Seeing Red (For Mike and Christa)

Red is the color of new maple leaves on the old trees in the garden, the cardinals who visit my feeders, the koi in a nearby pond, the gently swaying birdhouses in a sunlight dappled yard not far from home.

Mike and Christa passed away a while ago, but their red bird houses remain, and I think of my old friends whenever I pass by. So many conversations when I was walking Beau or Spencer or Cassie. So many spirited exchanges about hawks visiting their yard, squirrels stealing their saffron crocus bulbs, the nut yield from their walnut tree. They grew some of the most towering, impressive sunflowers I have ever seen anywhere, and the webs spun by orb weaving spiders in their hedge were often several feet across. There was lots of stuff to talk about when we met, and I miss them.

One of these days, all that will remain of us (Beau and I) is the conversations we had on our morning rambles, all the happy natter about birds, bugs, varmints, weeds and village yard sales. There are worse ways to be remembered.

The White Empress in Bloom

Great White Trillium (Trillium grandiflorum)

She appears in the woods a little later than her more vibrantly coloured red cousins, but she is just as grand with her three lush white petals, golden heart and three supporting bracts. Her petals are velvety, a little wider than those of the red trillium and they curve delightfully, as if she is trying to compensate for her lack of scarlet pigmentation with a paler but more shapely grandeur.

No compensation needed. She is absolutely gorgeous in her own right, another of the northern wildflowers that Georgia O'Keefe would have loved to paint.

Froth and Fragrance

One day there are no leaves or flowers on village trees, and the next day the same trees have embraced the season, their voluptuous canopies alive with birds who dish out madrigals at sunrise and trip the light fantastic from branch to branch until the sun goes down. Their pleasure is obvious, and oh, the fragrance, the splendid pinks!

Crabapple trees, magnolias, flowering almonds and plums seem to leaf out and flower overnight, and wonder of wonders, they are alive with madly buzzing bumbles, honey bees and wasps. Dusted with pollen from stem to stern, the little dears are in constant motion, ecstatic to feel sunlight on their wings and forage for nectar on a balmy morning in May.

Here comes another fine summer of prowling about in gardens wild and domestic with camera and lens, drinking in light and gathering nectars of my own. Now and then, I will put down my stuff and dance with the joyous bumble girls. Ungainly creature that I am, I hope no one is watching, but the bee sisters won't mind.

Pot of Gold

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.

Early Potterings

And so they continue... routines of staying home and doing things like gardening, yard work and baking, of taking long rambles with Beau in early morning before our favorite haunts are tenanted by unleashed dogs and their thoughtless owners, by sleepy walkers, bemused gawkers and weekend warriors. 

Nights are still cool here, but early mornings are perfect for wandering, and we seldom encounter anyone else on our outings. In the overstory, grosbeaks serenade the rising sun. Below them, woodpeckers act as a rhythm section and put on a fine performance. Adding harmony to the work in progress, puddle ducks paddle up and down the creek under the trees, slurping up tasty morsels from the bottom and waggling their tail feathers. Geese fly back and forth between fields and the river. Now and then, a heron or a Great Northern Diver (loon) passes overhead. 

This morning, a cormorant flew over our heads on its way north.  As I watched it go, I remembered that the word cormorant is actually a shortened version of the Latin corvus marinus meaning "sea raven". For centuries, cormorants were considered members of the corvid family, and were commonly known as sea ravens. With its glossy dark plumage, aquamarine eyes, orange throat pouch and bright blue mouth, the bird is surely one of the Old Wild Mother's most exquisite creations.

The early flickering sunlight in the woods has a buttery, caressing quality. Greenery is coming up everywhere through the tattered remnants of last autumn's finery: delicate fern fronds down near the creek, the leaves of trilliums, hepatica, trout lilies, violets, squill, wild columbines and tiny hyacinths on higher ground. 

Whenever we pass through her grove, I greet the Beech Mother and pat her silvery bark. I would love to be able to hug her, but she is an old tree and my arms are not long enough to go around her magnificent circumference.

If this morning's post sounds a bit like a litany, I suppose that is exactly what it is. Winter has packed its bags and is departing. We are happy to see it go. 

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...

Wordless Wednesday - Little Green

The Dutchman's Breeches

Dutchman's Breeches

(Dicentra cucullaria)

One can barely see them at reduced photo size, but draped along the stem and flowers in the second image are the season's first strands of spider silk. Since the north woods are still cool and wet, perhaps the spiders wore coats and gloves to do their work and sheltered under leaf umbrellas. I applaud their determination to get out there and spin in such brisk weather conditions. In a week or so, Dicentra cucullaria will carpet the woods, but these early bloomers were blooming in a protected alcove against a rock face warmed by the sun.

The feathery gray-green foliage and nodding white flowers like upside-down pantaloons were endearing, and the filaments of spider silk held my attention for some time with their shimmer and floating windblown motion. Larger and more lavish clumps were in bloom several feet up on the rock face, and I briefly considered either climbing up or dangling from the top to capture them with the camera, but decided to avoid such assuredly risky pursuits and shoot from right where I was standing. No fancy footwork or rock climbing this year...

The woods are slow to leaf out and bloom this time around, but these images were perfect for a late April week, a few days before Beltane or May Day.  They need no description from this doddering photographer and occasional wordsmith, although I have done just that this morning and tried to describe them.

Sequestered, Week 291 (CCXCI)

Happy Easter!

Awakening, Little By Little

Thursday Poem - Swiftly

Swiftly the years, beyond recall,

Solemn the stillness of this fair morning.

I will clothe myself in spring clothing,

And visit the slopes of the Eastern Hill.

By the mountain stream a mist hovers,

Hovers a moment, then scatters.

There comes a wind blowing from the south

That brushes the fields of new corn.

T'ao Ch'ien (translation by Arthur Waley)

Reginald H. Blyth thought T'ao Ch'ien's creation was the finest poem ever written. We are still several weeks away from seeing new corn, but for me, the eight lines are the essence of April and springtime.

Wordless Wednesday - Little Green

And there in the woods...

Siberian squill (Scilla siberica)

  

One day, there are deep snow drifts everywhere. The next day, the snow has vanished, and little green shoots and delicate wildflowers are poking their heads out of the sun warmed earth on the edge of the woods.

Flowers are springing up everywhere, reaching for the light over their fragile heads. Grasses thrust themselves out of puddles in the park, and a few ducks paddle up and down the little stream among the trees. Everywhere, there is birdsong, every feathered singer in the overstory declaring its delight in the season.

On morning walks, we (Beau and I) look for sprouting bloodroot, trout lilies and daffodils in the woods, and we rejoice whenever we see a tiny green leaf lifting its head from the moist, crumbly soil and desiccated leaves.

It will be a week or two before there is full blown flowering in our favourite haunts, but a few purple squill are already blooming in last autumn's tattered residue on the forest floor, and we were happy to discover them on a recent ramble.

There were times when we thought this winter would never end. There are days now and then when we still think so, but for the most part, we can hardly believe our good fortune. Every dancing sunbeam and tremulous wee fleur is a gift.

Into the Light

White Crocus (Ice Queen)

Wordless Wednesday - Adorned

Budding

Coming Up Purple

Friday Ramble - Patience

As I started off on the Friday ramble this week, the word that came to mind was patience, although I have already written a ramble on that word.

This week's offering has its roots in the Middle English pacient, the Middle French patient and the Latin word pati, all meaning to undergo something, to suffer through, get through, or put up with something and do it with grace and dignity - no whining, screaming or going completely off one's nut. It's a fine old word for someone who aspires to authenticity or enlightenment, but it's not a word for wimps and sissies, True patience is anything but limp, indecisive or docile. Sometimes, it requires bags of forbearance and not a little cussing.

By now, winter snows should have disappeared from the eastern Ontario highlands, and its forests should be carpeted with wildflowers, but recent recent storms brought ice, snow and bitterly cold winds. There will be no wildflowers in the woods for a week or two, and there are times when I think springtime will never come.

What is one to do??? I pick up my camera or paint brush, brew a pot of tea, pummel bread, stir up a fiery curry, go walkabout with Beau, curl up in my favorite chair with a good book. I just breathe, in and out, in and out, in and out.

For some reason, the elegant keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti (Mikhail Pletnev) and the Bach preludes (Glenn Gould) tuck everything back into place, and so does Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik or Die Zauberflöte. Grieg's Holberg Suite works wonders too, and in recent weeks I have also been listening to Sibelius.

Whatever the weather, we head out and look at the sun rising or setting somewhere, watch frozen cattails rattling their bones along the shore of our favorite lake. We listen to the wind in the bare trees, lean against the old rail fence and watch last autumn's desiccated leaves whirl through the air like confetti. We cling to the fragile hope that springtime will show up any day now and stay.

I am learning that patience is a wild and fierce emotion, and being patient with one's own self is the hardest thing of all. As Spirit Rock's Jack Kornfield says, “If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.” Equally true for patience. I may get there one of these lifetimes, but I have a very long way to go.

This morning's image is a bloodroot bloom from another year's wanderings. In early spring, the wildflowers emerge from the earth and dead leaves of my favorite place in the whole wide world, and they glow like little suns in their shaded woodland alcoves, all snowy white petals and golden hearts. Colonies of sanguinaria canadensis always leave me breathless when I encounter them, and in a week or two, I will see them again. I am counting the days until I do, perhaps not as patiently as I should.