Friday Ramble - For the Roses

One has to love creatures so exotic and lavishly endowed. Summer's roses are glorious creatures in their time of blooming, be their flowering an interval lasting a few weeks or one lasting all season long. All artful curves, lush fragrance and velvety petals, the blooms are lavishly dappled with dew at first light, and they're a rare treat for these old eyes as the early sun moves across them. If we (Beau and I) are fortunate, there will be roses blooming in our garden until late autumn, and we hold the thought close.

The word rose hails from the Old English rose, thence from the Latin rosa and the Greek rhoda. Predating these are the Aeolic wrodon and the Persian vrda-. At the beginning of it all is the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) form wrdho- meaning "thorn or bramble". Most of our roses have thorns to reckon with, and none more so than this morning's offering.

Viewing this exquisite specimen from the bedroom window, we find ourselves falling in love with roses all over again, so lovely as they mature, so graceful as they fade and wither and dwindle, their petals falling away and fluttering to the earth like confetti.

There's a bittersweet and poignant aspect to such thoughts in late June and early July, and I remember feeling the same way last year around this time. Here we are again in the second half of a calendar year and pottering down the luscious golden slope to autumn and beyond. Bumbles love roses, and they spend their sunlight hours flying from one bloom to another. My pleasure in the season and a gentle melancholy seem to be all wrapped up together in falling rose petals and blissed out bumblebees.

Call it wabi sabi and treasure the feelings—they are elemental expressions of wonder, rootedness and connection, the suchness of all things. How sweet it is, thorns and all.

Thursday Poem - Directions (Excerpt)

The best time is late afternoon
when the sun strobes through
the columns of trees as you are hiking up,
and when you find an agreeable rock
to sit on, you will be able to see
the light pouring down into the woods
and breaking into the shapes and tones
of things and you will hear nothing
but a sprig of birdsong or the leafy
falling of a cone or nut through the trees,
and if this is your day you might even
spot a hare or feel the wing-beats of geese
driving overhead toward some destination.

But it is hard to speak of these things
how the voices of light enter the body
and begin to recite their stories
how the earth holds us painfully against
its breast made of humus and brambles
how we who will soon be gone regard
the entities that continue to return
greener than ever, spring water flowing
through a meadow and the shadows of clouds
passing over the hills and the ground
where we stand in the tremble of thought
taking the vast outside into ourselves.

Billy Collins, from The Art of Drowning

First Gathering

Flaming Amazement

Ah, these burnished summer days! In the eastern Ontario highlands, the rolling fields are dappled with rounds of baled hay. Shadows stretch long skinny fingers across cropped acreages at dusk, and deer and wild turkeys feed under the trees.

The evening sun flames amazement as it drops below the horizon. I've always loved the words "I flamed amazement", spoken by Ariel in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, (Act I, Scene 2). They seem just right for a balmy summer evening when the setting sun is putting on a blazing, fiery show, and there is magic in the air.

Shadows slanting across the landscape lengthen, grow sharper and deeper as days grow shorter. As if to compensate for waning daylight hours, northern sunsets light up the horizon in gold, inky blue and purple, perfect molten light and technicolor clouds. 

Beau and I lean against a fence at sunset, and my camera and lens can scarcely take in all the riches on offer. The setting sun dazzles our eyes, and the waxing moon is as lustrous as a great cosmic pearl; she seems lit from within. I know the moon has no light of her own and borrows it from the sun, but it always seems otherwise at this time of the year. The fabulous sundown light is enough to make one swoon in delight.

Sequestered, Week 166 (CLXVI)

Sunday - Saying Yes to the World

For those of us who care for an earth not encompassed by machines, a world of textures, tastes and sounds other than those that we have engineered, there can be no question of simply abandoning literacy, of turning away from all writing. Our task, rather, is that of taking up the written word, with all of its potency, and patiently, carefully, writing language back into the land. Our craft is that of releasing the budded, earthly intelligence of our words, freeing them to respond to the speech of the things themselves – to the green uttering forth of leaves from the spring branches. It is the practice of spinning stories that have the rhythm and lilt of the local soundscape, tales for the tongue, tales that want to be told, again and again sliding off the digital screen and slipping off the lettered page in inhabit these coastal forests, those desert canyons, those whispering grasslands and valleys and swamps. Finding phrases that lace us in contact with the trembling neck-muscles of a deer holding its antlers high as it swims toward the mainland, or with the ant dragging a scavenged rice-grain through the grasses. Planting words, like seeds, under rocks and fallen logs – letting language take root, once again, in the earthen silence of shadow and bone and leaf.

David Abram,The Spell of the Sensuous

Seeing Through

Friday Ramble - The Measure of Our Days

Nearing the end of June, trees on the Two Hundred Acre Wood are gloriously leafed out, and vast swaths of woodland are as dark as night - the shadowed alcoves are several degrees cooler than the sunlit fields skirting them. Winding strands of wild clematis wrap around the old cedar rail fences by the gate, and the silvery posts and rails give off a fine dry perfume.

There are orange and yellow hawkweeds, buttercups and clovers, daisies, tall rosy grasses and ripening milkweed, several species of goldenrod, trefoils and prickly violet bugloss - all are moved by the arid summer wind and swaying in place. Open areas of waving greenery have an oceanic aspect, and I wouldn't be surprised to see the masts of tall ships poking up here and there.

Birds are everywhere, red-tailed hawks circling overhead, swallows and kingfishers over the river, bluebirds on the fence, grosbeaks dancing from branch to branch in the overstory and caroling their pleasure in the day and the season. I can't see them for the trees, but mourning doves are cooing somewhere nearby.

Fritillaries and swallowtails flutter among the cottonwoods, never pausing in their exuberant flight or coming down to have their pictures taken. Dragonflies (mostly skimmers, clubtails and darners) spiral and swoop through the air, a few corporals among them for good measure.

I began this morning with the words "It is high summer". Then I remembered that the solstice has passed by, and I went back and started again. And so it goes in the great round of time and the seasons . . . Many golden days are still to come, but we have stepped into the languid waters that flow downhill to autumn.

Thursday Poem - To the Rain

Mother rain, manifold, measureless,

falling on fallow, on field and forest,

on house-roof, low hovel, high tower,

downwelling waters all-washing, wider

than cities, softer than sisterhood, vaster

than countrysides, calming, recalling:

return to us, teaching our troubled

souls in your ceaseless descent

to fall, to be fellow, to feel to the root,

to sink in, to heal, to sweeten the seas.

Ursula K. Le Guin, from So Far So Good

Happy Summer Solstice (Litha)

Clouds in My Cuppa

Clouds, rain and fog were our lot for an hour or two yesterday morning. Oilskins and rubber boots waited by the door, and umbrellas bloomed like peonies out in the darkling street. On our walks, tall trees floated into view like the masts of wooden sailing ships and then disappeared again in the mist. There was the swish of early commuters splashing through lovely deep puddles when they thought nobody was looking, the grumble of buses, the soft growl of motor vehicles heading uptown for the day's toiling.

Through the kitchen window came the smell of rain and wet earth as I sipped my mug of tea, the sound of branches in the garden shedding their cloaks of wetness, jubilant robins in the overstory singing down more life giving precipitation. There is never enough rain for the robins, and they were giving the day their all. Rain please, Mama, more rain.

There's something restful about such mornings. If I could climb the old maple in the garden, I would perch right up there with the robins, trilling for more days like these fine soggy hours just unfolding. Getting there in oilskins and wellies might be difficult though, and what do I do with my tea and the umbrella?

Sequestered, Week 165 (CLXV)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.

Cormac McCarthy,
(June 20, 1933 - June 13, 2023)

Frog on the Rocks

Friday Ramble Before the Summer Solstice (Litha)

Here we are, just a few days away from Midsummer or the Summer Solstice. Next Tuesday is the eve of Litha, and the following day (Wednesday, June 21st) is the longest day of the calendar year with the Sun poised at its zenith or highest point and seeming to stand still for a fleeting interval before starting down the long slippery slope toward autumn, and beyond that to winter. Actually it is we who are in motion and not the magnificent star at the center of our universe. Our sun stays right where it is.

This morning's image was taken by the front gate of the Two Hundred Acre Wood in the Lanark highlands some time ago, and it is one of my favorites, capturing the essence of midsummer beautifully with the old rail fence, strands of wild clematis, field grasses and cool green tree shadows in the background. 

It seems as though the golden season has just arrived, but things are all downhill from here. After Wednesday, daylight hours will wane until Yule (December 21) when they begin to stretch out again. The ebbing of daylight hours is bittersweet, but longer nights go along on the cosmic ride during the last half of the calendar year, and that is something to celebrate for those of us who are moonhearts and ardent backyard astronomers. There are some fine stargazing nights ahead. The Old Wild Mother strews celestial wonders by generous handfuls as the year wanes, spinning luminous tapestries in the velvety darkness that grows deeper and longer with every twenty-four hour interval.

The eight festive spokes on the old Wheel of the Year are all associated with fire, but the summer solstice more than any other observance. Centuries ago, all Europe was alight on Midsummer eve, and ritual bonfires climbed high into the night from every village green. Long ago midsummer festivities included morris dancing, games of chance and storytelling, feasting and pageantry and candlelight processions after dark. Prosperity and abundance could be ensured by jumping over Midsummer fires, and its embers were charms against injury and bad weather at harvest time. Embers were placed at the edges of orchards and fields to ensure good harvests, and they were carried home to family hearths for protection. Doorways were decorated with swags and wreaths of birch, fennel, white lilies and St. John's Wort which is in bloom now.

Alas, my days of jumping midsummer bonfires are over. I try to be outside or near a window with a mug of Jerusalem Artichoke (or Earth Apple) tea and watch the sun rise. There's a candle on the old oak table and a lighted wand of Shiseido incense in a pottery bowl nearby. The afternoon holds a few hours of pottering in the village, a quiet meal as the sun goes down, a little stargazing and moon watching later. We (Beau and I) cherish the simplicity of our small festive doings and the quiet pleasure of being surrounded by kindred spirits at such times, and as always, we will think of my departed soulmate. This is our fourth Litha without Irv, and his passing still cuts like a knife.

Happy Litha (or Midsummer), however you choose to celebrate, or not to celebrate it next week. May the sun light up your day from sunrise to sunset, and your night be filled with stars from here to there. May all good things come to you.

Thursday Poem - One Song

A cardinal, the very essence of red, stabs

the hedgerow with his piercing notes;

a chickadee adds three short beats,

part of the percussion section, and a white-

throated sparrow moves the melody along.

Last night, at a concert, crashing waves

of Prokofiev; later, the soft rain falling

steadily and a train whistle off in the distance.

And today, the sun, waiting for its cue,

comes out from the clouds for a short sweet

solo, then sits back down, rests between turns.

On the other side of the world, night’s black

bass fiddle rosins its bow, draws it over

the strings, resonates with the breath

of sleepers, animal, vegetable, human.

All the world breathes in, breathes out.

It hums, it throbs, it improvises. So many voices.

Only one song.

Barbara Crooker

Wordless Wednesday - Wet

The Old Guy in the Garden

The garden Buddha (Hotei) sits in a sunny alcove in the garden under a canopy of old rose, buckthorn and blackberry leaves. Birds serenade him in early morning, and rabbits visit him at nightfall. Bumbles and dragonflies buzz around him, spiders knit him into their webs, and sometimes butterflies land on him. There is a steady rain of maple keys, leaf dust and pine needles from the trees over his head.

Hotei looks as though he is carved from stone, but he is actually made of some kind of polyresin, and he weighs only a pound or two. I discovered him in the window of a thrift shop years ago, purchased him for a dollar and carried him home where he now presides over a leafy enclave in the garden from early April until late October. 

The original Hotei was a wandering 10th-century Chinese Buddhist monk thought to be an incarnation of Maitreya, the Buddha who is still to come. In Asian cultures, he represents abundance and contentment, and he is the protector of children. For some strange reason, he is also the patron of bartenders.

On the Old Guy's back is a bottomless bag of food, drink and coins which he shares with those in need, and his name actually means "Cloth Sack" in Chinese. He holds a mala (Buddhist rosary), and sometimes he holds a fan with the power to grant wishes. Although our Hotei does not have a fan, he has a mala in one hand, and he seems to be reciting a mantra. One of these days, I will find a statue of Kuan Yin for the garden too.

Sequestered, Week 164 (CLXIV)

Sunday - Saying Yes to the World

Touch is a reciprocal action, a gesture of exchange with the world. To make an impression is also to receive one, and the soles of our feet, shaped by the surfaces they press upon, are landscapes themselves with their own worn channels and roving lines. They perhaps most closely resemble the patterns of ridge and swirl revealed when a tide has ebbed over flat sand.

Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot

After the Rain, Irises!

Friday Ramble - Lupins and Early Light

I never walk past a stand of lupins without thinking of the Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch in which a bumbling highwayman named Dennis Moore (played by John Cleese) steals lupins from the rich and tries to give them to the local peasantry. Alas, Moore's efforts are met with derision by those he is trying to help, and they demand other things like Titian paintings, Venetian silver and art glass.

This morning's lupins live in the abandoned garden behind a small brick bungalow in the village. The elderly woman who lived in the little house had a wonderful garden surrounded by fences and high hedgerows, and it could not be seen from the street. 

Sadie's enclosure reminded me of the secret garden in Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden. There were fruit trees, blackberries and hawthorns, antique lupins in blue, purple, pink and cream, daisies, coneflowers, cornflowers, old roses, phlox, peonies and specimen hostas. The place was full of rabbits, songbirds and bumbles in summer, and it was an oasis of serenity. I loved spending time there.

Some time ago, my friend moved into an assisted living community, and her dear little brick house was listed for sale, its enchanted garden bulldozed in an orgy of destruction. She has now passed away, and her fabulous creation is a thing of the past. A developer is about to start building town houses on the property, and no trees, gardens and green spaces will remain - in a short time, there will be nary a hint that a magical space once existed in a quiet corner of the village. Several lupins remain, and I plan to visit in the next few days and gather the seed from them.

I feel a little blue when I remember Sadie, and sowing her lupins will be my way of honoring her memory and her beautiful garden. What is remembered lives.

Thursday Poems - The Other Kingdoms

Consider the other kingdoms. The

trees, for example, with their mellow-sounding
titles: oak, aspen, willow.
Or the snow, for which the peoples of the north
have dozens of words to describe its
different arrivals. Or the creatures, with their
thick fur, their shy and wordless gaze. Their
infallible sense of what their lives
are meant to be. Thus the world
grows rich, grows wild, and you too,
grow rich, grow sweetly wild, as you too

were born to be.

Mary Oliver

Wordless - Down By the Pond

Seeing Red in June

June would not be June without clay pots, boxes and planters of red geraniums (cranesbills) blooming at the entrances of houses in the village. Here we are again, pottering along in June and heading toward another summer solstice, and there are geraniums everywhere.

On early morning walks, Beau and I have noticed that many of this year's geranium offerings are attended by purple petunias and marigolds. There are also some splendid coleuses in rainbow shades, and sometimes all four dwell comfortably in the same pot, geraniums, petunias, marigold and coleus. What a riot of aestival color!

My gypsy soul craves spectacular coleus strains like "Dragon Heart, "Rainbow Dragon", "Kingswood Torch" and "Chocolate Covered Cherry", and I am looking for other places in the garden to plant them this year. Ditto some of the more arty amaranth varieties in local nurseries like "Joseph's Coat", "Molten Fire" and "Early Splendor".

A pot of geraniums on our threshold is a long standing tradition, and every year, I think of their ancestors who graced our entry in years past and greeted everyone who came to the door. I remember their shape, their color, their texture, their green and rather peppery fragrance, their joyous flowering. They were perfect expressions of summer, and I thanked them. Happy blooming, everyone!

Sequestered, Week 163 (CLXIII)

Sunday - Saying Yes to the World

Stars, too, were time travelers. How many of those ancient points of light were the last echoes of suns now dead? How many had been born but their light not yet come this far? If all the suns but ours collapsed tonight, how many lifetimes would it take us to realize we were alone? I had always known the sky was full of mysteries—but not until now had I realized how full of them the earth was.

Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Seeing Red

Oriental Poppy (Papaver orientale)

Friday Ramble - Golden

Large Yellow Lady Slipper

(Cypripedium parviflorum var pubescens)

I sign on here in the morning, survey my photographic (and wordy) efforts, utter a silent "meh" and decide to say (or write) as little as possible. That seems to be happening more often than it used to. When I plunk myself down in front of the computer and skim the early news, I cringe. How can we be doing this to each other? I can't find words for what is going on, or at least not the right words.

Then I think of my wild orchids. In the eastern Ontario highlands, lady slippers are blooming as they have for time out of mind. In their flickering, sunlit alcoves, the orchids sway and sing a capella in their own lilting voices, a testament to wildness and belonging and community. Whole hillsides of nodding golden beauty express the indwelling incandescent spirit of the living earth without any help at all from This Old Thing. Wild orchids are a balm to this world weary spirit.

My departed soulmate and I loved our wild orchid colony and watched over them for years, protecting them from being eaten by deer and trampled by bears. Every year, I reclined in the grass nearby and marveled at their perfection, had long conversations with them and captured them with my lens whenever I visited. In the midst of global disease and rampant human brutality, here they are again in all their golden perfection.

Events on the world stage are breaking us wide open, and they compel us to confront aspects of our humanity that we would rather not acknowledge, let alone address. The orchids are a powerful reminder of what it means to be a sentient being on this dear little planet, and I am grateful for their counsel. Time for us to get to work.

Thursday Poem - Epiphany

Lynn Schmidt says
she saw You once as prairie grass,
Nebraska prairie grass,

she climbed out of her car on a hot highway,
leaned her butt on the nose of her car,
looked out over one great flowing field,
stretching beyond her sight until the horizon came:
vastness, she says,
responsive to the slightest shift of wind,
         full of infinite change,
         all One.

She says when she can't pray
She calls up Prairie Grass.

Pem Kremer