Mama Says Om - Cooperation

The earth and I have an arrangement which works for us, and that is surely the essence of perfect cooperation. It is a timeless covenant espoused by both, and the sharing is mutually beneficial, a nurturing experience which conveys beauty, grace and wisdom beyond description.

On my part of things, I walk the land in every season and try to clean up as I go along, leaving as light a footprint as possible on the good dark earth as I tread by. I mark Gaia's seasons and turnings with reverence, thoughtful eyes, a few inadequate images and great blundering handfuls of clumsy words.

And the earth??? Mother Earth feeds my soul, and she pours her abundance over me with love, boundlessly and withholding nothing. I am the fortunate one in this covenant - I am the one who is always wandering around with her mouth wide open in wonder.

Written for the brilliant mamas at Mama Says Om.

The Barley Moon of August

It's the definitive harvest moon here in the north, and its perfect glowing yellow color reflects the agrarian pursuits in steady progress in the fields below. I looked up at the full moon last evening and thought of the barley now being cut and winnowed in the highlands, of the oats, corn, clover and timothy being harvested and tucked away into granaries for the long nights to come.

Within the next few days, we will be dining on cobs of heirloom corn, and our own domestic alchemies are in full swing, with vast heaps of tomatoes, onions, peppers and squash appearing in the kitchen daily and being processed (canned or frozen) for winter. For every basket of tomatoes I turn into salsa or chili sauce, there seem to be another three baskets arriving.

Last night, I waited for the geese to wing their way overhead on their way to the river, but with such a bright moon to steer by, my favorite birds did not fly back until some long time after midnight, and I heard them calling as I was falling asleep.

We also know this moon as:

Acorns Appear Moon, Acorns Ripen Moon, Ale Moon, Autumn Moon, Barleycorn Moon, Berries Dried Moon, Berry Moon, Big Harvest Moon, Big Ripening Moon, Black Cherries Moon, Blackberry Moon, Blackberry Patches Moon, Blueberry Moon, Brewing Moon, Centáwen Moon, Cherries Turn Black Moon, Claiming Moon, Coho Salmon Return to Earth Moon, Corn Is in the Silk Moon, Corn Cutting Moon, Corn Moon, Crest of Hill Moon, Cutter Moon, Dahlia Moon, Dispute Moon, Dog Days Moon, Drying up Moon, Eighth Moon, End of the Fruit Moon, Feather Shedding Moon, Flying Moon, Fruit Moon, Gathering Rice Moon, Geese Shedding Their Feathers Moon, Gladiolus Moon, Grain Moon, Green Corn Moon, Green Moon, Harvest Moon, Hazel Moon, Joyful Moon, Leaves Moon, Lightning Moon, Middle Moon, Moon of Freshness, Moon of Life at It's Height, Moon When Young Ducks Begin to Fly, Moon When All Things Ripen, Moon When Cherries Turn Black, Moon When Choke Cherries Are Ripe, Moon When Elk Bellow, Moon When the Geese Shed Their Feathers, Moon When Indian Corn's Edible, Much Heat Moon, Mulberries Moon, Paper Bark Moon, Pear Blossom Moon, Plum Moon, Red Berries Gathered Moon, Red Moon, Ripe Berries Moon, Ripe Corn Moon, Rising Moon, Starts to Fly Moon, Still Green Moon, Sturgeon Moon, Tall Grass Moon, Thumb Moon, Vegetation Moon, Wode Moon, Wheat Cut Moon, Wild Rice Moon, Women's Moon, Wood Cutter’s Moon, Wort Moon

Of all the names above, I think my favorites are "Joyful Moon" and "Moon of Life at Its Height".

Found at Sunrise

The Late August Purples

Purple Clover

Joe Pye Weed

Rainy Pond

Mama Says Om - Quest

Say the word quest, and I think of early childhood rambles and my clear sense then that something grand, magical and illuminating was waiting behind the next tree or around the bend on the trail ahead. A child has no words for such perceptions, but the feelings were profound and bewitching nevertheless, and how they tugged at one's imagination. "Ready or not, here I come, seeking something magical, mysterious and incandescent, I know not what."

From those magical moments of childhood, one moved on into adult status, marriage and parenting with their multitudinous mundane issues and all those bumps and potholes in the road of life - a road which seemed (most of the time anyway) to be arrow straight and running toward a flat and distant horizon with nary a tree, a hill, a quest or a mystery in sight.

In these elder days, I think of the wind in the trees and of sunrises and twilights seen from the top of the cliff above Dalhousie Lake, of the way the clouds seen from "up there" seem to form a sparkling road, one spiraling right out into eternity and the great beyond. There are equally glorious sunsets to be seen in that lofty place if one has sufficient pluck to climb the mountain in twilight and from the lake shoreline too, often in the splendid company of herons. The sense of questing and a great mystery which were mine as a child (and which only seemed to vanish during my frantic middling years) has returned, and I am delighted.

It's all a quest whether we know it or we know it not: our childhood rambles into the woods and the beckoning fields, the mortgage payments and straight line highways of our middle years, and now (thankfully) sunrises, sunsets and moons experienced from the cliff above the lake. Sing ho for the journey and for the quest of life, sing ho for the great mystery which accompanies us all our earthly days!

Written for the incandescent questing mamas at Mama Says Om.

Thursday Poem - Benedicto

Benedicto:
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome,
dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.
May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
May your rivers flow without end,
meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells,
past temples and castles and poets' towers
into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl,
through miasmal and mysterious swamps
and down into a desert of red rock,
blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone,
and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm
where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs,
where deer walk across the white sand beaches,
where storms come and go
as lightning clangs upon the high crags,
where something strange and more beautiful
and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams
waits for you —
beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.

Edward Abbey

This Sunrise

Bev of Burning Silo has already commented on the amazing sunrise this morning, and her photo is absolutely lovely, much superior to these images of mine, but the beginning of this day was spectacular, and one simply cannot permit such an astonishing opening to go unnoticed, uncaptured, wordless and without comment.

At sunrise this morning, the skies over the little blue house in the village were a glorious shade of lavender, and they were filled with sumptuously backlit clouds of pink and rose and purple and gold. On such mornings, one has a fleeting wonder-filled glimpse into balance, eternity and enlightenment, and she remembers it forever. Emaho...

Wordless Wednesday - The Visitor

Falling Gold

Now it begins, methinks. The first fallen leaf in my garden is golden, and it makes a splendid composition as it rests against the weathered boards of the deck this morning.

This first vibrant fallen gold of the season calls out for rapt attention, and it is complemented perfectly by the yellows and oranges of the squash, beans, tomatoes and pumpkins ripening in the garden, and even the sunlight overhead.

I've often wished that we human creatures were able to duplicate the colors on offer in the landscape in August, September and October, but alas, we cannot. Only the Old Wild Mother (Gaia) can create such magnificence, and she (thankfully) withholds nothing in her giving - she waves her wand and pours riotous color and fragrance over the entire landscape in autumn, golds, plums, russets and deep winey reds.

I am never certain which of Gaia's colors I love best, but there is no more perfect hue on this planet than the color of a Red Oak leaf in autumn, and gold of this Box Elder leaf is not far behind.

What a lovely thing! The beautiful Aisling of The Quiet Country House has honored this meandering place with a "Nice Matters Award, and I am delighted because nice (in the best sense of the word) matters, and it matters immensely in our daily doings with each other on this little blue planet. The world is not such a very big place after all, and we are always bumping into each other - a little niceness, courtesy, tolerance and compassion goes a very long way indeed, and there is always room for more.

In my turn, I am nominating my dear friend, my wild and wise sister, PlumpieMousie.

Sundown in Late August

It's the perfect sunset in every way, taken from the road on the way home this weekend, and really, no words are necessary to describe a sumptuous view which is quite beyond words and descriptions.

Somewhere out there in the darkness below that flaming sky and those deep inky clouds, are rolling piney ridges and sleeping coves, old rail fences, log barns and farmhouses, fields full of grazing geese and deer, owls hunting the night, wild turkeys drowsing in their oak copses, the deep peace that comes over everything here when August draws to a close.

I close my eyes now, and I can see the leaves turning on the hill, long fragrant rows of firewood neatly stacked by the kitchen door in Lanark, old stone hearths, fireplaces and wood stoves kindled at dusk, bluebirds and swallows lined up on telephone wires everywhere and making ready to migrate, the endless columns of jams, jellies and pickles making their way into the larder.

It is a gorgeous time of the year, a season chock full of color and abundance. It's a time of change and transformation too, and one can't help but be thoughtful and perhaps a tad pensive when she thinks of past turnings and turnings which are yet to be. I think too of all the friends out there in the darkness - they are curled up in their own rocking chairs by the hearth with cups of tea and books. We all seem to be on the same page, and that is a gift at any time of the turning year.

Dew and Leaf

Vivid sunrises and sunsets viewed seen through old fences far and near (yesterday's images), cool sighing breezes airbrushing away the dusty dryness of late summer, fine glistening sequined dews in the hedgerow as delicate as Victorian beadwork and ornate as antique tatting...

The signs of the turning season are all around me if I have the eyes to see them and the wits to comprehend the magic at work here. Ahead are not just shorter days and earlier twilights, but also fields of golden barley, pumpkins and gourds at roadside stalls and farm gates, wild turkeys and deer feeding along the old rail fences at dawn.

What a harvest!

Sun Coming Up in August

Mama Says Om - Listen

It is cooler on this fine morning in the middle of August, and the casement windows are open. A slight breeze stirs the draperies, and as I tap away here on the keyboard with a large mug of Java nearby, I can hear day beginning in the village, the community awakening and coming to life around the little blue house and its guardian trees.

The music of a classic northern August sunrise is geese in flight, and I am listening to them with gratitude this morning. To and fro go the great birds in exuberant flight, away into the farm fields at dawn to feed, converse and gossip together, then down to the river at nightfall to rest.

This is the glorious music of the seasons and the turning year, this is Gaia's perfect orchestration. This is the music of what happens. Listen, can you hear it?

Written for the blithe mamas at Mama Says Om.

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 honoured 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 honoured 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

One of the greatest poems ever written, and it awakens memories of childhood summers on the farm: the waving fields of grain, rolling hills, old rail fences and hedgerows, the perfect dawns and sunsets, the feeling that the world is a magical place and something wonderful is about to happen.

The Journey (Tabi)

When encountering one of my August potholes, I always seem to potter (or lurch) off in one of three directions, and occasionally, I potter off in all three of them at once.

There are all those thoughtful potterings through morning hedgerows which merit (or do not merit) description here from time to time. There are potterings in all sorts of other directions with camera in hand, and sometimes, just sometimes, there are quiet Zen intervals spent with ink stone and bamboo brushes.

Yesterday was an ink stone and bamboo brushes kind of day, the results surprising and rather calming as well. The imagery is going to show up at the Cafe Press shop during the next few days, the rainbow colored version as shirts and various other household items, the scanned original as prints and cards.

There is a lesson here - one can indeed cobble together a fine thoughtful batch of lemonade from a big bag of lemons, and sometimes, she can find a little serenity along the way (journey) as she works.

Adrift?

Evening breeze and the languid sound of a heron moving somewhere along the shoreline in darkness, the wild river singing over the rocks and out into the lake, the creaking of the gnarled cedars which grow high up and out of the cliffs above my head.

Silly me, I'm not adrift at all. I'm just floating gently along here — like an old wooden boat which has slipped away from its moorings and is moving out into the center of the lake at sunset — like a water lily climbing serenely toward the surface of the beaver pond — like a fallen leaf turning round and round on the river — like an evening ripple dancing its way into existence and spreading out in slow circles until it kisses the shore.

Mutinous Thoughts in August

In the hot dry August weather, my favorite ponds and waterways are dwindling, and there are many places where one can walk across the Clyde and little Mississippi rivers - if one is so inclined that is. Water is still flowing in those splendid places however, and the soft ground nearby is clearly marked with the prints of the deer and bears and wild turkeys who come down to drink at sunrise and in evening twilight.

In the heat of the day yesterday, I wandered down to the winding creek below the eastern hill and its secluded pond among the trees, longing (quite simply) for a little shade and stillness and the gentle sound of water flowing downhill for good measure. The longing for those things was almost beyond expression - my silvery head is in a rather tumultuous state these days, restless and in something of a muddle as it always is at this time of the year.

Lately I find myself thinking of of making great sweeping changes of various kinds, of nuking this dear little blog home and starting over from scratch, of removing everything from the Cafe Press and Flickr sites and starting over there too. I consider shaving my head, learning to fly, running away to join the circus, or more likely in August, running off to camp on the northern shore of Lake Superior among the rocks and trees, with only the loons and bald eagles for company. In my dreams I can hear waves hitting the wild shore of Old Woman Bay, and I can hear loons calling to each other beyond the point.

One holds such mutinous thoughts at a reasonable distance by spending meditative time near quiet woodland waters in the graceful company of old trees and little green frogs - yesterday there were frogs in the pond everywhere I looked, and they brought me back to where I should be.

Eight Random Things About Me

My friend Waverly at Living in Season has tagged me and here we go.

1. I once trained to be a classical musician and almost made it, but fell in love and left my budding concert career behind - I have no regrets about it at all. The instruments are long gone (to pay off orthodontists and make mortgage payments), but one of these days I shall have another cello - lugging one around everywhere is a fine form of exercise, and what a rich and resonant music it makes! While I wait for a good cello to pop out of the ether, I play the recorder badly, and I have splendid dreams about conducting a symphony orchestra. In those dreams, the music I am conducting is the overture from Fidelio, and the orchestra (of course) is the Berlin Philharmonic. I would also like to learn to play the sitar.

2. On our first date many years ago, my soulmate and I spent most of the evening talking about art and literature, and somehow or other I landed up reciting almost the whole of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat to him - for the simple reason that he didn't believe I knew it, let alone knew the whole thing. I can still recite it from memory along with vast chunks of Yeats, Rumi, Hafiz, Basho, Rilke, Neruda, David Whyte, Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry and William Stafford. Perhaps I was a bard in a former life.

3. I learned to read when I was three and have had my nose firmly planted in a book ever since - could cheerfully part with my whole wardrobe and the family silver, but never my library. Owning a book shop and/or a stationery shop would be a dream come true and a truly celestial experience. I nurture the dream.

4. There is a slight bend in my nose which is not noticeable because of all the freckles on it. As a teenager, I was always falling out of trees and off horses, and my poor nose now lists permanently to port. Nobody ever seems to notice, and I don't usually volunteer the information.

5. My favorite items of footwear (on the rare occasions when I cop out and wear shoes these days) are my purple lace-up Doc Martens. I feel like Xena in those boots, invincible and as though I can do just about anything, but I don’t have a sword or breastplate to go with the boots.

6. There are four places on this earth I should like very much to visit before I shuffle off the mortal coil this time around: the Himalayas, China, Japan (Kyoto) and for some strange reason Iceland. I plan to make it to all four places in the next few years.

7. Having been quiet, shy introspective, freckled and rather easy going all my life (and about as intimidating as the Easter bunny), I secretly aspire to become a commanding presence in my elder years, someone who is wise, compelling and a little scary. Boo!!!

8. If I do have a vice, then that vice just has to be tea. There is a whole cupboard of exotic teas here in the little blue house, and I love every single one of them. The tea kettle is always whistling on the hob, and there is usually a pot(ion) of tea in progress, lemons neatly sliced up and waiting to be floated gracefully on fragrant china cups of amber.

In my turn, I am tagging Rowan at The Circle of the Year.

Mama Says Om - Sticky

Sticky is a good word for August methinks, and it is an excellent word too for our ceaseless oscillation between weather which is moderate and weather which is extreme.

Our northern days begin later, and they end earlier too, a natural state of affairs with the summer solstice several weeks in the past now and daylight hours on the wane until Yuletide in December.

Mornings are cool and shady, lovely times for long walks with Cassie and for working in the garden. By noon, we will both be happy to be indoors and looking out into the dense sticky heat beyond the windows. At twilight we will go off again and potter around among the hedgerows, peering into the dusky foliage for tiny acorns, ripening plums and hidden flowers blooming unseen in the leafy depths like late summer jewels.

This morning, there was a perfect spider web in the hedgerow, beaded with dew and looking for all the world like a fabulous (and very sticky) neck ornament. This one is the work of the orb weaver known here as the common garden spider, and it is an undertaking both glutinous and sublime - anything but common. Sitting there in the dewy grass, I thought of Indra's jeweled net (or web) and how we are all connected in the greater scheme of things. Emaho!

Written for the blithe (and unsticky) mamas at Mama Says Om.

Thursday Poem: Assurance

You will never be alone, you hear so deep
a sound when autumn comes. Yellow
pulls across the hills and thrums,
or the silence after lightning before it says
its names—and then the cloud's wide-mouthed
apologies. You were aimed from birth:
you will never be alone. Rain
will come, a gutter filled, an Amazon,
long aisles—you never heard so deep a sound,
moss on rock, and years. You turn your head—
that's what the silence meant: you're not alone.
The whole wide world pours down.

William Stafford, Assurance
(from The Way It is: New and Selected Poems)

Wordless Wednesday

Queen in Bloom

The tall Queen of the Prairie (Filipendula) in my garden is finally beginning to bloom, and it is full of butterflies - this male Monarch remained in residence for well over an hour yesterday, fluttering from branch to fragrant branch in complete and unfettered bliss.

As I watched the Monarchs dancing about yesterday, I suddenly remembered that in a little more than a calendar month, my favorite butterflies will have departed for southern climes.

How quickly summer appears here, and how quickly it departs again. Signs of the changing season are everywhere; roadside stands and local farm markets brimming with bright produce, stands of corn so high that one can barely glimpse the barns and farmhouses behind them, fields of wheat, barley and oats waving gracefully to and fro in the August breeze like oceans of waving (and very welcoming) hands.

Wild Signs of the Season: Chickory and Queen Anne's Lace flowering in the front paddock, Joe Pye weed in bloom by the beaver pond.

Bonhomme

After a week or two of becoming acquainted, it appears that the colt's name will be Bonhomme and perhaps "Beau" for short - he is definitely a "good man" (bonhomme), a gentleman, and beautiful too (beau).

This new life is a challenging exercise for the little guy. Like all colts his age, Beau requires frequent feeding and much loving attention from everyone he meets. He is having a wonderful time exploring the shiny (to him anyway) world of the farm, and he does so with boundless enthusiasm and curiosity. He follows his proud mother everywhere she goes, and he sleeps contentedly in the sunshine for hours at a time. The need for sleep manifests itself suddenly and in unexpected places - in the midst of a spirited romp around the paddock or field, he stops and yawns, then folds up neatly into the grass or straw and starts to snore.

He has the softest and most expressive nose on the planet.

Another Purple

Early Morning Lilies

A cheerful thought early on a day which promises to be as hot as blazes...

Not even I could take a bad photo of these perfect garden lilies, cool, serene, rosy and as freckled as I am (but a lot better looking overall). In my next life, I wouldn't mind being a lily of the field or a lily of the garden either.

Mama Says Om - Decision

It's a sweltering morning in the Lanark Highlands, the trees and hills and crags beyond the lake already cloaked in haze and appearing out of the heat cloud like nebulous spectres looking for a place to take up residence - the lake has an ethereal aspect on such mornings.

Decisions, decisions, decisions... Do we (Cassie and I) forsake the wide lake for the peace of the deep shady forest, the valleys for the highlands, the fields for the trees? Do we rest on the shoreline and converse with the summer people on the beach or do we climb the mountain and embrace stillness and silence, listening only to birdsong and the music of the river in the gorge far below? Perhaps we shall do both, but the mountain is calling, and she is calling in a compelling voice. Perhaps we shall see the osprey today as she hunts over the river.

It's an eccentric and mindful process, this slow and inexorable turning toward autumn in the circular dance of the seasons and the turning year. Lugnasadh has come and gone, and the autumn equinox is not far off - it is time now to weed and harvest our gardens (inward and outward) and to give some thought to "putting things by" for the long nights, certainly our thoughts and summer anecdotes, but also our corn, beans, squash and tomatoes.

The mindful blog button is one I've been thinking of crafting for some time, and its meaning is simple indeed. The button is one for all seasons, and one can use it if she (or he) is a committed Buddhist, a student of the Tao, a meditator, a lover of Gaia and her magnificent wild places or just a thoughtful entity who enjoys peering into hedgerows now and again. The button is all about awareness, thoughtfulness and connection - it is a gentle reminder of sorts to pay attention as we go along, and it is also one of my favorite beaver pond images. Use it if you wish, and enjoy!

Written for the wise mamas at Mama Says Om.

Wordless Wednesday - Garden Contemplation