pay-per-view

More flagrant than ever before, the garden this spring has been one raucous and debauched carnival of lawless bacchanalian flower sex. Someone asked me how the yard was doing a couple of weeks ago, and the only adjective I could think of to describe it was pay-per-view.

That the bees are back doesn’t hurt: there are more wanton workers barnstorming the sepals, looting the pistils and bracing the stamens than I’ve seen in years. I blush yet at the thought of the countless bodies  clumsily adjusting their undergarments, stumbling out of the garden dizzy with the perfume of sex, telltale pollen smeared on their collars.

Of course, that’s nature’s nature every spring. I’m just tuned in to it more acutely this year than any other in memory. I’ve been sublimating pretty hard in 2010, thanks to an especially lusty curiosity and cunning, and an abundance of free time, botanical variety, and midday mead. It all came to a climax today when I realized just how oh-so very badly I want to lay down with this one:

Can that be so bad? Can this particularly innocent instance of polymorphous perversion really have a price? Will Courtney be jealous?

Persnaps, but let this be her consolation: my botanical tryst is short-lived. Alas, this beauty is exceedingly ephemeral: try as I might, I can not preserve these petals. Vivid colors fade, perfect posture wilts, ardor will languish.

And yet!

For whiners like me, there’s always Autumn. The fruit borne this fall will be just another form of the same biological ecstasy, though more visceral and less hysterical, more nourishing and more sustaining, and far more enduring.

Thank you, pesto, for making winter worth living through.