June can be a slow month in the garden, visually; the spring bulbs and ephemerals are long past, seeds have barely sprouted, bedded annuals are still teeny things just starting to grow, and summer perennials have yet to open. But as the month progresses to the solstice, pops of color begin to emerge.
In olden days an astrologer could be executed for treason if he prophesied the death of the king, but times have changed. To be clear, the purpose of this article is not to say that Joe Biden will expire in office, but that there is a window opening shortly which could produce that result, and it’s something we should take note of. Given the pressures of the office and Biden’s status as the oldest serving president, this should come as a shock to no one.
To be fair, orange was the Old Trump, too, at least in terms of spray tan and hair dye. But in this next solar year, Donald J. Trump may find himself moving into a more sartorial realm with orange, in the form of a prison jumpsuit. On May 25th, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance gave The Donald an early birthday present when he empaneled a Grand Jury to look into possible criminal charges to be filed against the former US President (just a day before a Lunar Eclipse which conjoined asteroid Nemesis, noted for ruin and downfall). Prosecutors have been investigating Trump, the Trump Organization and its officers since at least 2018, and the convening of a Grand Jury signals that they are ready to present evidence and potentially seek indictments.
House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney (R-WY) must feel as if she’s gone down the rabbit hole these days. The conservative stalwart, daughter of former VP Dick “Darth Vader” Cheney, with a 78% lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union and a record of voting with President Donald Trump 98% of the time, is being booted from her leadership position, likely to be replaced by a woman with a 44% ACU rating, who only voted 77% with Trump. The reason for Cheney’s fall from GOP grace? Her apostacy in refusing to accept and promulgate the Big Lie, that Donald Trump won the 2020 election in a landslide and had it stolen out from under him. Liz also voted to impeach Trump after the January 6th assault on the US Capitol, and has called him to account for his role in that abortive coup, for which she is now paying the penalty.
It’s déjà vu all over again, as Yogi Berra would have it. Less than four months ago I put down my rescue cat Charcoal, who had a cancerous tumor in his mouth, and now his companion Cleo follows him across the Rainbow Bridge, from the same complaint! Cleo and Charkey were very close, and she hasn’t been the same since his passing. Her eating habits had become erratic, and she was isolating more and more in the upper reaches of a storage unit in the laundry room that was their home. After a few initial forays into the spring sunshine of the garden, she refused to go out, and the weekend before her death, she stopped eating completely.
As April wanes and fades into the lusty month of May, spring bulbs in the garden are waning, too, but there’s a last flourish of late-season daffodils to enjoy, and the muscari are at their peak. Perennials have returned, and are lush with new green growth (or in the case of heucheras, that might be rose, bronze, burgundy, yellow or purple growth!), and some have even bloomed.
