This is what was bequeathed us:
This earth the beloved left
And, leaving,
Left to us.
No other world
But this one:
Willows and the river
And the factory
With its black smokestacks.
No other shore, only this bank
On which the living gather.
No meaning but what we find here.
No purpose but what we make.
That, and the beloved's clear instructions:
Turn me into song; sing me awake.
Gregory Orr
At long last, the trees are in full leaf and wonderfully silhouetted against the darkness, the moon something to behold on evenings when the rain clouds roll away, and the lunar orb can be seen.
It would have been grand to see both the moon and a meteor shower last night, but the Eta Aquarid meteor shower peaked the first week of May, in the dark hours before dawn on Sunday, May 5 to be exact. Eta is a yearly phenomenon, and if you didn't catch it earlier this month, it will be around again next year at about the same time. Every year, Earth crosses the orbital path of Halley’s Comet in late April and early May, and debris from the comet lights up the sky before dawn as the Eta Aquarid meteor showers - our planet plunges most deeply into the stream of comet debris around the end of the first week in May. October's splendid Orionid meteor showers also emanate from Halley, and so they are autumnal kin to this month's light show. I have yet to get a good photo of any of Halley's castaway children.
Last evening's full moon was the first of three supermoons occurring in a row this year: May, June (the biggest) and July. It was astrologers who coined the term "supermoon" in the seventies, but astronomers and other members of the scientific community call the phenomenon a perigee-syzygy: perigee describing the point at which the moon is closest to the earth, and syzygy referring to either the new moon or a full moon. Is the supermoon apparent to the human eyes??? Probably not, but any full moon is worth an admiring glance. After all, it is Mother Earth's own moon and that makes it ours too.
There was a minor eclipse last evening. A small crescent shaped scrap, a mere whisper of Lady Moon passed through the penumbra or outermost part of Earth's shadow, each entity on its own but interwoven journey. Alas, the eclipse was only visible from parts of the southern hemisphere, a little before midnight.
We also know May's golden moon as the: Alewife Moon, Anagantios Moon, Blossom Moon, Bottlebrush Moon, Bright Moon, Budding Moon, Corn Planting Moon, Death Moon, Dragon Moon, Dyad Moon, Fawns Moon , Field Maker Moon, Fifth Moon, Fish Moon, Flowering 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, Seeds Moon, Seeds Ripen Moon, Sprout Kale Moon, Staying Home Moon, Storing Moon, Strawberry Moon, Suckers Dried Moon Summer Moon, Thrice Milk Moon When the Ponies Shed Their Shaggy Hair Moon, Wind Tossed Moon, Winnemon Moon.
As names go, I am fond of "Budding Moon", "Green Leaf Moon" and "Merry Moon".
Three perfect green leaves, three perfect snowy petals and a golden heart... The white empress of the woodland illustrates the timeless power of three perfectly.She appears in the woods a little later than her more vibrantly coloured red cousin, and she is just as grand. Her petals are slightly scalloped and velvety, a little wider than those of the red trillium, and they curve gloriously, as if she is trying to compensate for her lack of scarlet pigmentation with a paler but equally sumptuous grandeur.
No compensation is needed, for she is gorgeous on her own, and another of the northern wildflowers which Georgia O'Keefe would have loved to paint.
Clouds are flowing in the river, waves are flying in the sky.
Life is laughing in a pebble. Does a pebble every die?
Flowers grow out of the garbage, such a miracle to see.
What seems dead and what seems dying makes for butterflies
to be.
Life is laughing in a pebble, flowers bathe in morning dew.
Dust is dancing in my footsteps and I wonder who is who.
Clouds are flowing in the river, clouds are drifting in my tea,
On a never-ending journey, what a miracle to be!
Eveline Beumkes
Nights have been cool here, and dragonflies were a little late in appearing, but they are here at last, and in legions. 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 out of streams and ponds and affixed themselves to nearby saplings and twigs. Clinging to their airy perches, they breathed in and out in the evening air, and their transformation into adults began. Existing exoskeletons opened under the sustained pressure of heightened blood pressure and a deep resonant breathing rather like meditating. Newly fledged dragonflies climbed out of the 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 dear little wonder is (I think) is a male Common Baskettail (Epitheca cynosura). There was a brisk wind on the western hill, so the photos are not nearly as clear as I would like them to be, but here is one of the first dragons of the season for all that.
You can see the old crabapple in full frowsy bloom from the kitchen window as you are sipping your morning Darjeeling, and you resolve to capture it with the Pentax when breakfast is over and the dishes have been washed up and put away.
Along comes a cold north wind while you are turned away from the window and intent on completing your chores.
When you trot out to the garden and stand by the fence looking up, only a few minutes later, there are just a few flowers left on a single dancing branch, but oh how artfully the grass is spattered with fragrant fallen crabapple petals.
Something happens to my eyes around this time every year. After a winter spent tracing the artfully scalloped nautilus curves of ice and snow and drinking in the plethora of blues on offer during the long white season, I get hung up on all sorts of colors and shapes in May. If past experience is any indication at all, I will probably be this way for weeks, wandering around with an expression dazed and intoxicated, finding profound pleasure in throngs of prosaic and unlikely things.
It doesn't have to be a flower or a leaf or a stem. It could be almost anything, a tantalizing (and occasionally mundane) structure of some sort with patterns or shapes or flowing curves built into the equation and calling out for rapt and thoughtful attention.
Pottering off to the market on foot yesterday under a leaden sky with rain falling and more rain in the cards for days to come (it's raining now, in fact), there were soggy tulips and daffodils everywhere I looked. It was the rake leaning casually against a tree with a stucco wall nearby and a bit of bicycle in the background that followed me home and stayed with me as I opened the front door of the little blue house in the village.
The posture of the unhanded garden implement might have been forlorn, but it was serene, and it pleased this elderly eccentric eye as much as a whole bed of dancing blooms in sizzling shades. Does a simple garden rake have Buddha mind? This one seemed to be the very essence of Zen, and the question as I sat down to write this morning was simple, paradoxical and something of a koan. Was the leaning rake not complete within itself, and did it really need any words from me at all?
Is it silly to remember a particular wildflower with affection? Sometimes I wonder, and then I remember the red empress.
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 a single 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 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 before we arrive. Some years, a bright wind dances across the old hills and shakes her petals loose in just a few hours - when that happens, her time of blooming is brief. This we know, and this we love, understand and cherish beyond mere words - even the fallen petals of the red empress are works of art.
Some of the loveliest are in delicate shades of white and cream, and they never fail to hold out surprises when one takes a closer look. For the most part, the whites and creams are pure golden at heart rather than black and gold, and so they seem to be lit from within and giving off light like little garden lighthouses.
I was surprised yesterday to discover that these lovely whites were playing residence and smorgasbord to a whole tribe of tiny pollinating beings who wandered happily about dusted with pollen and delighted with the banquet goodies on offer.
On my knees in the grass in the hedgerow gazing at these unfettered and gently blowing escapees, I thought of something Georgia O'Keeffe said - she painted magnificent springtime blooms and often titled them simply as numbered abstractions for the flowing abstract contours at their hearts - she once mused aloud:
“When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for a moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower."
Georgia O’Keeffe, Travels With Maggie
The whites are a powerful reminder to be mindful and rest "in the moment", to pay attention and take a long slow closer look at the minute aspects of the grace filled world that is going quietly on around us.
Just plain old looking around the garden and running through the sunlit fields of our Two Hundred Acre Wood in Lanark are two of life's greatest pleasures, and a boy just can't get enough of either activity after a long dark winter spent (for the most part) indoors or trudging through snow that was often right up to his ears.
His ears wave on the breeze, his tail is an expressive blur, and his feet fly as he reacquaints himself with his favorite place and season. For a while, he wasn't sure that the snow would ever leave, or that his favorite haunts would still be there when springtime finally rolled around. For all his rambling and cavorting, he is right at my side in the woods, or at least, not far away - ever.
Blue skies and fluffy clouds overhead, birdsong, avian courtship rites and nest building birds everywhere - this week the village has been opening out and greening up before our eyes as Spencer and I potter about and peer into hedgerows. Spring does not make a quiet entrance this far north - she comes over the hill with an exuberant bound, reaches out with her twiggy hand, and behold, all is bursting forth and budding.
How can the word be anything except bloom? The word originates in the Middle English blo or blome, meaning to open up and flower lavishly, to glow with health and well-being, to be as sleek and glossy as an otter, as rosy, dewy and flushed with sunlight as a tulip or an early blooming orchid in a wild and wooded place. There are probable connections (or roots) between bloom and bhel in Proto-Indo-European, the hypothetical common ancestor of all modern European languages - in that ancient, oral and unscribed tongue, bhel means to grow, swell, or unfold, to leaf out or come into flower.
Perhaps a better word for this week would be sex, for that is what springtime's lush colors, alluring fragrances, velvet textures and warbling ballads are about - the Old Wild Mother's madcap dance of exuberance, fertility and fruitfulness. Every species on the planet seems focused on proliferating its species and perpetuating its own heady genetic brew, and their sheer pleasure in being alive is almost tangible.
Forsaking appointed chores, we poke around in the garden, ramble though thickets and contemplate the blue sky for long intervals. It's simply a matter of blooming wherever one happens to be planted. Spencer is already a master of that splendid Zen art, and his silly old mum is working on it.
One can barely see them at such a reduced photo size, but draped along the stem and flowers in the second image are the first strands of spider silk found this season on the Two Hundred Acre Wood. Given that nights are still cool, perhaps the spiders are wearing warm coats and woolen gloves. I have to applaud their determination to get out there and spin in such brisk weatherly conditions.
The feathery gray-green foliage and nodding white flowers like upside-down pantaloons are enchanting all by themselves, and the dancing filaments of spider silk held my attention for some time too with their gossamer shimmer and floating windblown motion. There were lavish clumps of Dicentra cucullaria blooming several feet up a nearby warmed vertical rock face, and I considered (briefly) either climbing up or dangling from the top, but decided to avoid such assuredly risky pursuits and shoot from right where I was standing.
The woods are slow to leaf out and bloom this year, but these images are perfect for a northern Beltane or May Day methinks - they need no description from this doddering photographer and occasional wordsmith, although I have done just that this morning and described them.
A very happy Beltane (or May Day) to each and every one of you...
