Friday Ramble - Autumn

This week's word comes to us through the Middle English autumpne and Old French autompne, thence the Latin autumnus. The Latin likely hails from even older Etruscan forms. The first part of autumnus (autu) may originate in the Etruscan autu, related to avil, or year, the second part (mnus) from menos meaning loss, minus, or passing. There we have it. At the end of our etymological adventures is the burnished but wistful thought that another year is ebbing, another circling in what I like to call simply, "the Great Round," the natural cycle of our existence.

September is about harvest and abundance, but it is about balance too. The Autumn Equinox on September 21 is one of the two times in the year when day and night are balanced in length. On that day, (also called "Harvest Home" or sometimes Mabon), the sun seems to pass over the equator on a journey southward, moving steadily away from us. Things are actually the other way around of course, and it is the earth and her unruly children who are in motion. Between the Midsummer Solstice and the Winter Solstice, our planet's northern hemisphere tilts away from the radiant star at its center, and we northerners go along for the ride.

The magnificent constellations of winter are starting to appear, and the dome of night is a treasure trove of deep sky wonders, a gift for stargazey types like this Old Thing. Beau and I were out stargazing last night, and this morning we were out again before dawn, the waning moon shining over our heads. When the sun rose, the stars vanished and every roof in the village was sewn with sequins of dew. With mornings like this, how can one feel anything except rich as Croesus and jubilant in spirit?

On early walks, fallen leaves drift around our ankles and make a fine rustling music. Earthbound foliage on the trail is going transparent and turning into stained glass in splendid buttery colors. We pause to look at all the wonders around our feet, and it's a wonder we ever get anywhere at all. When I stopped to look at yet another leaf in the path on our early walk, Beau sighed and looked up at me curiously. I started to say that I was looking for a perfect leaf, then stopped and started the sentence over again. Every single autumn leaf is perfect, just as it is.

Friday Ramble - Summer's Ticking Clock

Somewhere in the dusty recesses of my noggin, the passage of these sultry summer days is being marked, and ever so wistfully. The clock of the seasons is ticking away in the background, and hearing it, I find myself pondering the lessons held out by this golden interval that is passing away all too swiftly.

The other three seasons of a northern calendar year are splendid of course, and there are surely other fine summers ahead, but this summer's days are numbered. We are sliding gently down the hill toward autumn, days growing shorter, nights growing longer. It seems as though summer just got here, but here we go again,

Thoughts of coming and going are ever inscribed on summer's middling pages, and they're unsettling notions, making for restlessness and vague discontent, a gentle melancholy about the nature of time, a wistful appreciation of what is falling away and the transience of all earthly things.

An awareness of suchness (or tathata) is a middle-of-the-summer thing. For the most part, one goes gently along with the flow of the season, breathing in and out, trying to rest in the moment and do the things around home and garden that need doing.

Roses are a perfect metaphor for the season. Many old roses bloom once in a calendar year, but what a show they put on when they do. Their unruly tangles of wickedly thorny canes and blue-green leaves wear delicate pink (for the most part) blooms with crinkled petals and golden hearts. Each rose is unique, and each is exquisite from budding until its faded petals flutter to earth like snowflakes.

For several weeks after Midsummer, ambrosial fragrance lingers in every corner of the garden, and I find myself falling in love with old roses all over again.  It is nothing short of a miracle that creatures so beautiful and fragile thrive this far north. 

I pour over Taylor's Guide to Roses and drool over varieties that would never survive in my part of the world: Blush Noisette, Souvenir de Malmaison, Alba Maxima, Fantin Latour, Tuscany Superb, Rosa Mundi, Variegata de Bologna, Belle Amour and Ispahan. My copy of Taylor is falling apart, and it is probably time to replace it, but the little volume is an old friend and I cherish it.

Once in a while, I catch a glimpse of the Great Mystery while I am hanging out in the garden, and that is surely what this old life is all about. There are times when I wish I was better at remembering that and keeping everything in perspective, but forgetting now and then is quite all right - I have the garden to remind me.

The Measure of Our Winter Days

Beau and I are out and about early on winter mornings, but salt and icy pavement are not kind to his toes so we keep our ramblings brief. After our first outing, we return home and fill bird feeders in the garden. Then we put a little something out for the squirrels who are having a difficult time too. When I pull draperies open in the morning, the first thing I see is their delicate footprints in the snow on the deck.

Indoors, heaps of reading material, candles, potions, puckish pursuits and small eccentricities are the measure of our winter days. Ditto sketchbooks, baking, baskets of mending, researching oddities like building igloos and straw houses, pottery, spinning, making authentic French pâtés and pasta. The soup cauldron has a place of honour on the stove in winter, and there is always a pot of something or other bubbling away on it. Then there is the old "what else can I do with this eggplant" exercise. Failing anything else, I plot another garden bed, pummel bread or make scones. Out of my midwinter restlessness, good and comforting things occasionally come.

If the weather was a little warmer, we would be checking out local bookshops and shopping for art supplies like sketchbooks and watercolor pens, but that is unlikely to happen for a while. Thankfully, shelves in the study contain a lovely stash of yarn, scraps of fabric (the powsels and thrums of Alan Garner's incandescent memoir), ribbon, paper, paint, and sticky stuff to keep us out of trouble. First and foremost (of course), there are books. There are never too many about, and passing a tottering heap of friends as yet unknown is always a happy thing. 

It is tempting to embrace the notion that life becomes smaller in winter, but that is simply not so. Like our magnificent universe, like this dear little blue world, like the Great Round of time and the seasons in which we spend our allotted days, life continues to expand - we are simply reaching outward in different ways.

Thursday Poem - Praise Song

Praise the light of late November,
the thin sunlight that goes deep in the bones.
Praise the crows chattering in the oak trees;
though they are clothed in night, they do not
despair. Praise what little there's left:
the small boats of milkweed pods, husks, hulls,
shells, the architecture of trees. Praise the meadow
of dried weeds: yarrow, goldenrod, chicory,
the remains of summer. Praise the blue sky
that hasn't cracked. Praise the sun slipping down
behind the beechnuts, praise the quilt of leaves
that covers the grass: Scarlet Oak, Sweet Gum,
Sugar Maple. Though darkness gathers,
praise our crazy fallen world; it's all we
have, and it's never enough.

Barbara Crooker

Friday Ramble - Creeping Autumn

Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia)

Suddenly, there in the hedgerows on our morning walks are clear signals that seasonal changes are in the air. The persistent strands of Virginia creeper wrapping old wooden fences and stone walls and draping themselves around trees and shrubs were green a few days ago, and this morning many look more like Yuletide (or Christmas) paper, red and green and silvery in the early light. Where the stones and bricks to which they cling get direct sunlight during the day and retain their heat at night, the creepers cling to their greens a little longer, but they too are thinking about changing their colors.

Oak leaves are lightly touched with the splendid rosy bronze tint they wear in late September and early October before falling to earth, and beech leaves are already edged in coppery red and cognac. Leaf by leaf and branch by branch, maple trees in the eastern Ontario highlands are turning red.

One of my forestry references identifies native beeches as being of the species called simply "common beech". To my mind however, there is nothing common about the beeches on our hill with their majestic height, silvery bark, dense foliage and rounded crowns. They are simply magnificent.

Part of me wants to dance about and applaud the cooler temperatures and the burnished, glorious colors coming into their own. Another part of me, as much as I love Samhain (or Halloween) and the harvest season, is dismayed at the prospect of cold weather, long days and short nights, of an early autumn this time around. Fall should not arrive until the end of September at the very earliest, and then it ought to hang about until the end of November.

Please Mama, not yet........ Gift us with several more weeks of sun and warmth and gentle breezes, no ingathering and cold nights for a while longer.

Friday Ramble - Summer's Ticking Clock

Somewhere in the dusty recesses of my noggin, the passage of these sultry summer days is being marked, and ever so wistfully. The clock of the seasons is ticking away in the background, and hearing it, I find myself pondering the lessons held out by this golden interval that is passing away all too swiftly. The other three seasons of a northern calendar year are splendid of course, and there are surely other fine summers ahead, but this summer is waning, and its days are numbered. The summer solstice has come and gone, and we are sliding gently down the hill toward autumn, shorter days and longer nights.

Thoughts of coming and going are ever inscribed on summer's middling pages, and they're unsettling notions, making for restlessness and vague discontent, a gentle melancholy concerning the nature of time, a wistful sense of what is falling away and the transience of all earthly things. A heightened awareness of suchness (or tathata) is a middle-of-the-summer thing for sure. For the most part, one goes gently along with the flow of the season, breathing in and out, trying to rest in the moment and do the gardeny things that need doing.

Old garden roses are a perfect metaphor for the season. Most bloom once in a calendar year, but what a show they put on when they do. Their unruly tangles of wickedly thorny canes and blue-green leaves wear delicate pink (for the most part) blooms with crinkled petals and golden hearts. Each rose is unique, and each is exquisite from budding until its faded petals flutter to earth like snowflakes. For several weeks after Midsummer, fragrance lingers in every corner of the garden, and every year I fall in love with old roses all over again. It is nothing short of a miracle that creatures so beautiful and fragile thrive this far north.

Once in a while, I catch a glimpse of the Great Mystery while I am hanging out in the garden, and that is surely what this old life is all about. Sometimes, I wish I did a better job of remembering and keeping everything in perspective, but forgetting now and then is quite all right - I have my roses to remind me.

Thursday Poem - August

Summer sings its long song, and all the notes are green.
But there’s a click, somewhere in the middle
of the month, as we reach the turning point, the apex,
a Ferris wheel, cars tipping and tilting over the top,
and we see September up ahead, school and schedules
returning. And there’s the first night you step outside
and hear the katydids arguing, six more weeks
to frost, and you know you can make it through to fall.
Dark now at eight, nights finally cooling off for sleep,
no more twisting in damp sheets, hearing mosquitoes’
thirsty whines. Lakes of chicory and Queen Anne’s lace
mirror the sky’s high cirrus. Evenings grow chilly,
time for old sweaters and sweatpants, lying in the hammock
squinting to read in the quick-coming dusk.
A few fireflies punctuate the night’s black text,
and the moonlight is so thick, you could swim in it
until you reach the other side.

Barbara Crooker

Friday Ramble - And So It Begins

Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia)

On our morning walks, there are tell tale signs everywhere that seasonal changes are on their way. Wildflowers are going to seed, and the foliage along our way looks faded and a little tired. The persistent strands of Virginia creeper wrapping old wooden fences and stone walls and draping themselves around trees and shrubs were brilliantly  green only a few days ago, and this morning, one or two are starting to look more like Yule (or Christmas) paper, dappled red and green and silvery blue in the early light. Where stones and bricks get direct sunlight during the day and retain their heat at night, creepers will hang on to their summer greens for quite a while longer, but they too are thinking about changing.

The margins of oak leaves are lightly touched with the splendid rosy bronze they wear in September and early October before falling to earth, and beech leaves are already edged in coppery red and cognac. Of course, it could simply be the heat setting such changes in motion and not an early autumn. One of of my forestry references identifies our native beeches as being of the species called simply "common beech". To my mind, there is nothing common about the great beeches on our Lanark hill with their majestic height, silvery bark, dense foliage and rounded crowns. The trees are magnificent, and how I do love them.

Part of me wants to dance about and applaud the cooler temperatures to come, the burnished, glorious colors about to come into their own. Another part, as much as I love the harvest season and Samhain (or Halloween), is dismayed at the thought of an early autumn this time around. Fall should not arrive until September 21st at the earliest, and then it is allowed to hang about until the end of November.

Please Mama, not yet... Let there be several more weeks of sun and warmth and gentle breezes, no ingathering and cold nights for a while longer.

Friday Ramble - Sixteen Years and Onward

On Sunday morning, clocks in the little blue house in the village turned back an hour, and Daylight Saving Time waved goodbye until next year. The departure of DST also marked sixteen years of pottering about in cyberspace, sixteen long years of logging on in the morning, posting an image or two and sometimes muttering along for a few paragraphs, occasionally spilling coffee on the keyboard. There are times when I can't believe I had the cheek to set this "book of days" up in the first place, let alone do the blogging thing faithfully for sixteen years in a row. There are other times when I look at stuff I posted here years ago and am appalled. Yuck.

However lacking they are, and they are certainly that, these are my morning (or artist) pages, and chances are they will remain pretty much as they are in the coming year. There may be a bit of font and banner tinkering now and again, but that is all. I don't foresee any significant changes to this place, and I expect blogging life will simply go on as it has been doing so far, photos and scribblings and bits of poetry.

To say the last year has been rather difficult is an understatement and then some. In late November of 2019, my soulmate passed away after a ferocious battle with pancreatic cancer, and life without him is still rough going. I can't even begin to express how much I loved the man (and still do), how much I still miss him. Within a few months of Irv's passing, several dear friends also passed away from cancer, and I miss them too. Most of the time, I feel as though I am just clinging to the wreckage and paddling frantically to stay afloat. Thank goodness for family, for sisters of the heart, for cherished friends and darling Beau. I could not have gotten here without them, without all of you.

Big life stuff notwithstanding, it's a fine thing to be here and all wrapped up in what we call simply, "the Great Round". Some times are easier than others, but Beau and I go rambling with a notebook and camera every day. At times, I just tuck the Samsung S21 cell phone in my coat pocket, and off we go, collars turned up against the wind. We wander along at our own pace, conversing with the great maples and the beech mothers, watching their leaves dance in the autumn woods, feasting our eyes on the sun going down like a ball of fire over the river, on skies alight with winter stars and lustrous moons that seem almost close enough to reach up and touch. My departed love is always with us in spirit, resting easy in the pocket of my tatty old jacket - he loved rambling and was usually the first person out the door.

The road goes ever on, and there is magic everywhere if we have the eyes to see it, the wits to acknowledge it, the grace and humility and plain old human decency to show respect and say thank you. The small adventures of our journeying will continue to make their way here and get spilled out on the computer screen mornings with a bad photo or two and a whole rucksack of wonder. The world is a breathtakingly beautiful place, and I am starting to realize that sometimes an image says everything that needs to be said, all by itself, no words needed from this Old Thing. Mary Oliver says it best:

The years to come – this is a promise –

will grant you ample time

to try the difficult steps in the empire of thought

where you seek for the shining proofs you think you must have.

But nothing you ever understand will be sweeter, or more binding,

than this deep affinity between your eyes and the world.

(excerpt from Terns)

In another poem called It Was Early, she wrote that sometimes one needs only to stand wherever she is to be blessed, and that is something I keep in mind as Beau and I are tottering about. Thank you for your kind thoughts and healing energies, your comments and cards and letters, for journeying along with me this year. You are treasured more than you know, and if my fingers were working, I would write each and every one of you. Alas, they are not. Be well, my friends. Be peaceable. Be happy.

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 fence by the main 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 vetches and ripening milkweed, several species of goldenrod, trefoils, bindweed and prickly violet bugloss, all 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 among the tall grasses.

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 just 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 the languid waters that flow downhill to autumn.

Thursday Poem - At Sunrise on Winter Days

at sunrise on winter days, our trail unfolds
through freshly fallen white, and every unhurried

footfall crafts another waxing moon,

the sound of our muffled steps rising

through hedges and snow-drowned spruces,

three hearts beating together in perfect time.

frozen goldenrod and milkweed fronds,

great trees weighted down by the season,
all incline their heads in greeting.

ghost choirs of last summer's grosbeaks
sing above our heads, and phantom starlings

dance along roof lines as we pass by.

lady winter rounds the village out,

smooths the contours of house and street,
spins flowing deserts out of snow.

in morning softness, we know ourselves

at last—perfect, still and so complete

nothing abandoned or left behind.

Cate

Friday Ramble - Winter

This week's word comes from Old English wintr, thence the Proto-Germanic wentruz meaning "wet season", both originating in the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) wed, wod or ud, meaning "wet" or "wind". There are possible ties to the Old Celtic vindo meaning "white", but that word always sounds more like the English "wind" to me. The Old Norse vetr sounds like the present day "weather" and may indeed be one of its root forms. Cognates include the Gothic wintru, Icelandic vetur, Swedish vinte, Danish vinter and Norwegian vetter.

The most common words for the long white season have been around for a very long time, and most cultures on this island earth have one. The season occupies a singular place in our thoughts, dancing dramatically in a stronger light than its more moderate kin. Those of us who live in the north tend to predicate our activities in the other three seasons of the year on making ready for it.

Because of winter's ferocity, early Anglo-Saxons measured their calendar years from one winter to the next, and they reckoned their ages by the number of winters they had weathered. In Old Norse, the word vetrardag designated the first day of winter, usually the Saturday which fell between Oct. 10 and 16. Northern ancients were sure that the world as they knew it would come to an end after the most savage winter in history.  In the Eddas, the fimbulvetr (mighty winter) precedes the twilight of the gods, their last battle with the frost giants (led by Loki) and the destruction of the earth.

For the Celts, winter began at Samhain (October 31) or All Hallows (November 1) and ended on Imbolc or Candlemas (February 1 or 2) when springtime arrived. The Winter Solstice on or about December 21 marked  the longest night of the year, and it was a rowdy celebration. From that day onward, the light of the sun would return, a little more every day until the Summer Solstice in June. The legendary King Arthur was believed to have been born on the Winter Solstice in Castle Tintagel in Cornwall, and Druids sometimes refer to the Winter Solstice as Alban Arthuan ("The Light of Arthur").

It all comes down to cosmic balance. We owe the timely trappings of our brief existence in the Great Round to a tilt in the earth's axis as it spins merrily in space. When winter reigns here in the north, the happy lands south of the equator are cavorting in summer. I cling tenaciously to that thought in the depths of frozen January, that somewhere in the world it is warm and sunny, perfect beach weather and no parkas required.

Winter gifts us with the most brilliantly blue skies of the calendar year by day, with stargazey expanses of wonder by night. There is nothing to compare with the sun shining through frosted trees on a cold morning, with the sound of falling snow in the woods, with darknesses when the moon and stars seem so close one can almost reach up and touch them. We are made of star stuff, and that means the twinkling motes over my head are kin. That is truly cool.

When winter begins, I always consider moving further south, but it isn't going to happen. Instead, I pile up books and music for the long nights and accumulate tea. I stir curries, make bread and ponder the rows of jams and pickles in the pantry. I ready skis, snowshoes and boots for treks in the woods. By necessity, my rambles will be brief this winter, but I will still be taking them.

To know the north woods, one has to wander through them in winter, spend hours tracing the shapes of sleeping hills and trees with eyes and lens. She has to listen to snow falling among them and perhaps become a tree herself.

Friday Ramble - Mabon

It seems as though summer has just arrived, but here we are again, just a few days away from the autumn equinox. Cooler mornings, light rains before sunrise, heavy dews, falling leaves and acorns after months of blistering heat and humidity, can it be?

The occasion is often observed on September 21st, but the astronomical coordinate this year is actually next Tuesday, September 22rd. Whatever day one chooses to observe it (or not observe it), the September equinox is a pivotal cosmic hinge wearing many  names: Mabon, Harvest Home, Second Harvest, the Feast of Ingathering and Alban Elfed, to name just a few.

Mabon is the most common name of the bunch on this side of the Atlantic, perhaps rooted in the god's status as the male fertilizing principle in Welsh mythology. Ceres, Demeter, John Barleycorn, Lugh or Persephone are also excellent contenders for a tutelary deity presiding over autumn harvest rites, but I am fond of the "Great Son" of the Mabinogion, sometimes thought to be a companion of Arthur's Round Table.

In the old Teutonic calendar, the autumn equinox marked the beginning of the Winter Finding, a ceremonial interval lasting until Winter Night on October 15, also the date of the old Norse New Year. For moderns, the date marks the end of summer and the beginning of autumn, and it is also associated with the Archangel Michael—his feast takes place a few days from now on September 25 and is known (for obvious reasons) as Michaelmas. The autumn blooming Michaelmas daisy or New England aster with its purple petals and golden heart is one of my favorite wildflowers. South of the equator, seasonal cycles are reversed of course, and the vernal equinox (Ostara) is approaching.

The autumn equinox is about abundance and harvest, but most of all, it is about balance and equilibrium, one of two astronomical coordinates in the whole turning year when day and night are perfectly balanced in length. Like all the old festivals dedicated to Mother Earth, it is a liminal or threshold time, for we are poised between two seasons, summer and autumn.

One holds out hopeful thoughts for the autumn equinox, that skies overhead will be brilliantly blue and full of singing geese by day, that trees and vines and creepers will be arrayed in crimson and gold, that a splendid waxing golden moon will be visible against a blanket of stars by night. 

An autumn wreath graces our door, and a pot of chrysanthemums graces the threshold.  Sometimes the pot is adorned by leaves fallen from the old oak nearby. The tree is our resident guardian, the wreath and "mum" a nod to the season and a tribute of sorts. Oak, fallen leaves, wreath and blooms are cheerful things, conveying a benediction on anyone who knocks at the door, treads our cobblestones or just passes by in the street. Autumn images tug at the heart, and I always sort through reams of archived images looking for just the right one for today, am never sure I have found it. Leaves, light, clouds, geese, herons, purple daisies??? It's always about the light, and autumn light is fabulous.

However, and whenever you choose to celebrate the occasion, a very happy Autumn Equinox, Harvest Home, or Mabon. May good things come to you.

Friday Ramble - Autumn

This week's word comes to us through the Middle English autumpne and the Old French autompne, thence the Latin autumnus, and the Latin likely hails from even older Etruscan forms.  The first part of autumnus (autu) probably originates in the Etruscan autu, related to avil, or year. The second part of autumnus (mnus) comes from menos meaning loss, minus, or passing. There we have it. At the end of our etymological adventures is the burnished but wistful thought that another year is ebbing, another circling in what I like to call simply, "the Great Round," the natural cycle of our existence.

September is about harvest and abundance, but it is about balance too. The Autumn Equinox on September 21 is one of the two times in the year when day and night are balanced in length. On that day, (also called Mabon or "Harvest Home"), the sun seems to pass over the equator on a journey southward, moving steadily away from us who live above the 49th parallel. Things are actually the other way around of course, and it is the earth and her unruly children who are in motion. Between the Midsummer Solstice and the Winter Solstice, our planet's northern hemisphere tilts away from the radiant star at its center, and we stalwart northerners go along for the ride.

The magnificent constellations of winter are starting to appear, and the dome of night is a treasure trove of deep sky wonders, a gift for stargazey types like this Old Thing. Last night, a tapestry of stars covered the sky from here to there, and Jupiter and Saturn dazzled in the southern sky, borrowing light from the sun and acting for all the world as if they were stars, not planets.   The waning moon was not visible until a few minutes before midnight.

This morning, Beau and I were out in the garden again before sunrise, and it was cold. Orion, our favorite autumn constellation, was up and clearly visible in the south, the moon shining above it and slightly to the east, the red giant Aldebaran to the west. Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, danced in the east, just above the horizon. When the sun rose, the stars vanished and every roof in the village was sewn with sequins of dew. With mornings like this, can one feel anything except rich as Croesus and jubilant in spirit?

On early walks, falling leaves drift around our ankles and make a fine rustling music.  Earthbound foliage on the trail is going transparent and turning into stained glass in splendid buttery colors.  We pause to look at all the wonders around our feet, and it's a wonder we ever get anywhere at all. When I stopped to look at a leaf in our path this morning, Beau looked up at me curiously. I started to say that I was looking for a perfect leaf, then stopped and started the sentence over again.  Pristine, unblemished and golden, or faded, tattered and torn, every single autumn leaf is perfect, just as it is.

Friday Ramble - Summer's Ticking Clock

Somewhere in the dusty recesses of my noggin, the passage of these sultry summer days is being marked, and ever so wistfully.  The clock of the seasons is ticking away in the background, and hearing it, I find myself pondering the lessons held out by this golden interval that is passing away all too swiftly.  The other three seasons of a northern calendar year are splendid of course, and there are surely other fine summers ahead, but this summer is waning, and its days are numbered. The summer solstice has come and gone, and we are sliding gently down the hill toward autumn, shorter days and longer nights.

Thoughts of coming and going are ever inscribed on summer's middling pages, and they're unsettling notions, making for restlessness and vague discontent, a gentle melancholy concerning the nature of time, what is falling away and the transience of all earthly things.  A heightened awareness of suchness (or tathata) is a middle-of-the-summer thing for sure. For the most part, one goes gently along with the flow, breathing in and out, trying to rest in the moment and do the gardeny things that need doing.

Old garden roses are a perfect metaphor for the season. Most bloom once in a calendar year, but what a show they put on when they do.  Their unruly tangles of wickedly thorny canes and blue-green leaves wear delicate pink (for the most part) blooms with crinkled petals and golden hearts.  Each rose is unique, and each is exquisite from budding until its faded petals flutter to earth like snowflakes. For several weeks after Midsummer, fragrance lingers in every corner of the garden, and every year I fall in love with old roses all over again. It is nothing short of a miracle that creatures so beautiful and fragile thrive this far north.

Once in a while, I catch a glimpse of the Great Mystery while I am hanging out in the garden, and that is surely what this old life is all about.  I wish I did a better job of remembering that and keeping everything in perspective, but forgetting now and then is quite all right - the roses in my garden remind me.

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 fence by the main 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, but mourning doves are cooing somewhere nearby.

The air is filled with wings. Fritillaries and swallowtails flutter among the cottonwoods, never pausing in their exuberant flight or alighting 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 the languid waters that flow downhill to autumn.

Friday Ramble - Midsummer (Litha)

Here we are on the eve of Midsummer, the Summer Solstice or Litha. Tonight is midsummer eve according to astronomers, and tomorrow is the longest day of the calendar year, the sun poised at its zenith (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.

This morning's image was taken by the front gate of our 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 towering trees and hazy sky in the background, golden daisies and orange hawkweed, purple bugloss and silvery meadow grasses dancing front and center.

Summer was late coming this year, and it feels as though the golden season has just arrived, but things are all downhill from here, at least for six months or so.  After tomorrow, daylight hours will wane until Yule (or the Winter Solstice) around December 21 when they begin to stretch out again.

Longer nights rule during the latter half of the calendar year, and that is something to celebrate for those of us who are moonhearts and ardent backyard astronomers. The Old Wild Mother strews celestial wonders by generous handfuls as the year wanes, spinning spectacular star spangled tapestries in the velvety darkness that grows deeper and longer with every twenty-four hour interval.

How does one mark this sunlit moment between the lighter and darker halves of the year? The notion of midsummer night skies as a vast cauldron of twinkling stars is appropriate and magical too.  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, carried home to family hearths for protection.  Doorways were decorated with swags and wreaths of birch, fennel, St. John's Wort and white lilies.

Alas, my days of jumping midsummer bonfires are over. I will be outside with a mug of Jerusalem Artichoke (or Earth Apple) tea as the sun rises tomorrow. There will be a candle burning on the old oak table, a lighted wand of incense in a pottery bowl nearby. In other years, the day held a few hours of pottering in the village or a ramble in the woods with my soulmate, but not this year. There will be tea and munchies here with a dear friend this afternoon, a quiet meal as the sun goes down, a little stargazing later. A new lunar cycle begins this evening, so no moon watching tonight. This is our first Midsummer observance without Irv, and Beau and I are both thinking of him. We miss him so much.

Happy Litha or Midsummer, however you choose to celebrate (or not celebrate). 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.

Happy Beltane (May Day)

This is Beltane (or May Day) in the northern hemisphere, Samhain in lands below the equator. As we in northern lands drift from winter into springtime, our kin in the south are moving from summer into autumn..

It was a long winter in the eastern Ontario highlands, and nights are still cool. It will be another week or two until colonies of bloodroot are up and blooming in our forest, but early specimens lift their gold and white heads in protected nooks here and there in the woods. In other years, wild yellow orchids were in bloom right about now, but it will be a while before they put in an appearance, soon to be followed by trout lilies, columbines and hepatica.

The shy white blooms with their golden centers are dear to my heart and something of a seasonal marker. Encountering this one in its flickering, stone-warmed alcove, I could have kissed the good dark earth where the flower made its home—it was that perfect. Down I went in the dead leaves and stayed there for a while, nose to nose with the little wonder and happy as a clam. Make no mistake about it, getting up again was quite an undertaking for this Old Thing.

The interval was a wild epiphany, one particular to springtime when the north woods are just coming to life. Call it a moment of kensho, one of the fleeting scraps of quiet knowing and connection that I call "aha" moments. Forget frills, ruffles and bagatelles - this is the ground of my being. As long as I can spend time with trees and rocks and wildflowers, I can handle big life stuff, most of the time anyway. Add lakes, loons, cormorants, herons and sunsets to the equation, please. Also geese, trumpeter swans and cranes.

Happy Beltane (or May Day), everyone. Bright blessings to you and your clan. May there be light and blooming in your own precious life and your corner of the great wide world. Wherever you make your home on the hallowed earth, may all good things come to you at this turning of the wheel in the Great Round.

For the Vernal Equinox (March 19)

Tomorrow marks the Vernal Equinox or Ostara, one of two times in the calendar year (the other being the Autumn Equinox or Mabon) when the Earth and her unruly children hover in perfect balance for a brief interval. Humans had nothing to do with this day - it's a pivotal astronomic point ordained by the heavens, by the natural order of things in this magnificent cosmos where we live out our days, spinning like tops in the Great Round of space and time. Although the spring equinox is often celebrated on March 21st, tomorrow is the actual astronomical date this time around.

If I lived further south, tomorrow might be a day of greening and enchantment, a day when Eostre, the old Teutonic goddess of greening and fertility, wanders wild places with her arms full of spring blooms, bestowing blessings on everything she sees. Flowers would spring up in her footsteps as she passed, and she would be attended by hares, her special animal,. The air would be filled with birdsong,  with the heady fragrance of rich dark earth and wild springtime herbs.

Alas, the only snowdrops blooming here at the moment are those in a glass jar here in my study. It will be several weeks until Lady Spring makes an appearance in the northern landscape, but rumors of her imminent presence and the arrival of the greening season persist. It has been a long winter this time around, and Eostre can't show up to soon for me. Our winter birds feel the same. Every feathered visitor to our sleeping garden seems to be declaring its lofty status as a messenger from the sacred, a harbinger of abundance and new life.

Last night Beau and I went outside into the garden for a few minutes, and a cold going it was. As we shivered in the star spangled darkness and looked up into the cauldron of night, it seemed to us that this month's full moon on March 9th had (as it always does) borne more than a passing resemblance to a great cosmic egg - a perfect expression of this turning of the wheel with its verdant motifs of warmth, light and new life coming into being.

There is blooming in our thoughts this day, but it is too cold for outdoor celebrations. I will spend a few minutes outside this evening, perhaps light a celebratory candle on the deck, but the festivities are indoors for the most part.  This will be my first Vernal Equinox in more than forty years without my soulmate, and it will be difficult. There will be no grilled salmon, risotto and Chablis this year, but Beau and I will celebrate his presence in our lives, and we will send him our love, just as we do every day.

Happy Ostara everyone, a very happy Vernal Equinox to you and your tribe.

Restless in February

Little things leave you feeling restless in February. You ramble through stacks of gardening catalogues, plotting another heritage rose or three, design new plots of herbs and heirloom veggies. You spend hours in the kitchen pummeling bread dough and stirring cauldrons of soup, summoning old Helios with cilantro, fragrant olive oils and recipes straight from Tuscany. You burn candles and brew endless pots of tea, sunlight dancing in every china mug.

You play with filters, apertures and shutter speeds, entranced (and occasionally irritated) with the surprising transformations wrought by your tinkerings. Camera around your neck, you float through the woods, peering into trees and searching for a leaf somewhere, even a single bare leaf. You scan cloudy evening skies, desperately hoping to see the moon, and you calculate the weeks remaining until the geese, the herons and the loons come home again.

It may not seem like it, but change is already on its way.  The great horned owls who reside on the Two Hundred Acre Wood are repairing their nest in an old oak tree about a mile back in the forest, and they are getting ready to raise another comely brood.  It comforts me to think it is all happening again.

This morning, a single maple leaf was teased into brief flight by the north wind, and it came to rest in the birdbath in the garden. A simple thing to be sure, but the pairing of golden leaf and blue snow was fetching stuff indeed. In its poignant wabi sabi simplicity, the little scrap of leathery foliage cradled an often and much needed reminder. This is the sisterhood of fur and feather, of snowbound earth and clouded sky, of wandering eye and dancing leaf.  Out of our small and frost rimed doings, a mindful life is made.