The Friday Ramble - Listening

It is cool on this fine morning at the end of July, 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 old trees.

The music of a classic northern midsummer sunrise is geese in flight, and I am listening to them thoughtfully this morning as I write this. To and fro go the great birds, away into the farm fields at dawn to feed, converse and gossip together, then down to the river at nightfall to rest on the water and gather their energies for the next day.

Listening, I find myself thinking (to quote Linda Hogan) of a deeper way, and I recall the rippling cadences played by the water at a favorite bend in the Clyde River near Hopetown. Under the trees there, the singing river is deeply incised and meandering, the water painted green and gold and russet on summer afternoons by the ripening fields and birch stands on the far shore. Often, there are herons striding the shallows there, and always, there are geese drifting along in the sunlight at the end of the day.

It is high summer now, but shorter days and longer nights are already on their way, and the opening day of August is the first of three autumnal harvest festivals, the others being the Autumn Equinox (Harvest Home or Mabon) on September 21, and Samhain (Halloween) on the last day of October. The geese winging their exuberant way overhead this morning and floating serenely down the Clyde River at twilight are harbingers of autumn brilliance and gathering abundance, of apples and gourds, stands of ripe corn and fields of blowing pink and bronze barley. How lovely it all is...

This, I say to myself, is the true and proper music of Lughnasadh and First Harvest, the sound of the seasons and the turning year - this is Gaia's perfect orchestration, her wild untrammeled choreography. This is the music of what happens. Listen, can you hear it?

Happy, Lughnasadh (or Lammas) to everyone.

Thursday Poem - Messenger

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird —
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

Mary Oliver.
(Messenger from Thirst)

Wordless Wednesday - Enso

Putting Things By

This day, like so many other late July days of memory is to be spent trimming, washing and processing garden produce for the freezer, and that seems appropriate, given that Lammas (or Lughnasadh) or First Harvest is only a few days off now.

Meals tend to be a serendipity undertaking at this time of the year with trips out to the veggie patch before every lunch and dinner to see what is available, ripe for the picking and ready to be tossed into the wok or salad bowl. Since our veggie patch is not very large, we supplement our larder with organic produce from local farms, and much of the produce is coming from my friend Caroline's market garden at the Ouellette farm out in the Lanark Highlands. I also use her aromatic infused oil and vinegar blends in salads and stir fry offerings and am always hunting for new recipes to use them in.

Last evening I spent a happy hour or two with a large pot of green tea and my copy of Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Diugood's sumptuous Mangoes and Curry Leaves as well as Jessica Prentice's Full Moon Feasts, Deborah Madison's Local Flavours and Annie Somerville's Everyday Greens. I highly recommend all four books whether one ever gets around to making the recipes or not - they are all treats for body and spirit.

Today the yellow beans, tomorrow the world...

Just Floating

Himself

Spencer has just turned three, which makes him about twenty-one in human years. He is a loving attentive companion on our woodland rambles. He is also a fierce protector of his home, his tribe and his garden.

By necessity, the two images in this post are fairly small, but clicking on them will give you a better idea of what a beautiful boy our furry son is.

Dancing With the Wind

Sometimes, the most pleasing thing of all in a photo is a slight, even great, imperfection. Here it is the bee trying to land among the purple coneflowers and being blown about in the windy garden behind the little blue house in the village.

I hesitate to describe it as "wabi sabi", but that is as valid an expression as any for these late July days with their cloudy skies and soggy foliage. Implicit in such images and times are notions of imperfection, impermanence and completion unrealized - a sense of the fleeting nature of things, of their transience.

Wordless Wednesday - Rainy Red

Chaucer

Gray skies and rain, the earthy aroma of damp soil, compost and dripping foliage, the astringency of little green tomatoes on the vine, green peppers, hot peppers, corn, gourds and beans of every shape and color.

Out of the fertile gloom of the garden behind the little blue house in the village, there rises a single radiant David Austin rose this morning. It is called simply "Chaucer", pink and lavishly cupped with a golden heart, perfectly shaped and redolent of myrrh. Not even a week of summer monsoons can eclipse its splendor, and all the perfumes of Araby cannot compete with its perfect fragrance.

Dare I admit that I purchased it solely for its name? Canterbury Tales remains one of my favorite works ever.

Dancing in the Hedgerow

Goatsbeard or Meadow Salsify

(Tragopogon pratensis)

Sunrise Lily

Common Daylily
(Hemerocallis fulva)

There are daylilies growing and blooming everywhere here in the summer, in garden plots, ditches and dry moats, on road allowances and by abandoned farmhouse doors. Apparently there are thousands of different cultivars and groups all over the world devoted to the study and appreciation of these splendid immigrants from Europe, Korea and China.

The name Hemerocallis comes from the Greek ἡμέρα (hēmera) "day" and καλός (kalos) meaning beautiful, and daylilies are sun worshippers of the highest order, opening at dawn to greet the rising sun and withering gracefully away at sunset. The blooms last only a day, and each blossom makes the most of its brief time on this earth by flowering in in magnificent fiery hues and dancing in the wind on its elegant attenuated stem, whole colonies swaying together in gentle summer breezes like dance companies.

Wordless Wednesday - Ginkgo and Lichen

Grandmother Spider

Nursery Web Spider
(Pisaurina mira)

Mother Spider is more like it. I was actually looking for Monarch caterpillars this past weekend when I discovered several nursery web spiders guarding eggs on milkweed specimens in the western field. For the most part they were hanging straight down with their legs dangling, so I tickled their toes with a leaf - they curled up and posed for the camera, most obligingly.

While I was pottering about, the first of the season's Monarchs flew over my head, but it was the only one I encountered on the weekend. Seasonal rhythms have slowed down considerably this year because of our long wet springtime and the cooler (and wetter) summer weather. I am a little worried about the beautiful Lanark cicadas - they should be emerging just about now and beginning their courtship songs, but there is no sign of them so far.

All right already - the scribe likes all sorts of wild things, spiders and snakes and cicadas and coyotes and little red foxes and big black bears. Yes, she does... They are part of the Old Wild Mother's weaving, and they make interesting neighbors.

Scarlet

The indecently sumptuous red bloom belongs to a Chrysler Imperial rose in a pot, a gift from my daughter and son-in-law over the weekend, and it was a lovely surprise. We are preparing a space for it in the garden behind the little blue house in the village and will plant it this afternoon.

The Chrysler is a voluptuous creature, all vivid velvety scarlet petals and perfect old rose shape, a truly remarkable fragrance. It is an exuberant repeat bloomer, and I am looking forward to sharing the garden with it all this summer and (hopefully) in the autumn too. A hybrid tea rose, it will require a fair bit of protection to overwinter successfully this far north, but it can be done, and given the beauty and fragrance of the rose, I am willing to do anything and everything that is needed.

Obviously, Spencer feels the same way about the new rose as I do - he headed straight for it this morning when I let him out into the garden, sniffing it thoughtfully and indulging in much expressive tail wagging. His expression was one of pure bliss and rather like mine when I saw my gift for the first time this weekend.

Youngster

Dragonfly Resting

Widow Skimmer (Female)
(Libellula luctuosa)

Perhaps it is the heat or the punishing humidity, but lately I am less than satisfied with the pictures I am taking, and I am always admonishing myself not to correct, retouch, enhance and embellish the day's recorded activities. If the Old Wild Mother dishes out heat, humidity and wind on a sunny summer day (or an overcast one), who am I to tinker with her arrangements, and She does perfect dragonflies...

Thursday Poem - 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,
from How We Became Human

The Mead Moon of July

Sometimes the moon gifts you with her presence on fine summer nights, and then there are other evenings when you know she is shining up there somewhere beyond the dark clouds and rain, but she does not appear for the longing human eye. Last evening was one of those other times - it is turning out to be a remarkably wet and moderate summer here, and Lady Moon in all her radiant fullness could not be seen for even a moment, although we (Spencer and I) went hopefully out to the garden whenever the rain stopped.

Thankfully, we have the memories of other moons to engage our thoughts, and sometimes, our revisitations of other moons are so complete that we can see moonlight shining across the water, hear long ago waves lapping the shore, touching the silent reeds like a benediction, wrapping themselves around the long legs of herons wading in the shallows.

Last year at this time, my beautiful Cassie was here with me by my side, and we sang a haunting moon song with the timber wolves over the hill. There will never be another summer moon when I don't think of Aloha and Taylor, two beloved friends who passed away last July, and Cassie who followed them across the bridge into the next world a few weeks later.

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

Fairy Rose

Northern Crescent

Butterfly, Northern Crescent
(Phyciodes cocyta)

After the Rain

Hedge Bindweed or Wild Morning Glory
(Convolvulus sepium )

Bindweed is nasty stuff according to the vast majority of gardening tomes and gardeners - an ebullient, tenacious and invasive weed which should be uprooted from one's patch of greenery as soon as it appears. The flowers and vines are lovely to see though, intertwining their way through the hedges in the park and beaded with rain at sunrise.

As Spencer and I walked along this morning, we noticed that some of the Virginia creepers are acquiring a rosy hue. Our days are growing shorter now, and although there are still several weeks of good summer weather to come, autumn is on its way.

Wordless Wednesday - Ripening