About the Moon (Not)

It's not an unusual state of affairs in summer. . . Last evening (as usual), out came the big tripod and camera, and I made ready to go out in the garden and look at the moon coming up, big, bright, and almost full.

It's a meditation of sorts, this standing out in the garden and looking up at the moon on the night before her fullness, observing her perfect peaks and valleys, running through my inner archive of moon lore, thinking full moon thoughts and taking a photo or two. In all my years on this dear little blue planet, no two full moons have ever been quite the same, and they are all illuminating (pardon the pun).

Alas, there was no moon to be seen last evening, for we were balanced on the edge of a great unbridled summer storm with son et lumière in abundance, and we certainly need that rain if there is to be a harvest this year. The light show and sound effects were spectacular at times and Mother Earth is a little more moister (and happier) this morning.

We shall try again this evening, but how lovely the silvery grey hostas are in their mantles of raindrops.

Thursday Poem for the Moon

on balmy nights in late June,
the waxing moon comes up by the
old willow like a friend, unfettered
and vaguely hopeful too.

ribbons of rosy cloud up there
in the twilight and the first star,
night birds in the hedgerow,
a horned owl hunting the night.

hold them close these celestial
turnings great and small, the perfect
starlight pouring itself out like honey
and manna over the fragrant garden.

(me, with apologies)

Summer Stillness

Sit just to sit. And why not sit? You have to sit sometime, and so you may as well really sit, and be altogether here. Otherwise the mind wanders away from the matter at hand, and away from the present. Even to think through the implications of the present is to avoid the present moment completely.

Alan Watts

Meditative thoughts and slow reveries dovetail nicely with steaming sultry summer days in the northern rainforest. On recent potterings through the hedgerow early in the morning, I dress lightly in cotton from the skin out and often leave the larger camera behind, opting instead for the little Sony Cybershot which spends most of its days in a drawer here in the study. The tiny Sony was my only digital camera for quite a while, and it has always been the perfect companion for hot summer days.

Is it the dancing shadows made by the leaves over my head? Is it the flickering sunlight over the lake, the slow buzzing of bees, crickets and grasshoppers in the fields, the sound of the frogs in the beaver pond? I am not sure, but there is a strong desire to curl up on a flat stone by the stream and just "be there" for an undetermined but very compelling interval.

Every leaf and tree, every bird, butterfly and dragonfly, seems to be in slow motion and expresses itself in a honeyed croon. Even the hawks have a more fluid song as they hunt in slow circles over the western hill at sunrise. I have the definite feeling that the whole exercise is about praise.

By the Water

The sun shines not on us, but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fibre and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing.
John Muir

There is something bigger than fact: the underlying spirit, all it stands for, the mood, the vastness, the wildness.
Emily Carr

The song still remains which names the land over which it sings.
Martin Heidegger

How can we get there from here, I wonder, to the centre of the world, to the place where the universe carries down the night of song to our human lives. How can we listen or see to find our way by feel to the heart of every yes or no? How do we learn to trust ourselves enough to hear the chanting of the earth? To know what is alive or absent around us, and penetrate the void behind our eyes, the old slow pulse of things, until a wild flying wakes up in us, a new mercy climbs out and takes wing in the sky.
Linda Hogan

The song and the land are one.
Bruce Chatwin

In the places that call me out, I know I'll recover my wordless childhood trust in the largeness of life and its willingness to take me in.
Barbara Kingsolver

For some of us, our love for the world is so passionate that we cannot ask it to wait until we are enlightened.
Joanna Macy

Many Storeyed and In Bloom

I think of milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) as a series of many storeyed rural residences, and now that the wild specimens in Lanark are well on their way to a fine full blooming, the ones on my hill are absolutely full of foraging aphids, beetles, spiders, moths and butterflies.

Wild winged residents like the Monarch butterfly have evolved a special set of defenses to cope with the toxic chemical cocktail contained within the leaves of the milkweed (glycosides), and the Monarch's dietary preferences make it unappealing to predators.

After spending the weekend in the orchid bogs in Lanark, we returned home last evening severely chewed by deerflies, and we are rather looking forward to a whole day without hungry rampaging insects.

Wild and Showy Wonder

On the weekend of the Lanark orchid festival, a few images captured yesterday, not in the magnificent orchid sanctuary at the Purdon bog, but in a wild and sunny bog closer to home.

The blooming of Cypripedium reginae is a fleeting thing, and it would be a travesty not to mark the grandeur of this rare wild orchid's appearance with songs and photos and intervals of open-mouthed wonder.

My secret orchid colony is probably more than a century old. Its leaves are an exuberant rustling emerald green, and the blooms are huge.

Rose in the Garden

Mirabile dictu, there's a rose blooming in the garden this morning, the first bloom of the season on the Abraham Darby rose which resides in the garden behind the little blue house in the village.

What colour, what size, what perfect form, and how I wish I could share its incredible old rose fragrance with you too.

Thursday - Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith

Every summer
I listen and look
under the sun's brass and even
into the moonlight, but I can't hear

anything, I can't see anything --
not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up,
nor the leaves
deepening their damp pleats,

nor the tassels making,
nor the shucks, nor the cobs.
And still,
every day,

the leafy fields
grow taller and thicker --
green gowns lofting up in the night,
showered with silk.

And so, every summer,
I fail as a witness, seeing nothing --
I am deaf too
to the tick of the leaves,

the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet --
all of it
happening
beyond any seeable proof, or hearable hum.

And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
Let the wind turn in the trees,
and the mystery hidden in the dirt

swing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?

One morning
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body
is sure to be there.

Mary Oliver
from West Wind)

Monarch

Monarch Butterflies
(Danaus plexippus)

In these two photos, my favourite summer butterflies are shown feeding on Viper's Bugloss (Echium vulgare) on the edge of our western hill in the Lanark Highlands. It will be several days (I think) before the milkweed is in full bloom, and they can feast on their preferred menu.

It is only in seeing the Monarchs through the eye of my macro lens that I realize how magnificent they really are.

That Perfect Moment. . .

The wild and wandering life can hold no finer moments than those perfect intervals that sometimes deign to show up in one’s life in the middle of June somewhere in the sunlit bogs and fens of the Lanark Highlands.

Yesterday morning, I wandered slowly on foot along County Road 12 near the hamlet of McDonalds Corners in my favourite floppy hat, camera firmly in hand and spectacles perched on the end of my nose, a whole bag of lenses clanking agreeably on my hip, a bottle of water in one pocket of my photographer's vest and a large receptacle of insect repellent in another pocket.

The day was brilliantly sunny and humid, the skies a perfect azure blue, and a fine haze shimmered over everything within sight. The air over my head was full of dragonflies and damselflies, dancing Eastern Tiger Swallowtail and Monarch butterflies. There were (alas) deerflies in profusion, but such is always the case in June out in the highlands, and one goes out prepared for the heat, the humidity and the inevitable clouds of biting insects.

One is never quite sure what she will find in these northern rainforest expeditions, and the best thing to do is set off without firm expectations of any kind, to go along quietly and observantly and be open to the seasonal treasures on offer. One must be willing to embrace astonishment and be transfixed, ready at any moment to see something magical and fall headlong into a state of rapture that dazzles the eyes and makes the spirit sing. To wander in these wild places is to be an ecstatic apprentice of wonder.

I wandered down a steep embankment yesterday morning and into a squelching emerald green bog alive with voracious bugs and decomposing vegetation, and there it was — a gently nodding colony of the most magnificent Showy Lady Slipper orchids I have ever encountered anywhere.

Does life get any better than this? I returned home late in the day with a head full of wild orchids, having forgotten entirely about the deerflies. There were visions of Cypripedium reginae dancing in my mind, and I felt like singing hallelujah. This morning, the right words to describe the experience evade me, but the wonder remains.

Dalhousie

Here are hazy vignettes taken near Dalhousie Lake, as we pack up our gear this morning and head off into the steamy orchid bogs of the Lanark Highlands.

All were captured yesterday, and the morning was so splendidly hot, sunny and humid that a heat haze shimmered over everything, from the trees at the top of the gorge to the river and rocks far below. The water running headlong over the stones in the river was blissfully cool.

The gorge, river and lake are old friends, and the view from above is absolutely spectacular. The climb to the heights is one I have undertaken many times over the years, perching on top with my feet dangling over the edge, my camera in hand and the happy feeling that I was sitting on the very roof of the world. There has been at least one post here on the pleasures of sitting high above in the autumn mist, looking out over pine clad ridges and shadowed valleys.

Yesterday, there were legions of dragonflies swooping over the lake, and the trees along the river were full of Eastern Tiger Swallowtails.

At First Light

Mama Says Om - Gift

The first roses of the summer blooming in the garden - their colour, their fragrance, their velvety dew-speckled texture a few minutes after sunrise, the rich cream at their verges moving through shades of rosy pink and apricot, inward to a perfect cupped golden heart.

Thursday Poem - Morning Dew

With the morning dew,

stand forth from the mists
white peaks, green meadows.
The sun on the oak groves!
The larks climb so far
they melt into sky.
Who feathered the fields?
Who made wings of wild earth?
Above the tall ranges,
on broad sunlit wings the eagle rides the wind.
Above the sharp peak
where the river rises,
the turquoise lake,
the ravines deep in pines,
above twenty hamlets.
and a hundred roads
Mistress eagle, where bound
so early in the morning,
so steadily flapping down highways of air?

Antonio Machado,
(Morning Dew from Redux)

Four of Earth

It is wonderful how marvellous things come into one's life and just when she needs them to appear.

Several days ago my dear Sister Mermaid Joanna sent me an beautiful limited edition print of the Four of Earth from her magnificent work of art in progress, the Gaian Tarot. I opened Joanna's package yesterday (just when I needed it most), and the print is before me as I write this. It is so beautiful, and it tells me beyond mere words, that I have much to give thanks for: that the world is graced with bright and generous spirits like Joanna and Sister Superior Mermaid, Kim, that there is indeed beauty, abundance, harvest and completion in our endeavours, all in their own good time. Thank you Joanna, and from the bottom of my heart.

Henry, the grey squirrel who is the elder statesman in the garden behind the little blue house in the village, was happy to pose for Joanna's card some time ago. He is older, wiser and greyer this summer, and if anything, plumper, bolder and more audacious too.

Morning Colour

The Buzz

How swiftly the time of harvest comes!

The fields in Lanark are waist deep in timothy, alfalfa and various clovers, and the first hay cut of the season is in full swing this week.

The air seems to shimmer in the June heat, and it holds the fresh tangy fragrance of new mown hay, the winnowed fields lying in tidy heaped arrangements under the early sun. There is the resonant whirring grumble of combine harvesters everywhere, a buzzing of crickets, the golden euphoric hum of bees and wasps taking their nourishment from heads of blooming red clover.

It is only a few days until Litha and the Summer Solstice, and when I looked at my Lunaria calendar this morning, I marvelled at how quickly the year turns.

Sometimes an eagle. . .

Bald Eagle
(Haliaeetus leucocephalus)

We started off for the Two Hundred Acre Wood in Lanark at first light yesterday, knowing that the day would be hot and humid, and that our favourite part of the world would be in its customary June configuration, a northern rainforest in the midst of a full and shaggy bursting forth.

After the recent drenching rainfalls, everything was lush and green, and one can no longer see further than a few feet into the forest. The edges of the trails are blurred with verdant growth and new maple saplings are coming up everywhere. Red squirrels lectured invisibly from the dense foliage, and there were grosbeaks high in the canopy. Our bluebirds have returned, and they were active at the nesting boxes which we so hopefully cleaned out a few months ago. There were biting bugs in abundance, but the air was also full of dragonflies swooping and whirling on iridescent wings of ebony, amber, ruby and emerald green.

I was happy to note (for the sake of the Monarch butterflies) that milkweed is finally coming up everywhere and making good time in its rising. Although it was cold here last winter, there was little or no snow cover until late in January, and I worried that milkweed would be sparse this year, making summer a difficult undertaking for Monarchs and other milkweed feeding butterflies.

Somewhere in my thoughts as we drove along yesterday was the clear memory of an osprey hunting on gracefully arched wings over the river last June, and how I longed to see one. Instead, there was an eagle, a single perfect bald eagle soaring high in the cloudless blue right over my head. For some unknown reason, I was a bit blue myself yesterday, and an eagle was just what I needed to see. I wonder what he or she portends.

Garden Pagodas

(Aquilegia spp.)

Short Morning Story

Early morning at the lake, and it is already very hot - there is a fine haze over everything.

There is hardly a ripple, and the lake is a good place for early meditations.

My Cassie has finished her own meditations - she takes a swim and practises her retrieving skills.

Mama Says Om - Focus

There was a time not so long ago, when I would not have been outside at twilight to watch geese flying down to the river as I did a day or two ago, their strong dark shapes silhouetted against skies of rose and gold, against the tall stalwart forms of the spruces and pines and the wispy clouds.

There was a time when I would not have been standing in the hedgerow at sunrise to see this perfect leaf after rain and marvel: at its colours, at the perfect shape and lustre of the beads of wetness along its verges and veins, at the knowledge that in each raindrop there are atomies beyond my ken and focus, whole tiny dancing worlds in each roundness.

I am thankful for eyes with which to see the leaf, for ears with which to hear the songs of the geese as they fly, for a nose with which to breathe in this shaggy green summer fragrance in the hedgerow — with the doddering wits which allow me to "see" in a way which goes far beyond the senses, to fathom on some level, just astonishing this world is and how many wonders there are all around me, if I can just focus.

Written (however briefly) for the brilliant inspiring mamas at Mama Says Om.

Thursday Poem - Not Dawdling

Not dawdling
not doubting
intrepid all the way
walk toward clarity
with sharp eye
With sharpened sword
clearcut the path
to the lucent surprise
of enlightenment
At every crossroad
be prepared to bump into wonder

James Broughton (from Little Sermons of the Big Joy)

There is an original haiku offering here.

Garden Pink

Garden Columbine
(Aquilegia spp.)

Although this specimen is a garden columbine rather than a wild Canadian columbine (Aquilegia canadensis), its position in a corner of the garden in front of the little blue house in the village is one which always gives me pleasure in late May and early June.

This plant is several years old, and it has occupied its present living space since I moved it there seven years ago to give it more growing room - the large blooms with their ornate architecture and rosy colour are really something to see, and they always make me think of a truly funky hat.

Together with various specimen hostas (the huge ones), astilbes, monksood and Asiatic lilies, my columbine lives in a shady alcove near the cobblestone walkway leading to the front door. It is the first bloom our guests encounter when they visit at this time of the year, and I think of it as a kind of welcoming committee.

Turtle Rescue Time

Snapping Turtle

(Chelydra serpentina)

Most of Sunday was spent moving irate mother snapping turtles out of the roadways in Lanark and onto the verges in safety, and we were happy we had remembered our snapper moving implements, a heavy spade for scooping up the smaller mamas, a dilapidated corn broom and a stout length of timber (2 x 4). The day's score was nine turtles, and they all made it to safety with a little assistance and determination, although more than one wanted to trundle back across the roadway in the other direction and had to be moved two or three times.

The biggest of our snapper mamas weighed almost forty pounds and moving her was not difficult - she fastened her formidable jaws onto the end of our stout turtle moving timber, and we dragged her all the way to the ditch and safety.

By the end of the day, our tools were so thoroughly chewed that they were almost unrecognizable, but really - how can one leave these fierce, indomitable and astonishing ladies in the middle of a roadway to be run down and killed by speeding motorists?

The Morning Reds