Wordless Wednesday - Coming Up

May is scarlet, purple and green...

The end of May is not far off, and there's a legion of first appearances in the garden behind the little blue house and local hedgerows too...

The first buttercups, clover, daisies, salsify and vetches are blooming in the field at the end of the street, and a colony of escaped poppies dancing in scarlet profusion.  The texture of the poppies with the sun shining through them is astonishing and we stop to stare - the blooms seem to give off light and not just pass it along.

Here and there are tufts of the purple weed known locally as Creeping Charlie, Ground-ivy or Gill-over-the-ground.  I wasn't aware of it for some long time, but Glechoma hederacea  has a whole cornucopia of medicinal uses, and it is in common use as a salad green in many cultures.  European settlers carried it here on their travels, and it thrives in its "purpleness" wherever it finds itself, turning up in diverse habitats like vacant lots, parks, hedgerows and curbs, in residential flower beds and carefully manicured lawns.

Tall spires of Russell lupins in shades of pink and purple sway back and forth in our garden, and our blackberry bushes are in full bloom, full of bumble bees doing their happy appointed thing.  If the rain holds off, I shall be out with camera and macro lens later today and moving with the wind as I try to capture the profligate hues on offer.

I am always enthralled by the differences between these madcap florid end-of-May doings, and the state of things here only a few weeks ago.  Gone are the browns and the grays - there are reds and purples to be sure, and even the greens are dazzling.

The Long Cool View From Here

The Jester's Cap and Bells

 Wild Columbine

(Aquilegia canadensis)

The colors of these wild cousins are truly opulent, and their delightfully complex structure always reminds me of a medieval jester's cap and bells - there is something of blithely capering choreography to their nodding back and forth movement on gracefully curved and arching stems.  In late May, they always seem to be wearing at least one spider web, and this bloom is actually wearing two.

Unseasonal coolness, high winds and heavy rains wrought an early demise of columbines, trilliums and yellow lady slippers this year, and it was delightful to discover this prime and happy specimen cavorting alone in a sunny nook by the trail yesterday.  As I was looking, legions of swallowtails fluttered by my head and danced further along the path into the woods, and the air was filled with dragonflies.

Rapt Attention in the Green

Friday Ramble - Radical

This Friday's word is radical, and a natural choice for this madcap greening season when we are all planting packets of seeds and transplanting flats of flowers, herbs and veggies - it comes to us through the late Latin rādīcālis meaning having roots, and the Old English wrotan meaning to root, gnaw or dig up, both entities originating in the early Indo-European wrad meaning branch or root.

Synonyms include: fundamental, basic, basal, bottom, cardinal, constitutional, deep-seated, essential, foundational, inherent, innate, intrinsic, meat-and-potatoes, native, natural, organic, original, primal, primary, primitive, profound, thoroughgoing, underlying, vital. They also include pejorative words such as anarchistic, chaotic, excessive, extremist, fanatical, far-out, freethinking, iconoclastic, immoderate, insubordinate, insurgent, insurrectionary, intransigent, lawless, left wing, militant, mutinous, nihilistic, rabid, rebellious, recalcitrant, recusant, refractory, restive, revolutionary, riotous, seditious, severe, sweeping, uncompromising and violent.

We use the word radical to describe someone who dwells outside the mainstream, someone who has departed from accepted norms, traditions and social conventions and does their own thing. The word has been in common usage since the sixties, and being called radical may or may not be a compliment. I am always astonished and vastly tickled on some level to think that a word used to connote the rebellious, unconventional,, confrontational and downright peculiar actually means something as lovely and organic and simple as "rooted. Now how did that happen?

In the original sense, being radical simply means being connected and part of things, and that makes the word one of my all time favorites.  It signifies (for me anyway) a bone deep connection with everything that matters, with the Old Wild Mother and all her creations, the earth under my feet, the moon and stars over my head - with timeless notions of rebirth, transformation and non-duality. Pots off, roots down, branches up and away we go...

Thursday Poem - Becoming

Wait for evening.
Then you'll be alone.

Wait for the playground to empty.
Then call out those companions from childhood:

The one who closed his eyes
and pretended to be invisible.
The one to whom you told every secret.
The one who made a world of any hiding place.

And don't forget the one who listened in silence
while you wondered out loud:

Is the universe an empty mirror? A flowering tree?
Is the universe the sleep of a woman?

Wait for the sky's last blue
(the color of your homesickness).

Then you'll know the answer.

Wait for the air's first gold (that color of Amen).
Then you'll spy the wind's barefoot steps.

Then you'll recall that story beginning
with a child who strays in the woods.

The search for him goes on in the growing
shadow of the clock.

And the face behind the clock's face
is not his father's face.

And the hands behind the clock's hands
are not his mother's hands.

All of Time began when you first answered
to the names your mother and father gave you.

Soon, those names will travel with the leaves.
Then, you can trade places with the wind.

Then you'll remember your life
as a book of candles,
each page read by the light of its own burning.

Li-Young Lee

(from Behind My Eyes)