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 - Drifting Along in the Fog

On September mornings, the village is often a mysterious place, the earth warmer than the air above and the meeting of the two elements turning otherwise mundane landscape features into entities fey and luminous. Autumn is upon us, and she is comfortable in her tenure of mist, rain, wind and madcap, tumbling leaves.

There is nothing like a good fog, and September dishes up some splendid atmospheric murks. Mist swirls around everything in the village, draping whiskery trees, power lines, and the telephone poles that poke out of it like the masts of sailing ships. It smooths the edges of everything and rounds the contours of house and street.

The wind scours leaves from the old trees near home, and they rustle underfoot as Beau and I wander along on our early walks. If we listen carefully, we can sometimes hear Cassie and Spencer walking beside us, their happy feet doing a kind of scuffling dance through the fallen, leafy treasure. My departed soulmate loved early morning rambles, and he is always tucked in my pocket when we go out.

Out of the pearly gray and sepia come sounds now and again. Birds converse in village hedgerows and geese move unseen among the clouds, singing as they pass over our heads. Doors open and close as sleepy residents collect their morning papers. There is the soft growling of automobiles and the rattle and hum of city buses, the muffled cadence of joggers gliding through the park, commuters heading downtown to work, children chattering on their way to school.

Once in a while, there is the whistle of a faraway train, usually only a faint echoing in the air. The sound brings back childhood memories of freight trains rumbling through the countryside in the wee hours of the morning and sounding their horns in warning as they approached crossings. Raindrops beat a staccato rhythm on the roofs of houses near home, and little rivers sing through the gutters with their freight of leaves and twigs. Taken all together, it is atmospheric and symphonic.

On such mornings, the world seems boundless and brimming with luminous possibility, soil and trees and sky and mist giving tongue in a language that is wild and compelling. Part of me is curled up in the warm with a mug of something hot and a good book. Other parts are out there drifting along with the fog and happy to be doing it. 

Friday Ramble - Little Ordinaries of the Season

It's small things that engage one's attention at this time of year: fallen leaves like confetti on the dock at the lake, trees raining acorns and crabapples, sunflowers inclining their heads and sending thousands of seed children out into the world, damp furrows where veggies flowered, fruited and have been gathered in.

Trees in the garden were touched by cool fingers overnight, and their grip on summer’s foliage has loosened. The fallen leaves rustle wonderfully underfoot. Bergamots, mints and sages planted for the bees and butterflies have gone to seed, and fall bloomers are sporting buds. One artfully curving branch on the ash tree behind the potting shed has already turned brilliantly yellow.

In the park, beech leaves float down in burnished, windblown drifts and come to rest on the trail at our feet. Sunlight flickers through the overstory as though through clerestory windows, and the woods feel like a cathedral that goes on and on forever. I am reminded of something John Crowley wrote in his incandescent novel, Little, Big: "The further in you go, the bigger it gets."

September is only a few days away, and autumn is already in the air. The little ordinaries of this liminal time between the seasons conjure an earthy litany that is colourful and spicy on the tongue, touched with a leaf-dusty fragrance that follows us wherever we totter and shamble and lurch.

Swallows are congregating on telephone lines before flying south, and skeins of geese move to and fro between rivers and farm fields. A new generation of monarch butterflies is testing its wings before flying south. Soon, the loons on our favorite lake will be calling goodbye as they head for warmer moorings, and the great herons will not be far behind them. Is it just me, or is there a restless spirit loose in the village and haunting the countryside at this time of the year?

It is cool here this morning, and far from recent thoughts of salads and cold drinks, I find myself pondering soups and stews, corn fritters and gingerbread, roasted squash, the first McIntosh apples lovingly folded into a baked crumble with oatmeal, maple syrup and cinnamon. Always, there is tea. Thinking about comfort food and culinary undertakings is a sure indication of autumn, all by itself.

Life becomes quieter as daylight hours wane. Temperatures decline, and migratory kin head for warmer climes. Leaves fall, and things go to seed. The light in this corner of the great wide world ebbs and flows. We watch what is happening around us, and we drink in every blessed thing like wine. Collars up against the wind, we potter about and peer into hedgerows and thickets. We feast our senses. Then we come home to tea and toast and molasses cookies. Home is a lovely word in any season.

Friday Ramble - Abundance

I awaken early and lurch out to the garden wearing a faded cotton caftan, straw hat and sandals, carrying my cane and a mug of Earl Grey. In the wake of last week's tumble, the stick is a must. Best not to go base over apex into the tomato patch. The vines have taken off in all directions, and I might not be found for days.  

The only sentient beings happy about the heat are the ecstatically foraging bees and the ripening vegetables in village veggie patches: beans, peppers, tomatoes, kale, chards and emerging gourds. Are veggies sentient, and do they have Buddha nature? You bet they do, and I suspect they converse among themselves when we are not listening. The zucchini vines (as always) are on the march and threatening to take over entire gardens, if not the whole wide world. Ditto the kale which adores the kind of weather we are having this summer.

The tomatoes are a marvel. Scarlet or gold, occasionally purpled or striped, they come in all sizes and some surprising shapes. The first juicy heirloom "toms" of the season are the essence of feasting and late summer celebration as they rest in a bowl on the deck: fresh-from-the-garden jewels, rosy and flushed and beaded with early morning dew. A wedge of Stilton or Camembert, crusty bread, a little balsamic, a sprinkling of sea salt and a few fresh basil leaves from the garden are all that is needed to complete both the scene and today's lunch.

Oh honey sweet and hazy summer abundance... That luscious word made its first appearance in the fourteenth century, coming down the years to us through Middle English and Old French from the Latin abundāns, meaning overflowing. The adjective form is abundant, and synonyms for it include: ample, generous, lavish, plentiful, copious, plenteous, exuberant, overflowing, rich,  teeming, profuse, prolific, replete, teeming, bountiful and liberal.

Abundant is the exactly the right word for these days of ripeness and plenty, as we gather in the harvest, freeze things, chuck things into jars, "put things by" and store the bounty of summer for consumption somewhere up the road. Like squirrels and chipmunks, we scurry about, collecting the stuff in our gardens and preserving it to nourish body and soul when temperatures fall and nights grow long.

For all the sweetness and abundance held out in offering by the Old Wild Mother (Earth), there is a subtle ache to these golden, late August days with their dews and hazes and ripening vegetables. These days are all too fleeting.

Friday Ramble - In the Great Blue Bowl of Morning

We awaken to skies that would make an impressionist painter feel like dancing, to Canada geese singing in unison as they fly up from the river and out into farm fields to feed. This year's progeny sing loudest up there in the great blue bowl of morning. Their pleasure in being alive and aloft mirrors my own as I watch them with a mug of hot stuff, eyes shielded from the rising sun with a sleepy hand.

Below the sweeping strokes of vibrant color painted across the eastern sky are trees, hydro poles, rooflines and village streets, trucks and cars in rumbling motion, early runners in the park, commuters with lunch bags, bento boxes, newspapers and briefcases headed downtown to another day at their desks.

In a few weeks, the early runners and commuters will be joined by village children on their way to school, and nearby streets will be filled with happy chatter again. Beau and I have missed seeing the neighborhood kids on our summer rambles, and we are looking forward to hearing about their adventures on vacation.

On a recent morning walk, we paused by a neighbor's fish pond to watch the white and scarlet koi finning their way around in circles, and we noticed that the first fallen leaves of the season had already drifted into the pool, making eddies and swirls and perfect round spirals on the glossy surface. No need to panic, it's not an early autumn, just the blistering heat of August setting the leaf people free to ramble.

I would be a happy camper if I could paint skies like the one above, but I can't, and the camera's efforts will have to do. What my lens "sees" is absolutely sumptuous though, and I am content with the morning opus. Sky blue, rose, gold, violet and scarlet lodge in my wandering thoughts, and on the way home, I think about throwing a whole bunch of clay pots and glazing them in sunrise colors. 

Friday Ramble - Consider

The annual Perseid meteor shower is in progress, and this year, it will peak on August 12 - 13. I just have to write something about late summer nights and the dazzling streams of comet debris that turn pre-dawn August hours into the greatest show on earth. Until October and the Orionids that is.

Throwaway children of the Swift-Tuttle comet, the Perseids take place between July and August every year. The shower takes its name from Perseus, the constellation in the northern sky from which it appears to (but does not really) originate. Who knows, some of the particles rocketing around up there may be kin to my own star stuff. Awesome doings up there, a new extravaganza every night. The adjective "cosmic" is one of this tottery backyard astronomer's favorite adjectives.

Our wordy offering hails from around 1350 CE, tracing its origins through the Middle English word consideren and the Latin considerare, both meaning "in the company of the stars", thence the Latin sidus/sideris meaning a star or cluster of stars. At the beginning of it all is the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root form *sweid meaning to shine. Other English words like constellation and sidereal are kin, the first describing a group of stars, and the latter meaning simply "starry".

Humans are spun from the dust of ancient stars, and we are probably never more true to ourselves and our beginnings than when we are considering something, in the original sense of the word that is. The thought tickles me greatly. In doing so, we move away from the mundane and profane and intuitively toward a bone deep and authentic connection with the dimension from which we emerged, and of which we are such miniscule elements. Dancing motes in the eye of the infinite are we.

Clear summer nights are perfect times for stargazing, and so are cold clear nights when one can almost reach up and touch the stars. On late summer and early autumn nights, the sky is often filled with clouds from here to there, and one can hardly see eye or lens, let alone the wonders above us. Who doesn't love a good haze or fog though, and weather on the cusp of the seasons dishes up some splendid, atmospheric murks. Even when we can't see them, our starry kin are right up there over our heads and shining down on us. As Clarissa Pinkola Estes wrote:

"We find lingering evidence of archetype in the images and symbols found in stories, literature, poetry, painting, and religion. It would appear that its glow, its voice, and its fragrance are meant to cause us to be raised up from contemplating the shit on our tails to occasionally traveling in the company of the stars."

Friday Ramble - Sticky

Sticky is a fine word for this summer's puckish "toing and froing" between sunshine and rain, steamy heat and (occasionally) pleasantly cool temperatures, weather moderate and weather extreme. This summer is turning out to be a particularly unpredictable state of affairs, and it is a glue pot or "sticky wicket" at the best of times.

This week’s mucilaginous word offering hails from the Old English stic meaning “to adhere, be embedded, stay fixed or be fastened”. Then there are the Proto-Germanic stik, Old Saxon stekan, Dutch stecken, Old High German stehhan and German stechen all meaning much the same thing. Most of this week's word kin are rooted in the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) form steig meaning "to affix, point or be pointed". 

Recent mornings have been lovely times for walks or hanging out in the garden, but by ten, Beau and I are are happy to be indoors and looking out, rather than actually being out in the heat and humidity. At twilight, off we go again, and we potter around the village, peering into trees for walnuts, little green acorns, ripening plums, and flowers blooming unseen in nearby leafy depths like late summer jewels.

On early walks, hedgerows are festooned with spider webs, and the strands of silk are strung with beads of pearly dew, looking for all the world like fabulous neck ornaments. Summer webs here are, for the most part, the work of the orb weaver known as the writing spider, corn spider or common garden spider (Argiope aurantia). Artfully spun from twig to twig, the spider's creations are sublime. No two are the same, and they are often several feet from one edge to the other.

As I peered at a web in the hedgerow one morning this week, I thought about a friend (now moved away) who used to "do" web walks with me and occasionally rang the doorbell at sunrise when she discovered a real whopper and just had to share it. I visited a few of her early finds still wearing pajamas and slippers.

I thought too of the metaphor of Indra's jeweled web and how we are all connected in the greater scheme of things. Emaho! Sticky or not, it's all good.

Friday Ramble - Little Singers in the Trees

An annual cicada's song is the quintessential music of August, a sonorous vocal offering from little jeweled beings who emerge from the ground, shed their nymph skins, climb high into the light-filled trees and sing for a handful of days before expiring and returning to earth. It's a joyful, ecstatic and poignant element in the slow, irrevocable turning of one northern season into another.

Only male cicadas sing, but oh how they do, vibrating the complex abdominal membranes called tymbals over and over again to generate a raspy tune that will attract a mate. I have much to learn about identifying cicadas, but I think this one is the bigger Linne's cicada, rather than a Dog-day cicada. Whichever one it was, my little visitor was absolutely gorgeous. 

In ancient Greece and Rome, the cicada symbolized resurrection, immortality, and  spiritual ecstasy. The Greeks associated it with the sun god (Apollo), and with Dionysian rituals of ecstasy and madness. For the Romans, its emergence from the earth was a powerful symbol of transformation and rebirth.

In some Hispanic cultures, particularly those with strong Mesoamerican traditions, the cicada is associated with life, death and metamorphosis. It represents resilience, defiance, enduring hardship and surviving against the odds.  

In the southern French province of Provence, the cicada is viewed affectionately as a kindred spirit, a creature that loves the sun and makes music for the sheer joy of it. It is considered a lucky charm, and it is a popular motif in local art and crafts. 

We (Beau and I) often find abandoned cicada shells on trees at this time of the year but always feel fortunate when we encounter a newborn in all its pastel green splendor, sometimes still clinging to its discarded exoskeleton. Imagos (adults) darken as their new skins harden and their wings expand, but there is some variation in coloration, and many will retain greenish wings all the days of their lives.

For the last few days, we have been rescuing cicadas from sidewalks, driveways and roadways and moving them to safe perches where they will not be trampled by pedestrians or moving cars. On early walks, Beau and I always encounter at least two or three before we arrive home again. Evenings, I take my mug of tea out to the garden and listen to cicada serenades before the sun goes down, and I shall be sad when I go outside one night, and there are no cicada songs to be heard.

Call it "cicada mind" and cherish the notion. Our task is one of cultivating just this kind of patience, acceptance, rapt attention and unfettered Zen sensibility, of embracing our allotted days fully and singing wherever we happen to be, then dissolving effortlessly back into the fabric of the world when the time comes.

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.

Friday Ramble - The Measure of Our Days

In early July, the 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.

The fields are wonders: orange and yellow hawkweeds, buttercups and clovers, daisies, tall rosy grasses and ripening milkweed, several species of goldenrod, trefoils and prickly violet bugloss - everything is set in motion by the arid summer wind and swaying in place. The 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.

And then there are the birds, red-tailed hawks circling overhead, swallows and kingfishers above 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. These walks are filled with wonders.

I began this morning's post with the words "It is high summer". Then I remembered that the summer solstice has passed, 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.

Autumn with its burnished light, its grains and apples and gourds on the vine... The season feels like coming home to this old hen.

Friday Ramble - For the Roses

Rosa 'William Baffin'

One has to love creatures so lavishly endowed. Summer's roses are glorious creatures, be their flowering time an interval lasting a few weeks or one lasting all season long. All artful curves and lush fragrance, velvety petals and fringed golden hearts, the blooms are lavishly dappled with dew at first light, a rare treat for these old eyes as the early sun moves across them. If we are fortunate, there will be roses blooming in our garden until late autumn, and we (Beau and I) 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-, and way back, the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) form wrdho- meaning "thorn or bramble". Humans have had a thing for roses for a very long time.

Most of the roses in our garden have thorns to reckon with, and we approach them with caution. The thorniest of the bunch are the multiflora which has ruled a corner of the garden for years, and a much younger, (but no less armored) rose from the Canadian Explorer series called 'William Baffin'. Wicked thorns on that one.

Around this time of the year, I find myself falling in love with the roses in my garden all over again. The blooms are lovely as they mature, and they are gracefully poignant as they fade and wither and dwindle, their petals tattering, falling away and fluttering to the earth like perfumed confetti.

Bumbles and bees love roses, and they spend sunlight hours flying from one bloom to another, burrowing deep into the centers and kicking their pollen bedecked legs in rapture. The air is filled with whirring wings and happy, buzzing musics.

There's a bittersweet and rather mournful aspect to one's thoughts in late June, and I remember feeling the same way last year around this time. Here we are again, pottering down the luscious golden slope to autumn and beyond. 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 (侘寂) and embrace the feelings when they arise—they are elemental expressions of transience, impermanence and the suchness (tathata) of all things. Cherish the sweetness of the season, roses, thorns, bumbles and all.

Friday Ramble - For the Summer Solstice (Litha)

This is the eve of Litha (Midsummer) or the Summer Solstice, and as with all the old festivals, the observance begins tonight at sunset. Tomorrow is the longest day of the calendar year, 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. It captures the essence of midsummer beautifully with tall trees and hazy sky in the background, golden daisies, purple bugloss and silvery meadow grasses dancing front and center.

It seems as though summer has just arrived, but things are all downhill from here. After tomorrow, days will shorten until Yule (December 21) when they begin to stretch out again. The ebbing 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 Wheel of the Year are 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 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 in orchards and fields to ensure a good harvest, 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.

My days of jumping midsummer bonfires are over. I will try to be outside with a mug of Jerusalem Artichoke (or Earth Apple) tea and watch the sun rise tomorrow. The afternoon holds a few hours of working in the garden and (as usual) a few mugs of tea and a little reading time on the deck. At nightfall there will be a quiet festive meal, a little stargazing and moon watching later if the skies are clear.

We (Beau and I) cherish the simplicity of our small festive doings, the quiet pleasure of being with loved ones at such times. As always, we will think of my departed soulmate. This is our sixth Litha without Irv, and his passing still cuts like a knife. Some things cannot be tucked away or forgotten. They can only be carried.

Happy Litha (or Midsummer/Summer Solstice), however you choose to celebrate it, or not celebrate it. 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.

Friday Ramble - Kingfisher Days

Canadian Tiger Swallowtail

(Papilio canadensis)

In summer, I spend hours photographing dragonflies, butterflies, bumbles and bees, puddles and weeds, wild orchids, lupins gone walkabout and doing their own untrammeled thing in roadside ditches. The eastern Ontario highlands are a treasure trove of earthy abundance in all seasons, and I feel fortunate to be there and taking it all in, especially in summer.

Hours are also spent crawling about in the woods on all fours with a macro lens on the camera “doing” ferns, mosses, lichens and little green frogs. Every tump, stump, leafy alcove and stone has wonders to share. Is it difficult to lurch back to a standing position afterward after getting down on the forest floor? Yes, but worth it.

Still other hours are spent hanging out on the shore at the lake, capturing loons floating on the still water as the sun goes down, great herons standing motionless in the shallows, kingfishers hunting the last small meal of the day. Once in a while, an otter paddles by and peers up at me, displaying the bright red inside of its mouth and a set of wicked teeth. There is always something to see.

River otters are making a comeback in the Lanark highlands, and it is common to see them swimming along the lake and in nearby rivers. They are fabulous creatures, and I call them all "Portly", after the wandering otter child in the seventh chapter of Kenneth Graham's incandescent The Wind in the Willows.

These are kingfisher days, times out of time, full of magic and an elusive something I am always reaching toward and can't quite find, let alone capture with camera and lens. When I arrive home, dusty, sweaty and speckled with leaf dust, the day’s images are uploaded and archived. I look at everything first of course, but my efforts make me groan, so I file the DVD away and think no more of it.

Years later, while searching for the right image for something or other, I pull out a DVD and discover it is full of treasures. Imagine that. I have already taken the swallowtail, cicada, loon, fern, wildflower or rain dappled moss shot I am still hoping to find. I discover them all over again, and I remember when they were taken, my soulmate and Beau (or Cassie or Spencer) and I together in the woods on a glorious summer morning, chewed by bugs and as happy as clams.

Apologies to Susan Coyne for borrowing the title of her memoir Kingfisher Days for this morning's post. I have always loved the book.

Friday Ramble - Aestival

In the science of zoology, aestival refers to the tendency of all living creatures to be sleepy and slow moving in the heat of summer, and botanists also use the word to describe the arrangement of organs or components in a flower bud.

This week's word comes to us from the Late Latin aestīvālis and earlier Latin aestās, both meaning summer or heat. Both forms are cognate with the Sanskrit इन्द्धे (inddhé) meaning to light or set on fire. Way back in our wordy explorations is the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root form h₂eydʰ- meaning heat, fire or to burn. The adjective probably came into use during the Middle Ages, some time around 386. 

Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of nearly all Indo-European languages and its elements have been assembled from languages known today. There is no record that it ever existed, but if so, it would have been in use from the Late Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age. The prehistoric Proto-Indo-Europeans were most likely nomadic tribes from the steppes of eastern Europe and central Asia, and they were a footloose and fancy free lot. There is evidence that they wandered as far as the Aegean, northern Europe, Central Asia and Siberia, leaving their language, pastoral culture, patriarchal religious beliefs and customs wherever they went.

I once thought that the word siesta (referring to a leisurely nap after lunch) was related, but I discovered a year or two ago that its roots are in the Latin sexta meaning the sixth hour of the day (midday). The two words sound similar, but as far as I know, they are not related.

This week's word is my favorite adjective for the (all too brief) greening season at the heart of the calendar year. Summery is a fine word too, but it doesn't hold a candle or even a tiny wooden match to the frothy perfumed magnificence of the golden season that reigns so gloriously and so briefly here in the sub-Arctic climes of Canada. Aestival says it all, and I love the shape of the word on my tongue.

I say "aestival" and its sibilance summons up images of alfresco celebrations and farmers' markets, shaggy gardens of scarlet poppies and towering purple lupins, trees filled with singing birds, bees in the orchard, roses sweeter than any vineyard potion, perfect sunsets across the lake shared with herons and loons. The season is filled with light, and every moment should be savoured.

Friday Ramble - Sweet

And so it goes . . . One day, the old crabapple is bare and forlorn, the next day it wears a multitude of tiny leaves. Almost overnight, the tree is covered with blooms and buzzing with throngs of ecstatic, blissed-out bumbles, bees and wasps.

Along comes an early summer breeze, and the crabapple symphony is over, petals drifting through the air like confetti, coming to rest on lawns and hedges and gardens, on fences and birdbaths and pergolas and fountains. The fallen bits of pink float merrily on puddles in the street and flutter across cobblestones in the village like tiny, airborne scraps of vibrantly hued carnival paper. Their presence conveys a festive aspect to the day, and seeing them on our morning walks makes us smile.

Our word traces its roots all the way back to the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root form *swād- meaning sweet or pleasant, also the likely source of Old English, Germanic, Sanskrit, Greek and Latin words meaning the same thing.

Lilacs in the village are blooming, and when I stepped outside with Beau last evening around ten, the night air was full of their heady fragrance. For a few minutes, we leaned against the railing on the veranda and breathed in the glorious perfume. Then we were driven indoors by clouds of ravenous mosquitoes. The little blighters were out for blood and no mistake.

Standing out in the darkness, I remembered a long ago garden I planted with purple heliotrope. The color of the blooms was gorgeous, and their sweet, cherry-like scent pulled in hummingbirds, butterflies, bumbles and bees from miles around. The stuff was almost indecently sumptuous, and I shall have to plant it again.

How sweet this season is, how fleeting and poignant, just a little sad too. I sometimes wish that summer lasted a little longer this far north, but if it did, spring and autumn would be truncated slightly. No to that!

Friday Ramble - Earth/Earthy

Earth is a good word for pondering in this shaggy season as we work in our gardens and tend the sweet beginnings of the harvest to come. All things, or at least most things, arise from the earth and return to it in time, us included.

Our word dates from before 950 CE, and it comes to us through the good offices of the Middle English erthe, the Old English eorthe; German erde, Old Norse jǫrth, and Gothic airtha, thence the Ancient Saxon eard meaning soil or dwelling place. Then there is the Latin aro, meaning to plough or turn over. In the beginning is the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) form *h₁er- meaning ground, soil, land or place.

When we say "earth", we are usually thinking of the ground under our feet. We may also be thinking of the many millions of roots doing their thing way down deep, of the bones of our little blue planet and the fiery heart beating in its molten core. We almost never think of ourselves as elements in the same story, but blood and bones, root and branch, rivers and rocks, we are all tiny, thoughtless players in a vast elemental process. Endlessly befuddled strands in the web, we are always getting distracted and forgetting that we are part of anything at all. 

Once in a while, the simple fact that we are NOT separate shows up and insists we pay attention. It can happen while dangling on a rock face or seated in a pool of sunlight under a tree in the woods, on a hill somewhere under the summer stars, or on the shore of a favorite lake at dusk. Dazzling sunsets and starry nights do it for me every time, and occasionally it even happens while I am parked in the waiting room of my local cancer clinic. Such moments cannot be predicted, and nor should they, but I have noticed that they often show up right when I need them.

There I was this week, feet planted in the garden and head in the clouds, but not a lofty thought in sight. My soulmate and I gardened together fifty years, and I was missing him more than words can say that morning. Out of the blue, there came a fey scrap of elemental knowing, and I remembered (probably for the millionth time in this long and tatterdemalion life) that I was right where I was supposed to be and doing just what I was meant to be doing. I needed the reminder.

We belong here, roots, branches, star stuff and every dancing particle - we belong here as much as rivers, mountains, acorns, wild salmon and sandpipers do. Dirt, clouds, sky and stardust, it's all good.

Friday Ramble - Swimming in Light

We awakened to gray skies yesterday, to rain reveling in its own refrain and beating a staccato rhythm on the roof that shunned meter and metronome. Puckish breezes cavorted in the eaves and ruffled tiny leaves in the garden like tangy decks of playing cards. A thousand and one little waterfalls appeared out of nowhere, and impromptu streams danced their way through village gutters carrying twigs, oak leaves, pine needles and catkins.

Here and there were precious islands of stillness. Sheltered by overhanging trees, the ornamental pond in a friend's garden was like glass, its little school of white and scarlet koi hovering almost motionless in the early light, their open mouths like tiny perfect "o"s. Sometimes, they seemed to be swimming in light.

On our morning walk, we (Beau and I) took note of a rusty puddle under the corroded wheelbarrow in a neighbor's driveway, and I remembered that humans have been using rust (iron oxides) in artistic undertakings as far back as the prehistoric caves of Lascaux. I would be a happy camper indeed if I ever managed to produce something a scrap as vibrant as the magnificent Chinese horse.

I also remembered that a heady brew of iron oxides, carbon dioxide and water is probably where all sentient life began. The Japanese word for rust is sabi and together with wabi, another Japanese word meaning fresh or simple, it forms the expression wabi-sabi, an enfolding aesthetic or worldview centered on notions of transience, simplicity and naturalness or imperfection. Rust is fine stuff, be it in aesthetics, Asian philosophy, cave art, wet driveways or old wheelbarrows.

Clouds and rain, then sunshine and blue sky, then back to clouds and rain again, who knows what mid-May days will hold? When good weather prevails, Beau and I go into the woods, and we lurch along for an hour or two, a long way from the miles of rugged terrain we were once able to cover, but there is gratitude in every step.

On wet days, we listen to a little Bach or Rameau on the sound system, read and drink tea. We watch raindrops dappling the windows, the painterly way in which trees, rooflines and old wood fences are beaded with moisture and shining in the grey. Each and every raindrop is a minuscule world teeming with exuberant life, whole universes looking up at us, great and bumbling creatures that we are. Rain or shine, up and down, in and out, them and us, it's all good.

Friday Ramble - Bloom

Sunlight, blue skies and fluffy clouds overhead, birdsong in the overstory, avian courtship rites and nest building everywhere - the village is opening out and greening up before our eyes as Beau and I ramble 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 a twiggy hand, and everything bursts into bloom. When we went off to the park a few mornings ago, the first narcissus of the season were blooming in a sheltered, sunny alcove, and we both did a little dance. These were the Poet's daffodil (Narcissus poeticus), often identified as the narcissus of ancient times and one of my favorite spring bloomers.

How can this week's word be anything except bloom? The modern word comes to us through the Middle English blo or blome, and Old English blowan meaning to open up and flower lavishly, to glow with health and well-being, to be as dewy and flushed with sunlight as a garden tulip or an early blooming orchid in a wild and wooded place. It all begins with the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) roots bhel-, bhol-, bhlē- bhlō-. In that ancient tongue which is the reconstructed common ancestor of all modern European languages, they mean to grow, swell or unfold, to leaf out or come into flower, to flourish and thrive.

Perhaps a better word for this week would be sex, because that is what springtime's lush colors, alluring fragrances, velvet textures and warbling ballads are about - Mother Earth's madcap dance of exuberance, fertility and fruitfulness. Every species on the planet seems focused on perpetuating its own heady genetic brew, and the collective pleasure in being alive is almost tangible.

Forsaking appointed chores, we potter around in the garden, wander about in village thickets, stare into trees and contemplate the blue sky for long intervals. It's simply a matter of blooming wherever one happens to be planted. Beau is already a master of that splendid art, and his silly old mum is working on it.

Friday Ramble - The Music of What Happens

Around the corner, three song sparrows were trilling their hearts out from a rooftop. Their pleasure in the day and the season was echoed by a construction worker a few doors away belting out Doug Seeger's “Going Down to the River” as he installed drywall in the old house on the corner. The door of the place was wide open, and his rendering of the gospel classic was off key, but it was soulful and fine stuff indeed.

Listening to the sparrows and the guy doing the drywall, I found myself thinking of the mythic Irish hero, Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool). He thought the finest music in the world was not the belling of stags, the baying of hounds, birds singing in the overstory or the sound of happy laughter, but "the music of what happens". 

This morning, the crows left an offering in the birdbath, a tiny, dead field mouse with its entrails spilled out and floating forlornly around in limp spaghetti-ish circles, not really the way one likes to start the day. Downcast, I went back to the deck and held my nose resolutely over the mug of Italian dark roast waiting for me there. Later I donned rubber gloves, gave the wee mouse back to the earth, scrubbed out the birdbath and refilled it with clean water. The crows will probably return with new booty tomorrow, and we will commence clean up operations all over again.

Tulips in every shade of the rainbow are starting to bloom, but it is the reds that dazzle - the blooms are almost incandescent in the early sunlight, so bright they hurt one's eyes. Daffodils and scarlet fringed narcissus nod here and there, and violets sprinkle the garden. Magnolia trees in the village are flowering and their perfume lingers everywhere. Wonder of wonders, the first few bumble girls of the season have appeared, just in time to partake of the crabapples that are starting to flower. When Lady Spring finally shows up here, she hits the ground running.

What an amazing trip this season is, what wonders there are to feast one's eyes on; trees leafing out, wildflowers popping up everywhere, feeders in the garden full of songbirds. If I were to stop and take photos of every splendid thing we (Beau and I) see on our morning walks (and everything is splendid at this time of the year), we might not get home again for weeks.

Rain is in the cards for today, and that is quite all right. We need wet stuff, and by that I do NOT mean snow or hail. Collection barrels have already been dragged out of the garden shed and installed under downspouts. Wind chimes have been taken out of storage and hung in the crabapple tree. My new hummingbird feeder will arrive by the end of the day, and nectar has been brewed for it.

When I opened the sundeck doors before dawn this morning to let Beau out, the fragrance of dark, rain wet earth wafted in, and I felt like dancing.

Friday Ramble - Radical

This week's word is radical, a natural choice for this madcap season when greenery is popping up all over the place, and we are thinking about planting flowers and veggies in our gardens. It comes to us through the late Latin rādīcālis meaning having roots, and the Old English wrotan meaning to root, gnaw or dig up, both entities originating in the early Indo-European wrad meaning branch or root. 

Synonyms include: fundamental, basic, basal, bottom, cardinal, constitutional, deep-seated, essential, foundational, inherent, innate, intrinsic, native, natural, organic, original, primal, primary, primitive, profound, thoroughgoing, underlying, vital. They also include pejorative words such as anarchistic, chaotic, excessive, extremist, fanatical, far-out, freethinking, iconoclastic, immoderate, insubordinate, insurgent, insurrectionary, intransigent, lawless, left wing, militant, mutinous, nihilistic, rabid, rebellious, recalcitrant, recusant, refractory, restive, revolutionary, riotous, seditious, severe, sweeping, uncompromising and violent.

I have always admired the indomitable spirit of plant entities putting down roots in unexpected places, sunflowers sprouting from cracks in the asphalt on busy thoroughfares, wildflowers coming up between the concrete slabs in sidewalks, tiny trees planting themselves in granite rock faces and glacial dropstones.  

Those who live by different beliefs are often called "radical". Ditto those who live outside the mainstream, who don't follow accepted social standards and tend to do their own thing rather than just placidly following the herd like sheep. The word has been used in that context since the sixties, and being called "radical" might have been a compliment then, but these days it is often pejorative.

How odd that a word used to describe the unconventional, independent, mildly eccentric and rather peculiar actually means something as lovely, organic and simple as being rooted or connected. Do I consider myself radical? Anyone who sketches, scribbles, takes heaps of bad photos, rambles in the woods in all sorts of weather and talks to trees is a tad peculiar, so I suppose I am. Rooted.

This week's word is one of my favorites in the English language. It signifies (for me anyway) a bone deep kinship with everything that matters, with the good dark earth under my feet, the sky, the sun and the moon, the stars over my head - with timeless notions of rebirth, transformation, belonging and non-duality.

Roots down, branches up and away we go...