Catching the Sun

They capture and hold the sun within, these buttery yellow gerbera blooms. Kin to dahlias, daisies, marigolds, calendulas, coneflowers, chrysanthemums, zinnias, and the great towering sunflowers, they drink in morning light and store it within the frilly tutus of their lavish petals. Like sunflowers, their capitulum appears to be a single flower, but each is a community made up of hundreds of tiny individual blooms.

The blooms are little earthbound suns on stems, and they dish out light as if it is warm honey. All the other garden flowers around them are uplifted by their frothy golden magnificence, by their almost imperceptible swaying, by the soft, sighing music of their duet with the wind. Bumbles and bees adore them.

Now and then, I falter as all living creatures do from time to time. On dreary days, I mourn the paucity of light in the world, and I think about the injustice and suffering and deliberate cruelty rampant everywhere. Then I remember how my garden loves the light in summer, and I resolve do a little inward blooming of my own, to breathe in light and send joy and comfort back out into the great wide world.

I wish I could take in light and store it as flowers do in summer, but I haven't a clue how to go about it. Perhaps all that is required is to stand in the garden with my face to the sun. I could become a garden myself. Now there's a thought.

Sequestered, Week 303 (CCCIII)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

Our efforts to honor human differences cannot succeed apart from our effort to honor the buzzing, blooming, bewildering variety of life of earth. All life rises from the same source, and so does all fellow feeling, whether the fellow moves on two legs or four, on scaly bellies or feathered wings. If we care only for human needs, we betray the land; if we care only for the earth and its wild offspring, we betray our own kind. The profusion of creatures and cultures is the most remarkable fact about our planet, and the study and stewardship of that profusion seems to me our fundamental task.

Scott Russell Sanders

Nuts in the Overstory

 Black walnut (Juglans nigra)

Friday Ramble - Summer's Ticking Clock

Somewhere in the dusty recesses of my noggin, the passage of these sultry summer days is being marked, and ever so wistfully. The clock of the seasons is ticking away in the background, and hearing it, I find myself pondering the lessons held out by this golden interval that is passing away all too swiftly.

The other three seasons of a northern calendar year are splendid of course, and there are surely other fine summers ahead, but this summer's days are numbered. We are sliding gently down the hill toward autumn, days growing shorter, nights growing longer. It seems as though summer just got here, but here we go again,

Thoughts of coming and going are ever inscribed on summer's middling pages, and they're unsettling notions, making for restlessness and vague discontent, a gentle melancholy about the nature of time, a wistful appreciation of what is falling away and the transience of all earthly things.

An awareness of suchness (or tathata) is a middle-of-the-summer thing. For the most part, one goes gently along with the flow of the season, breathing in and out, trying to rest in the moment and do the things around home and garden that need doing.

Roses are a perfect metaphor for the season. Many old roses bloom once in a calendar year, but what a show they put on when they do. Their unruly tangles of wickedly thorny canes and blue-green leaves wear delicate pink (for the most part) blooms with crinkled petals and golden hearts. Each rose is unique, and each is exquisite from budding until its faded petals flutter to earth like snowflakes.

For several weeks after Midsummer, ambrosial fragrance lingers in every corner of the garden, and I find myself falling in love with old roses all over again.  It is nothing short of a miracle that creatures so beautiful and fragile thrive this far north. 

I pour over Taylor's Guide to Roses and drool over varieties that would never survive in my part of the world: Blush Noisette, Souvenir de Malmaison, Alba Maxima, Fantin Latour, Tuscany Superb, Rosa Mundi, Variegata de Bologna, Belle Amour and Ispahan. My copy of Taylor is falling apart, and it is probably time to replace it, but the little volume is an old friend and I cherish it.

Once in a while, I catch a glimpse of the Great Mystery while I am hanging out in the garden, and that is surely what this old life is all about. There are times when I wish I was better at remembering that and keeping everything in perspective, but forgetting now and then is quite all right - I have the garden to remind me.

Thursday Poem - Become 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)

Wordless Wednesday - Sweet

Perfect Rose, Thorns and All

The English rose in the garden plot under my bedroom window is exquisite, and it is wonderfully fragrant. Nothing I can say here is up to expressing even a tiny scrap of its perfection. Each and every bloom leaves me breathless.

My rose is called "Heritage", and it was one of David Austin's first roses. To create it, he crossed an unknown seedling with a white floribunda (Iceberg) and his own pink shrub rose (Wife of Bath). Through the latter, my rose has other illustrious forebears including a legendary hybrid tea rose called Madame Caroline Testout, an exquisite floribunda called Ma Perkins, and Austin's own magnificent Constance Spry.

Living as far north as I do, my rose requires a lot of coddling. Every few years it expires and has to be replaced, but my late soulmate adored it, and I plant another specimen for him. Ideally, there would be heirloom and David Austin roses in every corner of the garden, but that is not going to happen. On long winter nights, I pull out my rose references and dream, but the reality is that summers are too short here, and much of the year is too cold for many of the roses I long to cultivate.

How grand it would be to look out my window on a summer morning and see a whole garden of roses with literary names: Maid Marian, The Lady of Shalott, Emily Bronte, Sceptered Isle and Sweet Juliet, to name a few. Just imagine! To have one, I would have to move further south though, and that is not going to happen. 

Sequestered, Week 302 (CCCII)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

Literature exists at every level of experience. It is inclusive, not exclusive. It embraces; it does not reduce, however simply it is expressed. The purpose of the storyteller is to relate the truth in a manner that is simple: to integrate without reduction; for it is rarely possible to declare the truth as it is, because the universe presents itself as a Mystery. We have to find parables; we have to tell stories to unriddle the world.

Alan Garner

What Falls Away

Friday Ramble - The Measure of Our Days

In early July, the trees on the Two Hundred Acre Wood are gloriously leafed out, and vast swaths of woodland are as dark as night - the shadowed alcoves are several degrees cooler than the sunlit fields skirting them. Winding strands of wild clematis wrap around the old cedar rail fence by the main gate, and the silvery posts and rails give off a fine dry perfume.

The fields are wonders: orange and yellow hawkweeds, buttercups and clovers, daisies, tall rosy grasses and ripening milkweed, several species of goldenrod, trefoils and prickly violet bugloss - everything is set in motion by the arid summer wind and swaying in place. The open areas of waving greenery have an oceanic aspect, and I wouldn't be surprised to see the masts of tall ships poking up here and there.

And then there are the birds, red-tailed hawks circling overhead, swallows and kingfishers above the river, bluebirds on the fence, grosbeaks dancing from branch to branch in the overstory and caroling their pleasure in the day and the season. I can't see them for the trees, but mourning doves are cooing somewhere nearby.

Fritillaries and swallowtails flutter among the cottonwoods, never pausing in their exuberant flight or coming down to have their pictures taken. Dragonflies (mostly skimmers, clubtails and darners) spiral and swoop through the air, a few corporals among them for good measure. These walks are filled with wonders.

I began this morning's post with the words "It is high summer". Then I remembered that the summer solstice has passed, and I went back and started again. And so it goes in the great round of time and the seasons. Many golden days are still to come, but we have stepped into the the languid waters that flow downhill to autumn.

Autumn with its burnished light, its grains and apples and gourds on the vine... The season feels like coming home to this old hen.

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

Wordless Wednesday - Sweet

Happy Canada Day

Happy Canada Day, happy July!

Sequestered, Week 301 (CCCI)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

I am a child of the Milky Way. The night is my mother. I am made of the dust of stars. Every atom in my body was forged in a star. When the universe exploded into being, already the bird longed for the wood and the fish for the pool. When the first galaxies fell into luminous clumps, already matter was struggling toward consciousness. The star clouds of Sagittarius are a burning bush. If there is a voice in Sagittarius, I’d be a fool not to listen. If God’s voice in the night is a scrawny cry, then I’ll prick up my ears. If night’s faint lights fail to knock me off my feet, then I’ll sit back on a dark hillside and wait and watch. A hint here and a trait there. Listening and watching. Waiting, always waiting, for the tingle in the spine.

Chet Raymo, The Soul of the Night: An Astronomical Pilgrimage

After the Rain

Friday Ramble - For the Roses

Rosa 'William Baffin'

One has to love creatures so lavishly endowed. Summer's roses are glorious creatures, be their flowering time an interval lasting a few weeks or one lasting all season long. All artful curves and lush fragrance, velvety petals and fringed golden hearts, the blooms are lavishly dappled with dew at first light, a rare treat for these old eyes as the early sun moves across them. If we are fortunate, there will be roses blooming in our garden until late autumn, and we (Beau and I) hold the thought close.

The word rose hails from the Old English rose, thence from the Latin rosa and the Greek rhoda. Predating these are the Aeolic wrodon and the Persian vrda-, and way back, the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) form wrdho- meaning "thorn or bramble". Humans have had a thing for roses for a very long time.

Most of the roses in our garden have thorns to reckon with, and we approach them with caution. The thorniest of the bunch are the multiflora which has ruled a corner of the garden for years, and a much younger, (but no less armored) rose from the Canadian Explorer series called 'William Baffin'. Wicked thorns on that one.

Around this time of the year, I find myself falling in love with the roses in my garden all over again. The blooms are lovely as they mature, and they are gracefully poignant as they fade and wither and dwindle, their petals tattering, falling away and fluttering to the earth like perfumed confetti.

Bumbles and bees love roses, and they spend sunlight hours flying from one bloom to another, burrowing deep into the centers and kicking their pollen bedecked legs in rapture. The air is filled with whirring wings and happy, buzzing musics.

There's a bittersweet and rather mournful aspect to one's thoughts in late June, and I remember feeling the same way last year around this time. Here we are again, pottering down the luscious golden slope to autumn and beyond. My pleasure in the season and a gentle melancholy seem to be all wrapped up together in falling rose petals and blissed out bumblebees.

Call it wabi sabi (侘寂) and embrace the feelings when they arise—they are elemental expressions of transience, impermanence and the suchness (tathata) of all things. Cherish the sweetness of the season, roses, thorns, bumbles and all.

Thursday Poem - Aunt Leaf

Needing one, I invented her—
the great-great-aunt dark as hickory
called Shining-Leaf, or Drifting-Cloud
or The-Beauty-of-the-Night.

Dear aunt, I'd call into the leaves,
and she'd rise up, like an old log in a pool,
and whisper in a language only the two of us knew
the word that meant follow,

and we'd travel
cheerful as birds
out of the dusty town and into the trees
where she would change us both into something quicker—
two foxes with black feet,
two snakes green as ribbons,
two shimmering fish—and all day we'd travel.

At day's end she'd leave me back at my own door
with the rest of my family,
who were kind, but solid as wood
and rarely wandered. While she,
old twist of feathers and birch bark,
would walk in circles wide as rain and then
float back

scattering the rags of twilight
on fluttering moth wings;

or she'd slouch from the barn like a gray opossum;

or she'd hang in the milky moonlight
burning like a medallion,

this bone dream, this friend I had to have,
this old woman made out of leaves.

Mary Oliver, from Twelve Moons

Wordless Wednesday - First Gathering

On the Line

I wander about whenever I can, taking photos of things in the natural world that grab my attention: the light in the trees, summer grasses dappled with dew, the creek in the woods singing as it rambles downhill, cedar rail fences, flocks of geese, herons and loons, wild orchids, fallen leaves, mountains and rivers, sunsets and sunrises, full moons and starry nights, winter snowdrifts as high as the Himalayas.

Closer to home, there are the artfully arranged clothes on my neighbor's line (coordinated by colour) and her brightly colored plastic clothespins, sunlight coming through the kitchen window, leaning piles of books, beakers of espresso and mugs of tea, song birds, bumbles and butterflies in the garden, the Beech Mother (and her comely daughters), sweet Beau who lights up my world and my life.

There is (of course) the pesky business of finding words to accompany the images, but I am getting better at letting them speak for themselves. Most of the time, they don't need my clumsy tinkering and feeble attempts at description anyhow. 

The gathering goes on and on like a wild litany, like the pearls of dew on a spider web or the beads on a very long mala. There is always something to see if I have the presence of mind to pay attention to the wonders around me. As Beau and I potter along, I give thanks to the Old Wild Mother (Earth) for all the fine stuff she is dishing out. I have always done that, but these days, my thanks to her have particular urgency in the light of what is happening in the great wide world. 

Why am I mentioning all this stuff this morning? I need a reminder, and this is it.

Sequestered, Week 300 (CCC)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its essence can rise again, invisibly, inside us. We are the bees of the invisible. We wildly collect the honey of the visible, to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Happy Litha!

Friday Ramble - For the Summer Solstice (Litha)

This is the eve of Litha (Midsummer) or the Summer Solstice, and as with all the old festivals, the observance begins tonight at sunset. Tomorrow is the longest day of the calendar year, the Sun poised at its zenith or highest point and seeming to stand still for a fleeting interval before starting down the long slippery slope toward autumn, and beyond that to winter. Actually, it is we who are in motion and not the magnificent star at the center of our universe. Our sun stays right where it is.

This morning's image was taken by the front gate of the Two Hundred Acre Wood in the Lanark highlands some time ago, and it is one of my favorites. It captures the essence of midsummer beautifully with tall trees and hazy sky in the background, golden daisies, purple bugloss and silvery meadow grasses dancing front and center.

It seems as though summer has just arrived, but things are all downhill from here. After tomorrow, days will shorten until Yule (December 21) when they begin to stretch out again. The ebbing is bittersweet, but longer nights go along on the cosmic ride during the last half of the calendar year, and that is something to celebrate for those of us who are moonhearts and ardent backyard astronomers. There are some fine stargazing nights ahead. The Old Wild Mother strews celestial wonders by generous handfuls as the year wanes, spinning luminous tapestries in the velvety darkness that grows deeper and longer with every twenty-four hour interval.

The eight festive spokes on the Wheel of the Year are associated with fire, but the summer solstice more than any other observance. Centuries ago, all Europe was alight on Midsummer eve, and ritual bonfires climbed high into the night from every village green. Long ago festivities included morris dancing, games of chance and storytelling, feasting and pageantry and candlelight processions after dark.

Prosperity and abundance could be ensured by jumping over Midsummer fires, and its embers were charms against injury and bad weather at harvest time. Embers were placed in orchards and fields to ensure a good harvest, and they were carried home to family hearths for protection. Doorways were decorated with swags and wreaths of birch, fennel, white lilies and St. John's Wort which is in bloom now.

My days of jumping midsummer bonfires are over. I will try to be outside with a mug of Jerusalem Artichoke (or Earth Apple) tea and watch the sun rise tomorrow. The afternoon holds a few hours of working in the garden and (as usual) a few mugs of tea and a little reading time on the deck. At nightfall there will be a quiet festive meal, a little stargazing and moon watching later if the skies are clear.

We (Beau and I) cherish the simplicity of our small festive doings, the quiet pleasure of being with loved ones at such times. As always, we will think of my departed soulmate. This is our sixth Litha without Irv, and his passing still cuts like a knife. Some things cannot be tucked away or forgotten. They can only be carried.

Happy Litha (or Midsummer/Summer Solstice), however you choose to celebrate it, or not celebrate it. May the sun light up your day from sunrise to sunset, and your night be filled with stars from here to there. May all good things come to you.

Thursday Poem - Evening

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat

held for it by a row of ancient trees;

you watch: and the lands grow distant

in your sight, one journeying to heaven

and one that falls;

and leave you not at home in either one,

not quite so still and dark as the darkened

houses, not calling to eternity with

the passion of what becomes a star

each night, and rises;

and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)

your life, with its immensity and fear,

so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,

it is alternately stone in you and star.

Rainer Maria Rilke

(translation by Stephen Mitchell)

Wordless Wednesday - On the Edge

The Old Guy in the Garden

The old guy (Hotei) sits in a sunny alcove in the garden under a canopy of old rose canes and buckthorn boughs. Birds serenade him in early morning, and rabbits visit him at nightfall. Bumbles and dragonflies buzz around him, spiders knit him into their webs, and sometimes butterflies land on him. There is a steady rain of maple keys, leaf dust and pine needles from the trees over his head.

He looks as though he is carved from stone, but he is actually made of some kind of polyresin and weighs only a pound or two. I discovered him in the window of a thrift shop many years ago, purchased him for a few coins and carried him home where he presides over a leafy enclave in the garden from early April until late October.

From October to April, the old guy hangs out in the potting shed, and he is carried there with great pomp and circumstance when the garden is put to bed in late autumn. Our procession to his winter lodgings is a cherished seasonal ritual.

Sequestered, Week 299 (CCXCIX)

Painted Lady in the Garden

 (Vanessa cardui)