Wordless Wednesday - Village Magnolias Blooming

Spring's Golden Lily

Trout lily or Dogtooth violet

(Erythronium americanum)

A single bright golden flower tops a slender solitary stem above two mottled green and purple leaves. The lilies open only on bright sunny days, bending toward the ground with gently nodding heads - it always seems to me that they are listening to the awakening earth. The three petals and three sepals with their burgundy streaked outward surfaces curl gracefully backward like tricorns or Turkish hats, disclosing six stamens with rusty red, sometimes brownish anthers. 

We call it "trout lily" because its artfully dappled leaves resemble the coloration of a brook trout, sometimes “adder’s tongue” because the shape of its sharply pointed leaves resemble a snake's forked tongue as they poke through the detritus of last autumn. The lily is sometimes called "fawn lily" because it blooms just as spring fawns are being born, and “dogtooth violet” for the toothy appearance of the underground corm, although the plant is not a violet by any means.

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

The woods are filled with golden trout lilies at the moment, and I am sad to say that the other tenants in their leafy alcoves are dense biting clouds of black flies. We go out and visit them anyway - it is something we would not miss for all the world, bugs or no bugs. Out comes the lemongrass lotion, and off we go.

Sunday was Mother's Day, and the Old Wild Mother (Earth) is the mother of us all. Here's to you, Mama. Deep bows and heartfelt thanks from an elderly (and somewhat creaky) daughter who loves you more than words can say. 

Sequestered, 353 (CCCLIII)

Wordless Wednesday - Coming up Purple

Happy Beltane (May Day)

Beltane (May Day) Thoughts

This is the eve of Beltane (or May Day) in the northern hemisphere. The word is Scots Gaelic in origin and marks the beginning of summer. Below the equator, this is the eve of Samhain (also Scots Gaelic) meaning "summer's end". As we northerners drift toward warmth and light, our southern kin are drifting toward the dark half of the year.

Nights are are still cool, and it will be another week or two until full colonies of bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) are up and blooming, but early specimens lift their gold and white heads in protected nooks here and there in the woods. In other years, there were wild yellow orchids blooming, but it will be a while before they put in an appearance, soon to be followed by trout lilies and columbines.

Bloodroot flowers are breathtaking, and the shy white blooms with their golden centers are dear to my heart. They are something of a seasonal marker for me. Encountering this one glowing in its flickering, stone-warmed alcove, I felt like getting down on my knees and kissing the good dark earth where the flower made its home—it was that perfect. Ignoring my painful and protesting knees, down I went in the dead leaves and stayed there for quite a while, nose to nose with the dear little wonder and happy as a clam. Getting to my feet again was quite an undertaking.

The interval was one of the wild epiphanies I love so much, especially in springtime when the north woods are just coming to life. Call it a moment of kensho, one of those fleeting intervals of grace, quiet knowing and connection that I like to call "aha" moments. Forget the fancy stuff - this is the ground of my being. As long as I can spend time with trees and rocks and wildflowers, I can handle the big life "stuff", most of the time anyway. Add lakes, loons, cormorants, herons, sunsets and full moons to the equation, please. Also Canada geese, swans and cranes.

Happy Beltane (or May Day), everyone. May there be light and blooming and fragrance in your own precious life, in your particular 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.

Sequestered, 351 (CCCLI)

Thursday Poem - Bio

I am a leaf-dance in the woods.
I am the green gaze of the ocean.
I am a cloud-splitter in the sky.
I arrived robed in red
out of nowhere and nothing.
I whisper between pages.
I disappear in the painting.
I rest between musical notes.
I awaken among strangers
in a country I never imagined.
I am timbales and bells,
a parade under your window.
I am the riddle I cannot solve,
hands on the clock's face,
seven crows on a branch.
I am the one whose footfall
changes the pattern of stars.

Dolores Stewart, from The Nature of Things

(reprinted here with the late poet's kind permission)

Sequestered, 349 (CCCXLIX)

Wordless Wednesday - Emergence

Wordless Wednesday - Early Morning Rain

Spring Makes An Appearance

Skies are cloudy, and a gentle rain is falling outside the windows. Beau and I are doing tea and listening to raindrops hitting the roof of the garden shed in a fine staccato rhythm, to the last clumps of snow falling off the peaked rooflines of nearby houses. The watery motifs of two seasons are rolled into one this soggy morning.

Mr. B. does not care much for wet weather, and he is curled up in a corner of the sofa, grumbling. He does, however, appreciate a fine puddle, and there are lagoons in the village deep enough and wide enough for him to swim around in circles. That will cheer him up immensely when we go out for a walk later.

A murmuration of starlings is hanging out in the cedar hedge, and the wily birds are pretending they are something else entirely, cardinals, robins, house finches, song sparrows. What is wrong with just being a starling? A few robins are back, and they have been visiting the garden this week. At sunrise, one was perched high in the ash in the corner, singing his (or her) pleasure in the day and calling for more rain.

Perhaps it is time for a new wreath on the front door, something with sprigs of pussy willow, tulips or eggs (fake of course) in pastel colours. Rain or no, a graceful nod to the season and a small ritual gesture of some sort are called for. 

Perhaps I can finally lug the heavy tub of ice melter in from the veranda? On second thought, I think I will wait for a week or two. 

Friday Ramble - Homecoming

First come jubilant skeins of of geese flying in from the south and singing their return, then ducks splashing about in the melted alcoves of local rivers and streams. There is a whole lot of happy quacking in roadside ditches and puddles.

A single heron perches on the frozen shore of Dalhousie Lake and wonders why on earth she has come home so early in the season. Trumpeter swans and loons will not return for weeks, until there is more open water.

On the Two Hundred Acre Wood, there are larks and killdeer, beaky snipe and woodcock, a handful of plucky robins, the graceful "v" shapes (dihedrals) of turkey vultures soaring majestically over the trees and rocks and rocking effortlessly back and forth in their flight. From below, the light catches their silvery flight feathers and dark wing linings, and the great birds are as magnificent as any eagle.

A solitary goshawk perches in a bare tree on the hill, and a male harrier describes perfect, languid circles over the western field. Both birds are hungry after their long journey north, and they train their fierce yellow eyes on the artfully frosted field below, always on the lookout for a good meal.

This morning, a male cardinal is singing his heart out in the ash tree in the garden, and an unidentified warbler lifts its voice somewhere in the darkness.

Even the weather foretold for this day will be a friend.

Friday Ramble for Ostara

Today 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 natural order of things in the astonishingly beautiful cosmos where we live out our days, spinning like tops in the Great Round of space and time.

Today,  day and night are perfectly balanced in length. After a long hard winter that persists in hanging about and making our lives an endless snow removal exercise, that is something to crow about. No matter what the weather is like today (and it is nothing to write home about), brighter, warmer times are on their way.

If I lived further south, this might be a time 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. 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, the heady fragrance of rich dark earth and wild springtime herbs.

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

Early this morning, 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, it seemed to us that March's full moon (now only a thin waxing crescent a day or two past new) always bears more than a passing resemblance to a great cosmic egg. Its egginess is a perfect expression of this turning of the wheel with its verdant motifs of warmth, light and new life coming into being.

There is, most assuredly, blooming in our thoughts, but the weather is too cold for outdoor celebrations, and it will be very dark tonight since the moon is a thin waxing crescent. We will spend a few minutes outside looking at the stars, and perhaps we will light a celebratory candle on the deck, but our observance will be indoors for the most part. All are welcome at the table, and there are enough chairs and mugs to go around. See you there.

Friday Ramble - Getting Through March, Sheepishly

March came in like a lioness, and then the lioness stepped away for a few days. Within her brief absence, plucky birds paired off amorously, and local starlings sang merrily, pretending they were robins. For a while it looked as if there would be an early maple syrup run. For a handful of days, I dared to entertain thoughts of springtime - gardening magazines, nursery catalogs and seed packets bloomed on every surface in the little blue house in the village.

Silly me, I should know better than to succumb to such fancies. There are halcyon days now and then in March, but they are scant, and they are difficult to predict. Storms, frigid days and icy nights persist, the north wind flinging heaps of snow against the door of the garden shed, tumps of earth and faded grasses vanishing after emerging briefly out of the white stuff. There is still a lot of snow about, and our geese, loons and herons are going to be late coming home this year. It will be weeks until they can find food in frozen farm fields.

What is one to do at such times? I drink Logdriver espresso and Yorkshire tea, make soup and cookies, pummel bread dough. In the wee hours of the night, I plot new beds of heirloom veggies and herbs to be dug (hopefully) next month, research heirloom roses, ponder starting another quilt. I cultivate forbearance and try to be cheerful when temperatures drop and ice turns the threshold back into a skating rink. I hope ardently that March will get her act together and morph into a lamb, darn it.

At the end of winter, one becomes a tad maudlin. A friend in the Lanark Highlands told me this week that spring lambs are about to be born in her magnificent old log barn, and I could have cried. Poor wee curly beasties, coming into the world in such bleak and harrowing circumstances.

Enough is enough already. Rain is just fine, and it is easier to shove than snow. One thing about the weather though. When night skies are clear, they are fabulous: flaming sunsets and moons one can almost reach up and touch, planets dancing in the sky at dusk, dippers of starlight strewn by handfuls from vast, streaming cosmic cauldrons up there somewhere in the darkness. What a show, what a trip!

Fey Dreams and Eldritch Musics

Dancing in this elderly sconce are nighttime dreams of sunlight, warmth, birdsong and green things emerging from the earth. When I am awake, an eldritch music hovers on the edge of my hearing, a fey tune scarcely more than an echo in the wind.

Reed pipes perhaps or a harp? Rose-breasted grosbeaks? The horns of elfland? Bare naked satyrs prancing about in the woods with flutes? The whole thing may be just wishful thinking on my part. I am always restless in March and raring to go, impatient to be putting on my wellies and picking up my gardening tools.

When Beau and I are out on our walks, we listen for geese coming home. We have not heard them so far, but there will be rejoicing when we do. Wherever we are and whatever we are doing at the time, we will kick up our heels and dance. 

Wild magics are afoot in this season of emergence and rebirth and greening. There is magic in the sky over our heads, in the awakening trees in the sunny woods. There is magic in my garden, and I am here to take it all in again this year. Hallelujah.

What Falls Away

Sequestered, Week 294 (CCXCIV)

Magnolia in Bloom

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.