Lacy

Queen Anne's Lace (Daucus Carota)

also called Wild Carrot, Bird's Nest and Bishop's Lace

Splendor in the Grass

 Allheal or Heal-all

(Prunella vulgaris)

Friday Ramble - Blue Skies and Many Suns Blooming

Clear blue skies at sunrise, fields of sunflowers in bloom and ripening corn so tall that one can stand in it and be completely hidden from view.  Damson plums on the sideboard, wax beans and the first tomatoes of the season in the kitchen - it doesn't take much to get one thinking squirrel thoughts at a time of the year when gardens and orchards are strewing fresh organic produce before us like flowers.

Produce is carried in by the basket from the garden daily, and there are quart sealers and jam jars on every surface.  Where in the little blue house are we going to put all the bounty we are gathering in and putting by for leaner times and other seasons?

In wide fields beyond the garden, bees and wasps are intoxicated by the nectars of goldenrod and summer daisies and lurching ecstatically. from flower to flower.  Stooks and sheaves of grain are everywhere drying in the sunlight, and cribs are overflowing with corn. Yesterday I noticed that a neighbor's pumpkin patch is in full luxuriant flower, and there are little green apples in the old orchard now - they are already giving off a fine spice, although they still have a long long way to go.

Every season has its tutelary spirits and deities, and the gift bearing guardians of  summer are many.  Think Lugh, Dionysus, Bacchus and Silenus, Adonis, Tammuz, Saturn and Pan.  Think Demeter, Kore and Nokomis, Dame Kind, the Corn Mother, Ceres, Parvati and Pomona. And the Old Wild Mother??? She is surely here in our garden in summer, but Hers is every season of the turning year.

Poetry Thursday - How to Make a Tomato Salad

The tomato
warm from the garden bed,
juicy and full of seeds, a woman ripe for love.

The onion
make it sweet and lingering—
adulterous kisses, darkness at noon.

Dashes of salt, a taste of the source,
the seas coming in at the window.

A full blessing of oil—
the fruity olives pressed
by monks chanting a cappella
the earthenware jugs stored in cool cellars,
mellowing.

The basil leaves, spicy and fragrant—
a lover's fingers.

You cannot make too much of this.
And when it's gone...

its memory will, in barren winter,
be like the small hot flame
of a love letter read in secret.

Dolores Stewart (Riccio)

(from Doors to the Universe)

reprinted here with kind permission from the author

Dolores captures the enticements of a summer salad made with garden tomatoes, fresh herbs and olive oil wonderfully, and this is one of my favorite aestival poems.  She is a gifted poet and a fine author, and you may visit her here.  I was delighted to learn recently that she is about to publish a new "Divine Circle of Ladies" novel and a new volume of poetry.

Wordless Wednesday - Lit From Within

Morning Glory

(Ipomoea purpurea)

Summer Blues

Somewhere in the dim recesses of one's mind, seasonal changes and the passage of summer days are being marked.  A celestial clock is ticking away in the background, and hearing it, one can't help thinking that the long golden season is on its way out.  I love the other three seasons of the calendar year, and there are surely other fine summers ahead, but this summer is fading, and its shining days are numbered. Such thoughts of coming and going are always inscribed on summer's middling pages, and they are unsettling notions, making for general restlessness and vague discontent, a gentle melancholy about the transience of all things.

An awareness of suchness (or tathata) is a midsummer thing, and for the most part, one goes gently along with the flow, breathing in and out, trying to rest in the moment and doing the things which need doing.  Once in a while though, the melancholy floats to the surface, and along comes the ancient naysaying crone who dwells at the back of my noggin with her troubling questions.  What is the point of these pathetic ramblings with camera and notebook, all the long wordy paragraphs and morning blog entries, she asks slyly, brandishing her wooden spoon as she stirs the pot.  What is this really all about?

The two images here are from last weekend's potterings around a beaver pond on the Two Hundred Acre Wood, and when I downloaded them yesterday, my inner naysayer took a long look and then went slinking back into the shadows.  Was it the confetti colored leaves floating on the surface that sent her packing, the satiny ripples moving slowly outward on the pond, the reflected trees, or the peaceful deep blue of the water?  Whatever it was, she got the message.  Sometimes, just sometimes, one catches a glimpse of the Great Mystery when prowling with camera and notebook on summer days.  That is the point of all this - that is what it's all about.

Hazy Morning

Ambrosial

Abraham Darby (David Austin)

July 2011 

When I stepped out onto the deck this morning, what greeted my freckled nose was the heady perfume of roses in full bloom - all kissed by early sunlight and dishing out frothy sublime fragrance with abandon. 

A thousand and one bumbles are tipsy on the perfume and staggering around the garden on uncertain wings, dusted with pollen and buzzing blissfully.  Bewitched by the sumptuous sweetness on offer, they are unable to settle on any bloom for very long, and their ecstatic dancing from bloom to bloom makes one think of summer poems by Hafiz. 

Ambrosial is the word for a summer morning like this one, the only word that will do.

Water Runs Down

Friday Ramble - Sweet Abundance

You rise early (five-ish) and trot out to the garden wearing your favorite cotton caftan, straw hat and sandals, carrying a mug of Earl Grey.  It's already wickedly hot out there, and the waning moon dancing overhead is somewhat obscured by a high gossamer heat haze.  Another scorcher is on the way, and the only sentient beings here who are happy about it are the mindfully foraging bees and the vegetables in our garden: beans, peppers, tomatoes, squashes, chards and various gourds.  The zucchini (as always) are on the march and threatening to take over the garden, if not the whole wide world.

Oh honey sweet and hazy summer abundance....... That luscious word made its first appearance in the fourteenth century, coming down the years to us through Middle English and Old French from the Latin abundāns, meaning overflowing. The adjective form is abundant, and synonyms for it include:ample, generous, lavish, plentiful; copious; plenteous; exuberant; overflowing; rich; teeming; profuse; prolific, replete, teeming, bountiful and liberal.

Abundant is the perfect word for these circumstances of fullness, ripeness and plenty, as we weed and reap and gather in, freezing things, chucking things into jars, "putting things by" and storing the bounty of summer for consumption somewhere up the road. Like bees and squirrels, we scurry about, hoarding the contents of our gardens to nourish body and soul when temperatures fall and nights grow long. 

Our cups are truly overflowing, but for all the sweetness and abundance held out in offering, there is a subtle ache to these long aestival days with their heat hazes and ripening vegetables.  As much as we long for cooler times, summer is all too fleeting...

Thursday Poem - Epiphany

Lynn Schmidt says
she saw You once as prairie grass,
Nebraska prairie grass;

she climbed out of her car on a hot highway,
leaned her butt on the nose of her car,
looked out over one great flowing field,
stretching beyond her sight until the horizon came:
vastness, she says,
responsive to the slightest shift of wind,
full of infinite change,
all One.

She says when she can't pray
She calls up Prairie Grass.

Pem Kremer

In life, Pem Kremer was a fine poet and a professor at the University of Kentucky.  I know the kind of boundless prairie fields she is writing about in this poem, and she captures the grandeur, spirit and vastness of such places wonderfully.  Her words remain in memory long after reading.

Wordless Wednesday - Mermaid In the Green

Salad Days

Over the past many days, there has been a dense steamy heat here that has us toiling in the garden before sunrise and taking early walks with Spencer before the world becomes too hot to potter about in, then spending the day indoors doing other things.

There are always creations in progress in studio or darkroom, and there are domestic alchemies to be undertaken: processing vegetables for the freezer and making gluten free bread, marshaling quart (liter actually) sealers of pickles, relishes and tomato sauce like legions of foot soldiers and tucking them into the downstairs pantry for next winter. At the end of the day there is tea and a good book, a little Mozart on the sound system, the companionship of clan and kindred spirits.

Huge round bales of hay are everywhere one looks in July, fields of waving wheat and oats, barley turning rosy pink and silver in the early sunlight.  The first gold and cream corn of the season is showing up at roadside stalls and farm gate shops along with cucumbers, beets, purple onions as big as baseballs, succulent yellow beans, tiny new red potatoes and rainbow hued salad makings. It is far too hot for cooking, and dinner is often a bowl of freshly picked garden salad or a lightly wokked melange of veggies in every conceivable color, all  lightly tossed in olive oil and lemon juice or dressed in a fragrant invented-on-the-spot dressing with a little curry tossed in to kick things up a notch. Ed Brown's The Complete Tassajara Cookbook rests on the kitchen counter along with Deb Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone and Annie Somerville's Everyday Greens and all three are getting a good work out.  The last book was illustrated by Mayumi Oda, and it is a treat for all one's senses, not just the palate.

There is something almost indecently sumptuous about our summer repasts, an element of improvised ritual and thanksgiving.  How can we not think of harvest and plenty and sharing in high summer?  How can we not give thanks for all the astonishing bounty coming into season, this goodness being held out to us in offering by Mother Earth?  Our cups and our baskets truly runneth over.

Brightness in the Summer Wind

Orange Hawkweed or Devil's Paintbrush

(Hieracium aurantiacum)

Who would guess that this bright little being nodding on our Two Hundred Acre Wood is probably not a native?  I've always known the fiery little flower, so abundantly blooming this past weekend, as Devil's Paintbrush and assumed that it is indigenous to our favorite place.  Also called Tawny Hawkweed and Grim-the-collier, the plant is a wildflower native to the alpine regions of Europe where it is a protected species, but in this part of the world it is considered a weed.  The local yellow form,  Northern Hawkweed (Hieracium canadense), is apparently native, and it too blankets our hills in July, the two varieties dancing together in the wind on their long slender stems.

The various hawkweeds are members of the aster (Asteracea) family and belong to the genus of sunflowers (Helianthus).  We call them hawkweed from the original classical name hierakion, and that word hails from the ancient Greek hierax, meaning hawk. As far as I know, there is no medicinal or culinary use for the various hawkweeds, but according to folklore, hawks and falcons chew the leaves to improve their eyesight for hunting purposes, and Goddess knows, hunting from way up there in the blue summer sky looking down would require keen vision. 

The flower is tiny, beautiful, bright and wonderfully cheerful, and it is here this morning because it dwells on our hallowed hills, captivating us endlessly in July with its perky summer dance.  Fine things sometimes come in very small packages, and they so often escape our attention as we ramble in search of larger wonders.

Bumble Girls in the Gold

Common Eastern Bumblebee (Bombus impatiens)
Ox-eye Sunflower (Heliopsis helianthoides)

The Full Mead Moon of July

Gardens full of flowers and maturing rosehips, fields of hay and orchards laden down with young fruit, bees humming in the clover - last evening's full moon was one of harvest, plenty and gathering in - the second of the four "gathering" moons which grace the interval between June and September.  We are a few weeks past Litha (the Summer Solstice) now, and daylight hours north of the equator are already waning, but this is high summer, and so it's a festive time - skies are brilliant blue and flooded with sunshine by day, rich violet and spangled with moonshine by night. 

I also think of this moon as the moon of teaching, for July's moon falls in the sign of Capricorn and is ruled by the great cosmic teacher Saturn. On the full moon in July, it is fitting to honor those who have been our teachers and mentors in the game of life - all those who shared their wisdom and experience with us, whether that sharing took place within the structured environment of classroom or sanctuary, a workplace, the deep woods or even a park bench. Some of my best teachers have been rivers, stones and trees, and last evening I honored them all.

 We also know this gorgeous magical moon as the: 

Blackberry Moon, Blessing Moon, Blueberry Moon, Buck Moon, Claim Song Moon, Corn Moon, Crane Moon, Daisy Moon, Fallow Moon, Feather Moulting Moon, Flying Moon, Grass Cutter Moon, Ground Burning Moon, Hay Moon, Heat Moon, Horse Moon, Humpback Salmon Return to Earth Moon, Hungry Ghost Moon, Index Finger Moon, Larkspur Moon, Lightning Moon, Little Harvest Moon, Little Moon of Deer Horns Dropping off, Little Ripening Moon, Lotus Flower Moon, Meadow Moon, Manzanita Ripens Moon, Midsummer Moon, Middle Moon, Middle of Summer Moon, Moon of Claiming, Moon of the Young Corn, Moon of Fledgling Hawk, Moon of Much Ripening, Moon of the Home Dance, Moon of the Middle Summer, Moon of Ripeness, Moon When Cherries Are Ripe, Moon When the Buffalo Bellow, Moon When People Move Camp Together, Moon When Limbs of Are Trees Broken by Fruit, Moon When Squash Are Ripe and Indian Beans Begin to Be Edible, Moon When Ducks Begin to Malt, Mountain Clover Moon, Peaches Moon, Raspberry Moon, Red Berries Moon, Red Blooming Lilies Moon, Return from Harvest Moon, Ripe Corn Moon, Ripening Moon, Rose Moon, Salmon Go up the Rivers in a Group Moon, Seventh Moon, Smokey Moon, Strong Sun Moon, Summer Moon, Sun House Moon, Thunder Moon, Warming Sun Moon, Water Lily Moon, Wattle Moon, Wort Moon

I am rather fond of Blessing Moon and Meadow Moon.

Friday Ramble - Tattered

Tattered comes to us from the Middle English tater and the old Norse tǫturr meaning rag or shred, and both words are cognate with the old English tætteca meaning just about the same thing.  Almost every culture on the planet possesses something like it - Low German has its tater, Old High German has zaeter, and the Icelandic form is töturr.  Originally, the word was a noun, but tatter makes an appearance in modern parlance only occasionally, and we cleave to the past participle form with its implied verb.

To be tattered is to be frayed, shabby and dilapidated.  It is to be threadbare, all patches and blowing bits, worn from long and honorable use in the service of life.  That makes the word conceptual kin to wabi sabi, the timeless Japanese aesthetic centered around notions of simplicity, transience and impermanence or mujo (無常).

As Richard Powell of Still in the Stream puts it: "[Wabi-sabi] nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is ever finished, and nothing is perfect."  The subtitle for his book Wabi Sabi Simple is Create Beauty, Value Imperfection, Live Deeply.  They are good words to live by.

Paradoxically, that which is tattered, transient and incomplete is beautiful in its own way, perfect in its natural state and suchness or tathātā.  There's the the old koan of life popping up again and insisting that we consider its elemental truth - here today and gone tomorrow, but oh, how we blaze with life while we are here, and oh, how we sing in our scant time on the earth.

It would be difficult to imagine anything more lovely, tattered and poignant than the White Admiral who came into the garden yesterday morning.  She danced and fluttered her way around in the sunlight, and there was joy in every vibration of her tattered wings.   When she came lightly to rest among the pines, she was perfect and a perfect reminder too.  If I could have held the lady in my arms, I would have.

Thursday Poem - A Kite Is a Victim

A kite is a victim you are sure of.
You love it because it pulls
gentle enough to call you master,
strong enough to call you fool;
because it lives like a desperate
trained falcon in the high sweet air
and you can always haul it down
to tame it in your drawer.

A kite is a fish you have already caught
in a pool where no fish come,
so you play him carefully and long,
and hope he won't give up,
or the wind die down.

A kite is the last poem you've written,
so you give it to the wind,
but you don't let it go
until someone finds you
something else to do.

A kite is a contract of glory
that must be made with the sun,
so you make friends with the field
the river and the wind,
then you pray the whole cold night before,
under the travelling cordless moon
to make you worthy and lyric and pure.
 

Leonard Cohen

(from The Spice-box of Earth)

Wordless Wednesday - Falling Water

Early Morning Rain

Goddess in Summer Flight

Milkweed (Ascelepias syrica) is in full flower in the Lanark Highlands, and the heat drenched fields on the Two Hundred Acre Wood are full of butterflies. We've seen feeding Monarchs at a distance, but alas, there are no photos to post here this morning.  Spencer goes dancing through the fields ahead of me, and he scatters butterflies like confetti as he frolics through the tall grasses. His ears fly; he kicks up his heels, and the white curl on the end of his expressive tail oscillates back and forth like a flag - his enthusiasm for life and freedom and sunny summer days is delightful to see.

A female Aphrodite Fritillary (Speyeria aphrodite) was resting on the path down the hill yesterday, and when she fluttered languidly into the tall white clover nearby, I did manage to capture a photo of her. When I arrived home, some long time with a magnifying glass and various texts was spent trying to decide whether she was (in fact) an Aphrodite Fritillary or a Great Spangled Fritillary, another of my favorite summer butterflies.

The small black spot below the discal cell on my beautiful basking friend was so small, faded and indistinct as to be almost indiscernible, but it was there, and there was no wide pale band on the hind wing when she was seen in profile - the spaces between the markings on the underside of her wings were a bright coppery color.

The beautiful circular silvery markings on the undersides of the Aphrodite's wings are an "all natural" organic phenomenon known in the science of chromatics as structural coloring (or in layman's terms as iridescence). Light reaching the wing spots is scattered or reflected by multiple layers of specialized scales, rather than being simply absorbed by the more ordinary wing pigments between the spots. Structural coloring abounds in the Old Wild Mother's creations, and we see it in all sorts of wild places - various butterflies, beetles and other insects, blue jay and peacock feathers, the shells of oysters (where it is called mother-of-pearl or nacre) and cephalopods like the glorious Nautilus with its perfect spiral shell. Mama does such things better than we ever could, although we are always trying to go her one better.

A Monarch capture would have been nice, but yesterday's Aphrodite was in her glory and her element.  She was magnificent, utterly magnificent.

Summer's Golden Currency

Alight

Yellow Coneflower

Friday Ramble - Lakeside

Craving the quiet companionship of water and trees, we three stuff our bags with spare batteries, memory cards and various lenses, water bottles and bug juice, pack up the old Volkswagen and make sail for the Lanark Highlands as fast as we can journey up the road. The longing to be at Dalhousie Lake is almost painful.

Lake is another of those words which has been around for centuries, and its origins predate the Battle of Hastings (1066 CE).  Has anyone read 1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England, comprising all the parts you can remember, including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates?  That puckish retelling of English history by W. C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman was published serially in Punch in the thirties, then much later as a book, and it was an absolute hoot from start to finish. There is a tattered copy in my library, and it still makes me laugh - I always enjoy dipping into it on a winter evening with a mug of tea in hand.

Sadly, Punch ceased publication in 2002 and now exists only as a website and online cartoon archive. The magazine published the work of some of the foremost comic writers of its time, and it created the template upon which all or most modern cartooning is based. Writers such as Thackeray, P.G. Wodehouse and P.J. O'Rourke were regular contributors, and the artists and cartoonists were legendary figures such as Tenniel, Leech, Keene, du Maurier, Shepard, Fougasse, and Pont.  The magazine wasn't all cartoons and witty repartee though - it was legendary for its blistering social and cultural commentary, tackling issues such as poverty, sweatshops and child labor long before it was acceptable to do so in Victorian society. 

This week's word comes to us from the Middle English lak, a conflation of Old French lac, and the source for both is the Latin lacus meaning basin.  Kindred forms in other languages include the Greek lákkos, Old Irish loch  and Old English/Saxon lacu  meaning variously: stream, sea, channel and water.  There is also an Old English word leccan , meaning to moisten something, wet it down or cause a leak.  There are a number of likely possible Proto-European roots (or ancestors), and one of these fine days, I shall unearth the right wily and elusive root - the most likely is laku, meaning pond.

The lake shore at the end of our resolute journeying is the substance of everything hoped for and so much beyond: a gossamer haze enfolding the hills like smoky blue tulle, the slow downward gurgle of the river under the bridge and out into the sleepy lake, the smooth green reflections of cedar and spruce on the water, their perfect tangy fragrance. The veil of haze lifts for a moment, silhouetting a single loon floating beyond the reach of my lens - it flashes its wings like silver and calls across the ripples of its own making in a magnificent haunting voice. Ripples and song will be with us all the way home this day and go dancing through our dreams when we rest our heads this evening.

Thursday Poem - Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honored among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honored among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Dylan Thomas

 
I read this poem every year around this time, and whenever I do, I am carried 

back to golden childhood summers spent on my grandmother's farm.

Word(less) Wednesday - Pot

 

Who is the Potter, pray, and Who the Pot?

Omar Khayyam, The Rubáiyát

Vibrant Days

Ah sweet and shaggy July... Waist high stands of purple Viper's bugloss (Echium vulgareare) in the Lanark Highlands are buzzing with intoxicated bumblebees. Brown-Eyed Susans are blooming, and almost every flower wears a sparkling Red-blue Checkered Beetle (Trichodes nutalli) like a enameled brooch.

We haunt our fields looking for Monarch butterflies and their offspring, hoping to find gloriously striped children arrayed like royalty and clinging to the underside of milkweed leaves. It is cicada time again too, and we listen for male annual cicadas perched high in the trees and calling to attract mates - I'm always on the lookout for newly emerged cicadas in our poplar groves.  So far, there has been only a single Monarch butterfly in the air over the Two Hundred Acre Wood, and there is no sign whatsoever of caterpillars and emerging cicadas, but these are early days. We will continue to potter about and look for butterflies and cicadas at every opportunity.

In the western field, last year's milkweed pods are draping themselves across their younger kin with insouciance or leaning against the old rail fence like weary travelers.  I never tire of looking at their thousand and one textures and the muted variegation of their earthy hues. Who knew that gray and brown came in so many delightful shades?

Yesterday, two female wild turkeys crossed the lane in front of us in late afternoon.  They were shepherding their unruly offspring before them like like little brown sheep, administering a gentle peck here and a nudge there to keep the inquisitive children moving.  The two families were speeding along at a fine rate, and their appearance was so unexpected that I didn't have a chance to snap a photo.

Floating

Spatterdock or Yellow Pond Lily 

(Nuphar lutea)

Wordless at Twilight

A favorite view around twilight...  The scent of water and reeds hovers in the air, granite and evergreens and weathered planks.  There's the sound of the river gamboling down through the gorge, under the bridge and out into the lake, waves lapping the shore and the old dock creaking on its splintery pilings, crickets and bullfrogs, the plangent voices of drifting loons, an occasional rasping of herons.  There are coyotes singing somewhere nearby, and they sound happy.

The setting sun is a sphere of flames over the distant shore, and at the end of  a summer day, its light paints a sparkling trail clear across the lake.  The backdrop is a frieze of purple clouds and floating islands, slow ripples spreading outward from the center, birds going home to roost for the night.

Crone sits on the dock with her feet dangling in the water, and she knows a deep and peaceful stillness that comes along all too rarely.  She senses Great Mystery all around her in the twilight, grace and a wild elemental truth that she wishes she could share, but she can't find the right words - this evening she can't seem to find any words at all,  That doesn't bother her though.  She will let the images speak (or rather sing) for their own wild selves, and oh, how they do sing. Who needs words on such a night?

Green, Gold, White...

Oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare)

Metallic Sweat Bee (Augochloropsis metallica)

Friday Ramble - Aestival

The word aestival comes to us from  the French word of the same spelling and the Late Latin aestīvālis, both originating  in the earlier Latin form aestās meaning summer or summery.  The verb form  aestivate means to spend the summer in a specific place (at the cottage perhaps) or engaged in a specific activity.

In the science of zoology, aestival refers to the tendency of living creatures to be somewhat drowsy and slow moving in the heat of a summer day.  Botanists use the word to describe the arrangement of organs or components in a flower bud. Once upon a time, I thought that the word siesta (referring to a nap after lunch) was related, but discovered a while ago that siesta comes from the Latin sexta meaning the sixth hour of daylight.  The words sound similar, but  they are not kindred spirits as far as I know.  Nor is the word festival related, although it too sounds as if it should be kin.

Aestival is one of my favorite words for the bright and flowering weeks in the middle of the calendar year.  Summer is a good word, but it can't hold a candle or even a match to the frothy magnificence of the golden season which reigns so briefly here in the north.

I say "aestival" and its sibilance conjures up images of festivals and celebrations, gardens in madcap blooming, trees full of singing birds, roses sweeter than any vineyard potion and perfect sunsets across the lake shared with herons,  At the end of day perhaps, there are fizzy potions with little paper umbrellas in them, vegetable skewers on the grill and homemade sherbet made with the first strawberries of the season.

Looking out this morning, I can see the tall spires of day lilies through my study window.  It is still early here, and all the blooms are folded up like rolled umbrellas, but in an hour they will be open and the undistilled essence of summer.  It's all golden, and it's all good.

Happy July everyone, and if you live in Canada as I do, Happy Canada Day.