Here be dragons...

 Four-spotted Skimmer

 (Libellula quadrimaculata)

 Another lovely summer spent chasing airborne dragons beckons...

The air over the Two Hundred Acre Wood was filled with dragonflies buzzing erratically to and fro yesterday as they dined on gnats, deerflies and mosquitoes with gusto. As is usually the case here at the end of May, many of the happy fliers were these skimmers with a light sprinkling of baskettails, darners, dashers and pondhawks.

This specimen was probably female, but the males and females of this lovely dragon are similar and difficult to sort out. The sole differences seem to be the presence of a flange on the S8 segment (female) and a slight grayish bloom on the abdomen of an adult male.

For all the rain, the clouds, the thunder and the lightening, the presence of so many winged dragons is a harbinger of high summer, of long blue days, technicolor sunrises and early mornings spent in the garden, of purple summer evenings spent on the deck with a good book and a tall glass of tea.  Let it be, please - may it be so and soon.

wearing the rain like jewels...

From the Edge

Thursday Poem - Questions Before Dark

Day ends, and before sleep

when the sky dies down, consider

your altered state: has this day

changed you? Are the corners

sharper or rounded off? Did you

live with death? Make decisions

that quieted? Find one clear word

that fit? At the sun's midpoint

did you notice a pitch of absence,

bewilderment that invites

the possible? What did you learn

from things you dropped and picked up

and dropped again? Did you set a straw

parallel to the river, let the flow

carry you downstream?

Jeanne Lohmann

Wordless Wednesday - Earthenware

Emergence

Nights have been cool here, and our dragonflies are a few weeks late in appearing, but they are here at last.  At some time during the last few days, the dragonflies of the Lanark highlands began to emerge, and the first of the season were out and about during our pottering last weekend.

In darkness, the naiads (nymphs) climbed from streams and ponds and affixed themselves to nearby saplings and twigs. Clinging to airy perches, they breathed in and out in the warm evening air, and their transformation into adults began.  Existing exoskeletons opened under the sustained pressure of  heightened blood pressure and deep resonant breathing.   Newly fledged dragonflies climbed out of their outgrown skins and up into the night like fragile wraiths.

The emerged adults (or tenerals) clung to chosen twigs as their soft new exoskeletons and legs firmed up and took on characteristic species markings and colors.  Their untried wings were folded meditatively together, becoming glossy and iridescent and strong enough for flying - toward the end of the metamorphosis, the wings opened and moved outward into the classic extended dragonfly posture that distinguishes dragonflies from their exquisite damselfly kin.  As the sun climbed above the horizon, the newborn dragonflies arose in glistening clouds and launched themselves skyward on their maiden flight.

It's an event to be treasured, this hopeful uprising of newborn dragonflies at sunrise - it's a moment of elemental grace in a world that often seems to have lost its way and gone mad in its wanderings.  It's a reminder, and I need such reminders often.

This little wonder is (I think) is a male Common Baskettail (Epitheca cynosura).

Red Empress in Bloom

Red Trillium or Wakerobin
(Trillium erectum)

Is it silly to remember a particular wildflower with affection?  Sometimes I wonder, and then I remember her.

This particular red trillium has resided near a bend in the trail for time out of mind, and she gifts us with a single perfect flower every year.   Rising from the warming earth, she spreads three great green ruffled leaves, then puts forth an elegant nodding bud.  As the sun grows stronger, the bud slowly raises its head and unfurls in deep opulent crimson, possibly my favorite color ever.  So great is the bloom and so rich is the color that it can be seen from quite a distance, even on overcast days.

Some years, a deer passes along the trail and consumes the flower.  Some years, a bright wind dances across the old hills and numbers her days, but this we know: this we love, understand and cherish beyond words - even the fallen petals of the red empress are works of art.

A Feast for the Eyes

It happens every year....  Spring gifts us with tulips in every color of the rainbow, and then the rains come.  Exuberant winds blow through the garden, and in only a day or so, the tulips are colonies of waving stems unadorned by petals and stamens.

I adore tulips in the fullness of their blooming, and the camera loves them too, but they are loveliest as they are coming apart and drifting in the wind like little silken boats.  Coming to rest on the earth, the blooms form masses of confetti petals, scarlet and gold, pink and creamy white, sometimes a purple as dark as night.

Mozart devotee and lifelong tulip lover that I am, I planted the dark purple tulips called "Queen of the Night" again last autumn, but nary a one came up.  Perhaps the midnight Queens taste like wine - their sleeping bulbs are always the first to be snatched by squirrels.

Mother Bird

Female Northern Cardinal at the Feeder

(Cardinalis cardinalis)

Thursday Poem - Litany

This is a litany of lost things,

a canon of possessions dispossessed,

a photograph, an old address, a key.

It is a list of words to memorize

or to forget—of amo, amas, amat,

the conjugations of a dead tongue

in which the final sentence has been spoken.

This is the liturgy of rain,

falling on mountain, field, and ocean—

indifferent, anonymous, complete—

of water infinitesimally slow,

sifting through rock, pooling in darkness,

gathering in springs, then rising without our agency,

only to dissolve in mist or cloud or dew.

This is a prayer to unbelief,

to candles guttering and darkness undivided,

to incense drifting into emptiness.

It is the smile of a stone Madonna

and the silent fury of the consecrated wine,

a benediction on the death of a young god,

brave and beautiful, rotting on a tree.

This is a litany to earth and ashes,

to the dust of roads and vacant rooms,

to the fine silt circling in a shaft of sun,

settling indifferently on books and beds.

This is a prayer to praise what we become,

"Dust thou art, to dust thou shalt return."

Savor its taste—the bitterness of earth and ashes.

This is a prayer, inchoate and unfinished,

for you, my love, my loss, my lesion,

a rosary of words to count out time's

illusions, all the minutes, hours, days

the calendar compounds as if the past

existed somewhere—like an inheritance

still waiting to be claimed.

Until at last it is our litany, mon vieux,

my reader, my voyeur, as if the mist

steaming from the gorge, this pure paradox,

the shattered river rising as it falls—

splintering the light, swirling it skyward,

neither transparent nor opaque but luminous,

even as it vanishes—were not our life.

Dana Goia from (Interrogations at Noon)

The Flower Moon of May

Lady Moon rises over the water, and her rising is an expression of warmth and the greening season and new life awakening - it is also an expression of hope and yearning in this unseasonably cool, wet and overcast May. 

Alas, the moon was not to be seen last evening, and this image is from another spring night, a year or two past. Clouds filled the sky this time around, but Spencer and I were outside in the rainy garden with tripod, camera, telescope and telephoto apparatus, and we were happy to be there.  It is always good to be out in the enfolding glow of the lady who reigns over our sleepings and dreamings. Last evening's glow was faint, but we knew in our blood and bones that the moon was up there somewhere smiling down on us, and we smiled back.  

In many parts of the world, May's full moon is known as the Buddha Moon, and its appearance marks the beginning of Wesak, the Buddhist festival which celebrates the Buddha's birth, his enlightenment and his passing into spirit at the end of his earthly days.  For that reason, this moon is particularly dear to our hearts.  We also know this moon as:

Alewife Moon, Anagantios Moon, Blossom Moon, Bottlebrush Moon, Bright Moon, Budding Moon, Buddha's Moon, Corn Planting Moon, Death Moon, Dragon Moon, Dyad Moon, Fawns Moon, Field Maker Moon, Fifth Moon, Fish Moon, Flower Moon, Flowering Moon, Fright Moon, Frog Moon, Frogs Return Moon, Geese Go North Moon, Geese Moon, Grass Moon, Green Leaf Moon, Hare Moon, Hoeing Corn Moon, Idle Moon, Iris Moon, Joy Moon, Leaf Dancing Moon, Leaves Appear Moon, Leaves Tender Moon, Lily of the Valley Moon, Little Corn Moon, Little Finger Moon, Magnolia Moon, Merry Moon, Milk Moon, Moon of Big Leaf, Moon of the Strawberry, Moon of the Camas Harvest, Moon of Waiting, Moon To Plant, Moon When Corn is Planted, Moon When Ponies Shed Their Fur, Moon When the Buffalo Plant is in Flower, Moon When the Leaves Are Green, Moon When the Little Flowers Die, Moon When the Horses Get Fat, Moon When Women Weed Corn, Mulberry Moon, Mulberry Ripening Moon, New Waters Moon, Old Woman Moon, Panther Moon, Penawen Moon, Peony Moon, Planting Moon, Putting Seeds in the Hole Moon, Ripening Moon, Seeds Moon, Seeds Ripen Moon, Sprout Kale Moon, Staying Home Moon, Storing Moon, Strawberry Moon, Suckers Dried Moon Summer Moon, Thrice Milk Moon, Wesak Moon, When the Ponies Shed Their Shaggy Hair Moon, Wind Tossed Moon, Winnemon Moon, Wisdom Moon

I am rather fond of "Leaf Dancing Moon" and "Ripening Moon".  Happy Wesak everyone!

Rainy Day Thoughts

One thinks of April as being the northern month of springtime rains, but here we are in the middling pages of May with heavy cloud and rain cloaking the village and more of the same "in the cards" for the next several days.   So much for planned rambles in the woods with Himself and Spencer...

We are at least a month behind where we usually are at this time of the year, no columbines or wild yellow orchids in bloom in the woods, local trees still laboring mightily to leaf out themselves out for summer, garden plots forlorn and waiting for us to seed them lavishly and with hope for a good harvest this year. 

Woe betide us, the black flies are out and about in dense biting clouds, and we are a mite chewed this morning,  having spent a few hours yesterday poking about in the village hedgerows - there is nothing the local gnats like better than a fine soggy day and warm blooded entities to munch on.

Will we see the flower moon of May this evening?  We are sending good thoughts to the universe but rather doubt it - we will probably land up pulling the draperies closed this evening, lighting a beeswax candle and remembering other moons instead.   And so we place a bright bunch of flowers in a south facing window on this full moon morning and make plans to spend the day indoors for the most part.  There is fresh baked bread and cookies in our future (gluten free of course).  Tea and books await us, the piano sonatas of Scarlatti, the soaring vocal harmonies of the Mediaeval Baebes and the Sibyl of the Rhine.

The rain beyond the windows is acting like a rhythm section, and it keeps time like a gently ticking grandmother clock or a metronome oscillating back and forth.  It's all good.  Perhaps I shall design a tee-shirt with those words on it.  Sometimes I need a reminder.

Celebration

 

Trailing Light

Greater White Trillium (Trillium grandiflorum)

Female Crab Spider (Misumena vatia)

One of those encounters which on the surface of it is merely mundane, but chock full of wonders when one embraces the moment and takes another look... 

The trillium in the shadows was definitely one of the greater trilliums, its three petals almost as large as a hand with the fingers extended in invitation or offering.  In its heart were six fuzzy bright gold stamens, and when I bent to look closely, something was moving there - the something turned out to be a beautifully marked female crab spider, the first of the season.

I watched the lady move from the heart of the trillium out across the petals, then swing gracefully over the edge onto the underside. A skilled hunter who doesn't make use of webs in hunting, the crab spider is a chameleon, and as she moved, her colors were morphing from the bright gold at the trillium's heart to the white of its petals.  It was wonderful to watch, and for a moment I forgot about the clouds of voracious gnats hovering around my head.

I could mark the spider's trail by the bright golden pollen she was tracking across the petals on her delicate furry feet, and I thought to myself, "Look, she's trailing light..."  Trailing Light is also the title of a blog where I occasionally post black and white photos and my fumbling attempts at poetry.  Unlike me, the crab spider in her trillium was poetry in motion, and she was a true artist - more creative than I shall be in a thousand and one years.  In the words of the late Dag Hammarskjold, I am just standing around down here with a paint pot (or rather a camera), looking on and shouting.

All Wet

Gazing Intently

An elegant point and perfect focus...  Spencer's intent expression is fixed on a black squirrel which has not realized that it is being stalked and in great danger.  A few seconds later the squirrel came to its senses and scrambled over the fence with our furry son not far behind.  Things are supposed to stay where they are when he is pointing them, and he regards it as a personal affront when they do not.

First of all, thank you for all the kind words about our boy's health issues.  His Lyme disease tests went off to the University of Guelph for analysis and came back to us in good time - Dr. Sue was kind enough to contact us as soon as they did.

It appears (thank the Old Wild Mother) that the tick bite was fairly recent, and that he has not actually come down with the disease.  In the words of Dr. Sue, Spencer has been exposed to Lyme, but he is fighting the disease tooth and claw, just like the indomitable little brown warrior he is.

We are helping his battle along with an aggressive course of antibiotics and thinking good thoughts.  This is our first encounter (and Spencer's) with Greenies Dog Pill Pockets, and  thanks to the chicken flavored variety, he is taking his medication cheerfully.  He absolutely adores the treats and would probably consent to another course of antibiotics if it meant he would continue to get his "greenies".

Thursday Poem - Looking for Gold

 

A flavor like wild honey begins

when you cross the river. On a sandbar

sunlight stretches out its limbs, or is it

a sycamore, so brazen, so clean and so bold?

You forget about gold. You stare—and a flavor

is rising all the time from the trees.

Back from the river, over by a thick

forest, you feel the tide of wild honey

flooding your plans, flooding the hours

till they waver forward looking back. They can’t

return; that river divides more than

two sides of your life. The only way

is farther, breathing that country, becoming

wise in its flavor, a native of the sun

William Stafford, Looking for Gold
from The Way it Is: New and Selected Poems

Wordless Wednesday - Beaded

Budding Late

On a bleak and overcast morning, a single late tulip bud raises its head in a forgotten corner of the garden, and the quiet shape reminds me of hands held together in a gassho.

From the hint of color along the upper verges, the bud will unfold to a vibrant red in its own good time, but the progress to blooming is a slow one.  Nights are still cold here, and the furnace hums along during the hours of darkness.  Against the predawn purring of the heating apparatus comes the sound of flocks of Canada geese flying joyously between the wildly torrenting river and nearby farm fields.  The geese are delighted to be back, and we are happy to hear them winging their way overhead.

These are early days to be sure, but spring lasts only a few days in the north, and it will not be long until the herons and loons return - we listen for them passing overhead and watch shorelines for their appearance. From winter to high summer we will go swiftly, and our turning will have all the speed and effortless grace of an aikido move flawlessly executed.

For all my longing for blue skies, sunlight and riotous flowering, there is something in this gentle oasis of green which feeds the spirit. It's all good.

Morning Chimes

Golden

Trout Lily
(Erythronium americanum)

A single bright golden flower tops a slender solitary stem above two mottled green and purple leaves.  The lilies open only on bright sunny days, bending toward the ground like gently nodding heads - it always seems to me that they are listening to the awakening earth.   The three petals and three sepals with their burgundy streaked outward surfaces curl gracefully backward like tricorns or Turkish hats, disclosing six stamens with rusty red, sometimes brownish anthers.  Tabor is right when she says that spring is not only gold and green and red, but pink and purple and rust and chartreuse too.

We call it "Trout Lily" for the resemblance of its artfully dappled leaves to the coloration of a brook trout.  It also goes by “Adder’sTongue” for its purported resemblance to a snake's forked tongue (haven't quite figured that one out), the shape of the sharply pointed leaves as they poke through the detritus of  last autumn. The lily is sometimes named "Fawn Lily" because it blooms just as this year's fawns are being born, and we call it “Dogtooth Violet” for the toothy appearance of the underground corm, although the plant is not a violet by any means.  

One of the first springtime blooms, trout lilies play a vital role in maintaining sylvan balance by capturing nutrients from decaying leaf matter, and they do it long before the forest around them has awakened from its winter slumber.  When their blooming time has passed, and the lilies have died away for another year, the same nutrients are returned to the trees, nourishing them as they stretch their branches skyward and leaf out exuberantly.

Every woodland glade on the Two Hundred Acre Wood is full of these wonderfully curved and nodding beauties at the moment, and it is a travesty that the other residents of the aforementioned glades are dense biting clouds of black flies.  Of course, we went out to the woods to sit with the lilies anyway this weekend - doing so is a long standing tradition and something we would not miss for all the world.

The earth is the mother of us all, and on this day consecrated to mothers everywhere, let us also think of her humbly, with deep gasshos (bows) and heartfelt gratitude.  This one is for you Mama from an elderly (and somewhat creaky) daughter who loves you beyond all words.

Spring is red and gold and green...

Friday Ramble - Not

Yesterday was one of those days one wishes had never happened.

We went off to the veterinarian at first light - Spencer was to get his first ever test for Lyme disease. The ailment has never been a problem this far north, but thanks to global warming it is moving into the area, and Dr. Sue is testing for Lyme disease this year.  We are always happy to do anything to keep our little guy healthy and happy. 

On our return home, there was silence in the front yard, no happy chirping or fluttering.  Someone had stolen the eggs from the nest in the wreath on the front door, and the finch parents were nowhere to be seen.  I say "someone" rather than something because it is fairly clear that the culprit was human.   There were no bits of eggshell laying anywhere and no feathers to indicate a tussle.  The nest was intact, not a twig out of place, and the wreath was hanging perfectly straight on the door.  What this bodes for the rest of the summer we cannot say.  In years past, there have always been three finch nestings in the old wreath, but we would not take issue with the local finches if they chose to nest somewhere else in the future.  When I thought of how distraught those dear rosy little birds must have been yesterday, I felt sick.

Late in the afternoon, Dr. Sue called to say that Spencer had tested positive for Lyme disease.  Our little guy will require another test, and it will be carried out first thing on Saturday morning.  I know little or nothing about Lyme disease, but Dr. Sue thinks it likely that Spencer encountered the infesting tick before he came to us.  Rest assured that all possible measures will be taken, but we so wish our wee boy was not going through this.

Will keep you all posted on how things go, but a sad old heart this morning...

Thursday Poem - Go Out to the Rainy Woods

Go out to the rainy woods, leaving

the tired eidolons of the spirit and your

wayward thoughts at home in the warm.

Bring only your camera and notebook,

yourself, if indeed a self you have or are.

Leave that self somewhere among the

earthy wetness and the old trees.

Sit quietly with these drenched leaves,

these birds, that flowing stream and

wait for them to speak or sing in this green

and wordless language that you share.

Know that there are atomies vast and

teeming with life in everything you see.

Return home at the end of the day,

as a leaf yourself, a stone perhaps, or a star 

kerrdelune

Wordless Wednesday - Greenly

Red Empress Unfolding

Red Trillium or Wakerobin

 (Trillium erectum)

It is always astonishing how quickly the highlands turn green when days begin to warm up in early May.  A few days ago, the hills and fields were mottled brown from here to there, and there was hardly a green shoot to be seen.  Now, here we are on the cusp of flowering, and there are little green sprouts coming up everywhere.

 

The red empress is the reigning monarch of the Lanark Highlands, and she is the northern wildflower most likely to get me down on my creaking knees at this time of the year.  There I was yesterday sprawled among the tattered leaves, peering into the leafy emerald shade at a single bud of deep rich crimson, deliciously curved and too gorgeous for words.

Spring has arrived late this year, and the red empress is almost alone in her protected cove at the moment - her red and white sisters are still only tightly furled leaves, and they are taking their own sweet time in opening.  Within a few days, there will be trilliums everywhere.

Turtle Island

The first painted turtle (Chrysemys picta) of the season made her appearance this weekend, sunning herself on a warm rock in the beaver pond.

The tilt of her head said it all, and her pleasure was almost tangible - she seemed to be smiling.  Resting in the sunlight after a long winter spent in the mud at the bottom of the pond is a wonderful thing.