Intoxicated Bumblebees

For a brief interval on Sunday afternoon, I was convinced that there was something terribly wrong with the bumblebees on the Two Hundred Acre Wood in Lanark, that they had succumbed to a mysterious lunatic ailment of some sort. Many were behaving erratically, rolling around and staggering, buzzing happily but uncharacteristically, laying on their backs among the wildflowers and waving their antennae and legs in the air. Their flight patterns were odd to say the least, and they were easily distracted. There was little or no visible foraging going on.

As it turns out, my striped friends "had a buzz on" (pardon the pun). They were thoroughly intoxicated by the abundance all around them and the astonishing fragrances on offer, and they were also inebriated from the fermented nectars they had been imbibing earlier in the day. Bumblebees sometimes do this in the summer, but it appears that this year, my wildflowers are dishing out (or rather pouring) some very potent stuff.

Monarchs

Saturday morning was adrift in butterflies, particularly Monarch butterflies, and it was far too hot in Lanark to countenance doing very much at all except curling up in the shade of the big trees for a while and watching the bees, butterflies and dragonflies fluttering about. By mid morning, the temperature was blazing, and the humidity was astonishing - the experience was akin to wandering in a Brazilian rainforest.

These butterflies appeared to be female as they lacked the scent (pheromone) spot on their hind wings which would identify them at once as male specimens. As a general rule, female Monarchs are not as colourful as their brothers, but in both cases, the very faded wings and languid behaviour seem to indicate that they are older ladies, probably of the summer generation which will not migrate in August. Their vibrant children have already hatched out and taken exuberantly to the air in the highlands - there were clouds of bright young Monarch butterflies about yesterday, but they did not alight anywhere long enough to be photographed.

Last evening was a trifle cooler but (sigh) only by a few degrees. At nightfall, I pottered outside with my tea for an hour or so and watched several little brown bats circling about in the garden behind the little blue house in the village. The cicadas were certainly in fine form - the air was filled with their courting songs. This morning, it is already hot and humid, and we are in for another scorcher - there will be no release from the "hot stuff" for several days. I am by no means hastening toward the next turning of the seasons, but am already thinking longingly about autumn and its cooler days. This crone's brain seems to slow down considerably in the heat - some of the slowing is indubitably "an aging thing", but most of the present lethargy is related to the heat.

Cool Summer Blues

Globe Thistle (Echinops Ritro)

Chickory (Cichorium intybus)

Cool blue on a hot humid summer morning. . . . The Globe thistles in the garden behind the little blue house (which is not such a cool place these days in spite of its colour and the surrounding trees) are at least four feet high, and they are topped with marvellous big spheres of intricate blooms which are real architectural wonders.

There is an abundance of Chickory here this year, dense clouds of intense blue flowers floating along the roadsides in Lanark in ghostly clusters. This introduced cousin of the aster family is one of the toughest perennials around. Over the summer it will be mowed down times without number by road maintenance crews, sprayed regularly with the oil used to coat the verges and keep dust down, and it will be routinely trampled by trucks and campers. It returns from all these ordeals cheerful and resilient, and its blooms are brighter and even more abundant when it returns.

Then there is the lovely lavender blue pot I discovered in the ditch last weekend while cleaning up in Lanark. It was in pristine condition and I carried it home to the village to fill with marigolds.

Poetry Thursday - Apples

Behold the apples’ rounded worlds:
juice-green of July rain,
the black polestar of flowers, the rind
mapped with its crimson stain.

The russet, crab and cottage red
burn to the sun’s hot brass,
then drop like sweat from every branch
and bubble in the grass.

They lie as wanton as they fall,
and where they fall and break,
the stallion clamps his crunching jaws,
the starling stabs his beak.

In each plump gourd the cidery bite
of boys’ teeth tears the skin;
the waltzing wasp consumes his share,
the bent worm enters in.

I, with as easy hunger, take
entire my season’s dole;
welcome the ripe, the sweet, the sour,
the hollow and the whole.

Laurie Lee

There is a Thursday poem here.

Virgin's Bower (continued)

Virgin's Bower, Wild Clematis (Clematis virginiana)

These are the photos which were intended to accompany yesterday morning's blog entry on tidying operations last weekend. The first photo shows the Virgin's Bower which is blooming all along the fenceline at the front of the The Two Hundred Acre Wood. The second photo is a closer view of this lovely wild climbing vine which has turned my weathered old fence into a work of summer art.

Other names for this wild botanical wonder include "Devils's Darning Needles", "Traveler's Joy" and "Old Man's Beard", and the clematis is a whole pharmacy, all by itself. Early settlers packed clematis leaves into their boots to ease their blisters and packed it under their saddles to prevent saddle sores on their horses. Leaves stuffed into the crown of one's hat kept a traveler cool and protected from the effects of the sun, and an infusion (tea) made from the leaves has long been known as a remedy for headaches, congestion and gastric upsets - the same infusion used as a foot bath soothes weary feet wonderfully and is also an excellent eyewash. When added to one's bath, the infusion is a wonderful balm for sore muscles.

The count at the end of the afternoon of cleaning up was several large yellow rubbish bags of non-biodegradable detritus (or "stuff") of various kinds as well as three dozen beer bottles (unbroken) and a few dozen empty beer cans, all of which went off for recycling on Monday morning. As I lurched back to the gate late in the day on Sunday, a single Eastern Tiger Swallowtail alighted in a patch of milkwood on the other side of the fence, and out (of course) came the camera. A gorgeous one it was, and perhaps a small token of thanks from Mother Nature and the Fates for an exercise which was quite a chore in the heat and humidity.

Virgin's Bower

On Sunday morning, I took my usual weekend walk along the roadside in Lanark to collect the detritus which accumulates in roadside troughs, trenches and thickets; empty beer bottles and cans, styrofoam burger containers, old newspapers, scraps of polyfilm, plastic cups, tin cans and other items too toxic and unpleasant to mention specifically here.

I think the very least one can do as a passionate devotee of Gaia and Her wild places and careful custodian of a few hundred priceless rural acres of fields, hedgerows, stones and trees is to be respectful of them, to learn to know them and give thanks for them — to keep things relatively tidy. That is not simply an aesthetic issue, although aesthetics certainly do enter into the equation. Much of the detritus left along the roadside is not biodegradable, and wild creatures can be gravely wounded by the sordid rubbish which visiting motorists so thoughtlessly hurl onto the verges as they hurtle along our rural roads at breakneck speeds.

It was very hot and humid here on the weekend, and the weekly exercise was both unpleasant and wearying, but cleaning up is a task I have set myself, and it needs to be carried out on a regular basis. As I pottered slowly along the roadside on Sunday, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the Virgin's Bower (Clematis virginiana) vines which drape themselves over the old fences along the front of the property had expanded significantly this year, and everything was in riotous bloom.

My resident wild cousin of the domestic clematis also goes by the name of the "Devils's Darning Needles" here in the north. Later in the season, the female plants will be covered with tens of thousands of clusters of silky seed fronds which glisten in the sunlight and make for astonishing photographs. This weekend, there were masses and masses of tiny white blooms clambering over everything in sight, and the bees were absolutely "over the moon' with this unforeseen abundance.

There are a few lovely photos to go here (or rather a few very BAD photos of lovely things), but Blogger refuses to upload any images at all this morning.

Summer Cicadas

Yesterday afternoon, I discovered this newly emerged cicada adult clinging to its discarded exoskeleton on a poplar tree at the edge of the eastern hill at our place in Lanark.

Summer's cicadas are at the final or imago stage of their life cycle. They have such exquisite coloration, such delicate pattern and transparency to their wings, and each one I discover is like a small woodland jewel. They all seem to wear wide eyed hopeful expressions right after they have emerged into the green world as adults.

Only the males of the species produce the cicada songs which we associate with summer evenings, and the mating songs of cicadas are not produced by stridulation (like crickets) but through the rapid vibration of the tymbals mounted at the bases of their abdomens.

This is another one of those summer experiences which always brings back memories - the singing of cicadas in summer is one of the first things I can remember.

Oh Dragonfly

The air in Lanark was full of dragonflies yesterday, and they were constantly in motion. Capturing a photo (even a fuzzy photo) of one of these creatures is something that comes along rarely, so I was happy when this one perched on a leaf nearby for a few seconds and waited for me to click.

It is only this year that there has been time to look at (and think about) such little miracles as dragonflies, and I am very much a beginner when it comes to identifying these winged wonders, but I (very) tentatively identified it as a Yellow-legged Pondhawk.

They are small creatures, and they are certainly numerous in summer, but dragonflies are remarkable, and I am looking forward to the dragonfly studies already planned for this winter along with several others such as the history and geology of the Lanark Highlands, wild turkeys, beetles, moths, cicadas and nut trees. I am going to be busy. . . .

Red and Yellow

Mama Says Om - Relax

This week, the theme at Mama Says Om is "relax":

It's all about being (and hanging) loose. Relax is an intransitive verb rooted in the Middle English relaxen, which in turn springs from the Old French relaxer, thence from the Latin relaxare (to loosen).

On any day of the year at all, relax means a walk in the woods in Lanark with Cassie among the big trees and the old rocks. On a hot summer's day, it's also a comfortable perch in a striped sling chair near Dalhousie Lake or the Tay River, wearing my favourite old straw hat, barefoot in baggy cotton garb of some sort and holding a good book and a big mug of tea.

The sound of the waves stills my thoughts until they flow along like a deep quiet river. The presence of the calm water relaxes me until I am just a gnarly assemblage of loosely strung together and definitely over-the-hill body parts breathing in and out easily on the shoreline. At such times, I would be happy to rest at the water's edge until it freezes over and the snow flies again.

Words I Love - Sojourns in a Parallel World

We live our lives of human passions,
cruelties, dreams, concepts,
crimes and the exercise of virtue
in and beside a world devoid
of our preoccupations, free
from apprehension — though affected,
certainly, by our actions. A world
parallel to our own though overlapping.
We call it "Nature"; only reluctantly
admitting ourselves to be "Nature" too.
Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,
our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute,
an hour even, of pure (almost pure)
response to that insouciant life:
cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing
pilgrimage of water, vast stillness
of spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane,
animal voices, mineral hum, wind
conversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering
of fire to coal — then something tethered
in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch
of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.
No one discovers
just where we've been, when we're caught up again
into our own sphere (where we must
return, indeed, to evolve our destinies)
— but we have changed, a little.

Denise Levertov

There is an original Thursday poem here.

Fruitful Conifers

It has been far too hot and humid for rambling during the day, but on a walk early yesterday evening, I noticed that the conifers in the village are all engaged in manufacturing cones, surely an indication that summer is waning.

These artfully suspended green and russet pendants are the female elements of nature's conifer proliferation scheme, each cone bearing within itself a vast multitude of little conifers-to-be, new forests of lofty branches in the making and great fragrance yet to come.

The Bells and the Bamboo

The shapes in these two garden photos repeat each other, and they form a kind of continuum or flowing pattern which did not make its presence known until I uploaded the images on my memory card early this morning.

The windbells and bamboo reside far apart and in opposite corners of the greenery behind the little blue house in the village, but they are "all of a piece". When moved by wind, bird or human hand, the bells and the bamboo make music, and their shapes, textures and sounds are all pleasing.

From Wide Angle to Close Up

On this fine early sunny morning when the temperatures are already hovering in the mid-nineties, I offer you this cool green thistle with its magenta bud. The projected temperature for this day is 109 humid degrees, and we are already well on our way to it. Living in a sub-arctic climate zone has pronounced ups and downs.

What's with this blog's affinity for close ups and small things, with the careful attention lavished on thistles, birds, butterflies, bees, flower heads, leaves and stones? From day to day, I'm aware of it in a tangential or peripheral way, but I seldom think about assigning provenance to the focus or hanging a name on it.

Perhaps the origin is simply this. I've spent most of this life dwelling in the realms of the corporate and the scientific, but without ever having the time to give them much real thought or to consider the elemental wonders of the world around us, of the Old Wild Mother's own splendid natural creations. Life has been a flurry of activity — reams of paper concerning litigation, patent specifications and other legal matters of one sort of another, plus all the other "stuff" like meals, dishes, lawn mowing, dusting and taxes. The details vary somewhat from person to person, but that is true for most of us. There was never enough time to stop and listen to the humming of the bees in the western field, to look closely at flowers, read the life stories of the trees that are written in their leaves or understand the myriad patterns and portents woven into the sky at sunrise or sunset.

In one sense, these blog entries contain the essence of matters mundane, prosaic and commonplace (not to mention as boring as anything can ever be). In another sense, the little tableaux, wanderings and written wonderings here are random scraps of thought which hold the true essence of things, and they probably contain most (but not all) of what is important. Yes, I am passionate about great waters, trees, mountains and tundra, and I write about them all here, but the state of small is also great — it is elegant, thoughtful, and alight with essential indwelling grace and generosity which know no bounds.

In Lanark a few days ago, I had one of those small random knowings which surface suddenly from time to time, and I realized that I had been pining for small for years. When such epiphanies show up in a balloon, I wonder if I will ever learn, if I will ever manage to get it all together — I suppose that in Ursula Kroeber LeGuin's lovely words, "I am a slow unlearner, but I love my unteachers." All one can do in the circumstances methinks, is laugh and carry on. Emaho. . .

Lace at the Gate

Queen Anne's lace or Wild Carrot (Daucus carota)

There was a profusion of lace at the gate of the Two Hundred Acre Wood in Lanark yesterday, bank upon bank of it stretching into the distance: Queen Anne's Lace and the wild roadside kin who join it in summer: flowering Wild Fennel, Milkweed, Yarrow, Chicory, Butter-and-Eggs, Spotted Knapweed, St. John's Wort, Virgin's Bower (wild Clematis), a wide assortment of clovers, mulleins, hawkweeds, pinks, vetches, fleabanes and daisies. The roadside sisters were all dancing madly and rapturously in the astonishing heat and the dry summer wind.

The splendid organic architecture of Queen Anne's Lace never fails to delight. From first bud to autumn's fragile spiralling round brown mandala husk, the flower heads are intricate and amazing, and each one wears a tiny blood red flower in its centre to attract pollinating bees - there were bees everywhere yesterday, and the air was filled with their happy buzzing. As I stood at the roadside, I remembered Kim's words a few days ago about the Melissae and thought that bees have been present in much of my life too.

Fountain

This fountain lives in the perennial garden at All Saints Church in the village of Westboro. Her calm round face, kindly presence and the slow soothing gurgle of the water into the basin below her chin are soothing indeed on hot days like this one when the temperature is well over one hundred degrees without humidity factored into the equation. In early morning, I like to sit on the old bench nearby, just breathing in and out and listening to the water.

This morning I found myself thinking wistfully of a favourite cool place, a secluded cove called Old Woman Bay on the northern shore of Lake Superior where the steep cliffs rise right out of the lake, where the loons sing at sunrise on summer days, and the water runs cold and clear over the rocks.

Mama Says Om - Whimsy

This week, the theme at Mama Says Om is "whimsy".

After being absent for many years, garden trolls (or gnomes or dwarves) are making a comeback here this summer, and they are the very essence of whimsy in their small resin and PVC souls. I am seeing a multitude of garden trolls in my pottering, small magical beings who stand in garden plots and shrubbery and on verandas, holding watering cans, hoes, hatchets, beer steins and in one case, a whole potted geranium. What unites them all is their brightly coloured garb, their pointed hats, their long beards and their placid expressions.

One of my first ventures into the world of reading as a child was The Three Billy Goats Gruff, and I developed an early love for trolls, heading off as soon as I could into Nordic fairy tales, mythology, folklore and the literary genre called paleofiction to learn more about huldrefolk in all their many forms. As a child, I mispronounced all the names without exception, but the journey was a happy one, and it continues to this day, an early fortuitous encounter which gave me my first taste of folklore, fairytales and archetypes and sent me off on a lifelong journey which is brimming with arcane lore and replete with literary adventures.

My clan are of the opinion that the tale of "The Three Billy Goats Gruff" is to blame for sending me off on all sorts of parallel journeys too: wild gardening, woodland rambling, pottering about in the chthonian realms (the fruitful darkness of Joan Halifax) and in the general scheme of things, rooting for underdogs almost every time, although that can probably be traced back through a long line of ancestresses (or foremothers) who were headstrong, wayward, obdurately self-sufficient and cussedly intractable — I thank Herself for each and every blessed one of them.

I still have the troll tales, dolls and figurines of my childhood, and adult books on trolls and related matters abound here - one is always tripping over them as the little blue house in the village is so small, and we really do need several more bookcases. I delight in troll and fairytale films and music too, especially Edvard Grieg's scores for Peer Gynt, but I have managed (so far) to avoid computer gaming. It could become addictive.

Why are there so few female garden trolls about this year?

Poetry Thursday - Morning Prayers

I have missed the guardian spirit
of the Sangre de Cristos
those mountains
against which I destroyed myself
every morning I was sick
with loving and fighting
in those small years.
In that season I looked up
to a blue conception of faith
a notion of the sacred in
the elegant border of cedar trees
becoming mountain and sky.

This is how we were born into the world:
Sky fell in love with earth, wore turquoise,
cantered in on a black horse.
Earth dressed herself fragrantly,
with regard for the aesthetics of holy romance.
Their love decorated the mountains with sunrise,
weaved valleys delicate with the edging of sunset.

This morning I look toward the east
and I am lonely for those mountains
though I've said good-bye to the girl
with her urgent prayers for redemption.
I used to believe in a vision
that would save the people
carry us all to the top of the mountain
during the flood
of human destruction.

I know nothing anymore
as I place my feet into the next world
except this:
the nothingness
is vast and stunning,
brims with details
of steaming, dark coffee
ashes of campfires
the bells on yaks or sheep
sirens careening through a deluge
of humans
or the dead carried through fire,
through the mist of baking sweet
bread and breathing.

This is how we will leave this world:
on horses of sunrise and sunset
from the shadow of the mountains
who witnessed every battle
every small struggle.

Joy Harjo (Morning Prayers)

There is an original Thursday poem here.

The Rhyme of the Fish in the Well

It is in the speech of carters and housewives, in the speech of blacksmiths and old women, that one discovers the magic that sings the claim of the voice in the shadow, or that chants the rhyme of the fish in the well.
John Maruskin

John Maruskin's wise words were written in a published essay some time ago, and they have been much with me since I first read them - I have quoted them here and there and in many places during the last year or two, and eventually, I printed them off and pinned them to the bulletin board here in my little study (which is about the size of a bedroom closet). Although the words speak (or rather sing) of that which is magical, mysterious and mythical rather than the deep flowing Lanark rivers I have been blogging about in the last week or two, they are evocative and good words for pondering.

I think of us as a vast network of clear flowing waters, wise and becoming entities on a shared voyage. Our journey begins in high and secret places and meanders through cultivated fields, orchards and groves, climbs winding trails up onto moonlight mesas and then returns to the nurturing heights again. We each do this in our own way and in our own time, and we have wisdoms great and small to share about our journey.

As I write this morning, I am waving a goblet of water in your direction and toasting you with the fundamental "stuff" of life (hopefully without spilling it on the keyboard). May the waters of your life flow clear and cool over mountain stones and through the valleys too. May there be glorious moons and wide vistas waiting for you up ahead on the trail, and may there be many wonders. May your words flow freely and from the heart, bubbling up from the deep well of your creativity and shared experience. May your springs never run dry.

From the Field

Oh these fields of green and gold with their old split rail fences, their hedgerows and their guardian trees. . . . There are bales of hay everywhere this week, bales round and square and oblong, bales large and small, sweet bales of Alfalfa, Clover, Rye, Oats, Wheatgrass and Timothy (Bluegrass). Cornfields are reaching for the clouds and Barley is poetry in motion.

The skies are different in haying time, clearer blue at sunrise and a deeper more intense blue in the evening. On my walks through the fields with Cassie, I measure the slow careful march of summer and the turning of the seasons by the length of the shadows falling from big round bales in the pastures. At dawn there are crows perched on the bales exchanging stories, and at twilight, there are legions of deer and wild turkeys grazing in the stubble fields around them. Light and shadow are doing their slow honeyed seasonal dance to an improvised choreography and their own fey tunes.

An urban acquaintance remarked recently that "when one has seen one bale of hay, one has seen them all". Not so, each is unique and has its own pattern and texture — each casts a fine artistic shadow which is all its very own.

Windblown Butterflies

Sunday was a day chock full of butterflies, but many were tattered in appearance and seemed weary. This is (no doubt) due to recent heavy rains and the high winds which have been a constant feature of our northern summer this year. The Lanark Highlands have been in constant motion for several weeks now, and photographing anything from a leaf to a butterfly is problematic.

This summer, I feel as though I am living my life on a great inland sea amid flowing waves of barley, clover and corn, and by autumn, I may well have developed the steady rolling gait of a fierce old seawoman who has spent her entire life living out on the ocean and far from land, although that is certainly not so. Grace O'Malley (or Gráinne Mhaol), the legendary Irish seafarer of the sixteenth century (not to mention pirate, warrior, chieftain and adventuress) comes to mind here, although I possess hardly a scrap of her energy and courage and nothing whatsoever of her skill with sword and lance. In her own time, the fearless Grace was known as the "Mother of All Rebellions", and it would be splendid to merit such a title.

Both the White Admiral and the Question Mark shown here were somewhat the worse for wear, and they were happy to rest for a while among the sheltered junipers and the milkweed on the edge of the eastern hill and out of the wind. Monarch butterflies were numerous, but they refused to pose and didn't alight anywhere long enough for me to take a single photograph - there was no noblesse oblige on their part yesterday. It didn't matter at all, and I was perfectly content with the two butterflies who visited and "hung out" with me for some time. Both were beautiful just as they were, tattered or no, and we three sat quietly on the hill together, just breathing in and out - they were fine companions for such a day. Besides, I am a wee bit tattered myself.

Just Another Summer Day

It was just another summer day in the Lanark Highlands, perfect blue skies with wisps of cloud here and there, bright sunshine, big trees, old rail fences, blackberried hedgerows and fields full of wildflowers.

Yesterday, there were Red-tailed Hawks hunting over the field below the western hill, and there were White-tailed Deer grazing contentedly with their freckled fawns in the deep shadows along the fenceline. There was a Pileated Woodpecker hammering away on a dead butternut tree along the trail, and I heard young turkeys chattering in the woods. The air was full of Goldfinches and Monarch butterflies.

Is there such a thing as just another summer day?

Wild Roses and Hips

It is a brilliant morning here, sunshine and clear skies, and the day promises to be hot and humid, well over a hundred degrees with the humidity factored into the equation. We are off to Lanark in a short time; today I need to be out in the fresh highland air for a few hours among the big old trees and walking under their cool leafy canopy - I need to regenerate and pull in vibrant energy from my nemeton, from the perfect peace and balance of my native place.

The wild mountain roses in my garden are blooming, and they are certainly enjoying their season of plenty. These were transplanted years ago after a western trip and now form a dense thorny hedgerow in the garden behind the little blue house in the village - every July, the hedgerow is covered with masses of fragrant pink roses and a veritable cornucopia of rosehips, but this year's harvest is extraordinary.

Every year, I look at this hedgerow and realize once again that summer is fleeting. Although there are many golden days still to come, it will not be long before autumn makes an appearance, before domestic alchemy is in progress, and like the squirrels, I am filling my larder for the long nights time. When the rosehips ripen, they are transformed into jars of rich crimson jelly, chock full of natural vitamin C and goodness. Snug in our nests when the snow flies, we will partake of summer and its brilliance all winter long.

Mama Says Om - Treat

This week, the theme at Mama Says Om is: treat.

Treat is one of those small words which is used frequently in everyday speech, but which leaves one scratching her head when she learns exactly what it means and whence it originates. The word originates in the Middle English tretien, and that comes from the Old French, traitier, which in turn springs from the Latin word tractare or trahere, to draw. Interesting stuff this, and how, pray tell, does one get from drawing to candy, ice cream, chocolate eclairs and a multitude of other small indulgences which we think of as being treats (not to mention larger indulgences such as digital SLR cameras, home entertainment centres and cruises among the Greek islands)? Roget's thesaurus gives us the following:

Noun: amusement, banquet, celebration, dainty, delicacy, delight, delight, enjoyment, entertainment, feast, feast, festivity, fete, fun, gift, goody, gratification, indulgence, joy, meal, party, pleasure, reception, refreshment, regale, repast, satisfaction, spread, surprise, sweet; Verb: account, act, administer, amuse, apply treatment, appraise, attend, dine, feast, fete, regale, spread, dress, entertain, give, heal, indulge, play, regale, satisfy, serve

In our own language, treat generally means to indulge someone else or one's own self, and treating family and friends in small thoughtful ways is an ongoing activity, but I was surprised to realize that for my clan, the word treat seldom has to do with chocolate, doughnuts, ice cream or large appliances. When we think of treats and indulgences here, we usually think of other things, of cups of tea and books, books, books, of fountain pens and peacock blue ink, blank journals and velvety stationery. We think of art and everything to do with art: canvas, paints and bamboo brushes, potter's clay, gently rustling tissue paper in Oriental patterns wispy as silk, bits of old satin ribbon and scraps of fabric with which we can assemble collages. We think of long walks in the wild with Cassie and the garden, of the multitude of glorious colours, patterns and textures on display in the natural world, the colours of the summer moon and the sky at sunrise. My grandchildren think of leaves and butterflies, of construction paper, glue sticks and scissors.

All our treats are appropriate methinks, given the origin of the word treat, and most of our treats to each other and ourselves are small but thoughtful - many are absolutely free. The best treat of all is time together.

Poem Thursday: Can You Imagine?

For example, what the trees do

not only in lightning storms
or the watery dark of a summer night
or under the white nets of winter
but now, and now, and now — whenever
we're looking. Surely you can't imagine
they just stand there looking the way they look
when we're looking. Surely you can't imagine
they don't dance, from the root up, wishing
to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting
a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly
more shade — surely you can't imagine they just
stand there loving every
minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings
of the years slowly and without a sound
thickening, and nothing different unless the wind,
and then only in its own mood, comes
to visit, surely you can't imagine
patience, and happiness, like that.

Mary Oliver (from Long Life)

Like a River

To put your hands in a river is to feel the chords that bind the earth together.
Barry Lopez

A river sings a holy song conveying the mysterious truth that we are a river, and if we are ignorant of this natural law, we are lost.
Thomas Moore, The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life

The ancient Irish bards knew the Salmon of Knowledge as the giver of all life's wisdom. In the salmon's leap of understanding like a leap of faith, we can see ourselves "in our element," immersed in the river of life. The cycle of the salmon's journey reminds us that all rivers flow to the same sea.
Lynn Noel, Voyages: Canada's Heritage Rivers

Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.
A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

Wayward Lilies

Such exuberant creatures these lilies. . . . Shunning the dictates of conventional garden form, they do their own thing, in their own way and their own time. Every other plant in the garden behind the little blue house potters along and observes the niceties related to height, form, symmetry, texture and demure colour. My lilies (however) are all over the place, taller than any other flowering residents except the Constance Spry and Maiden's Blush roses, more brightly coloured than anything else in the garden, ecstatic, eccentric and cavorting in the wind at the drop of a hat — the faintest breeze sets them dancing exuberantly in their place in the southeast corner of the garden.

In morning, my lilies open and turn their faces to the sun, and in evening they fold themselves up and dream until the light returns. There are times in afternoon when I can hear them through the kitchen window, exchanging earthy jokes and laughing among themselves. The whole flamboyantly coloured troupe have been giving some thought to hiring an old school bus (orange of course) and taking their act on the road.

Photographing the lilies takes time because of their persistent cavorting in place and their refusal to pose for the camera — one must have patience and wait for them to pause for breath in their frolicking and their revelries. I feel just the slightest bit like Georgia O'Keefe when I manage to capture them on a memory card and transfer the results into this system.

If the lilies could speak, what would they say? The garden divas (or sibyls) would no doubt tell us to live according to our deepest instincts as they do and be what we were meant to be — they would tell us to bloom as only we can bloom and pay no heed whatsoever to how everyone else is going about it. They would tell us to go with the flow and make a eloquent plea for colour, freeform blooming, creative expression on one's own terms and spontaneous dancing in the wind.

To those of you below the the 49th parallel, Happy Independence Day. To quote a dear friend, "a very happy everything".