Bumble Girls in the Basil

The Jeweled Thicket

Spotted Jewelweed or Touch-Me-Not

(Impatiens capensis)

There is a whole thicket of these colourful critters blooming in the moist earth along the creek in the woods, and we were happy to find them this past weekend.

Jewelweed is a wild herbal with known medicinal benefits, and it has been used by indigenous groups for centuries. They used infusions made with the leaves to treat measles and fevers, poultices of bruised stems for the pain and itching of skin ailments like poison ivy, poison oak and poison sumac. The plant contains compounds which neutralize uroshiol, the chemical causing contact dermatitis, and it is a fine addition to one's medicine chest.

The plant is also an important nectar source for hummingbirds, and they are usually about when it is in bloom. When hummers reach into the bell-shaped blooms with their long beaks and brush up against nearby seed pods, the pods explode, propelling seeds some distance into the air, hence the common name, Touch-Me-Not.

For years, I cultivated jewelweed in my garden, and thanks to its exploding seed pods, it came up everywhere. Keeping it in check was quite an undertaking, and I eventually removed it from the garden altogether. I have just harvested seeds from the thicket in the woods and am about to give the species another try.

Jewelweed is cheerful stuff, and I like the freckled faces on the flowers when the plants are in bloom. In addition to being a "tried and true" wild medicinal, it provides nourishment for hummers, bees and other insects, and that makes it a clear winner in my book. Here we go again!

Wordless Wednesday - First Toms

On the Road Again

A family around the corner keep this gem in storage much of the year, but they are about to set out on their annual summer road trip, and their vintage VW is parked in the driveway, slowly being stuffed to the gunnels with things like camp stoves, picnic coolers, coffee mugs, sleeping bags and air mattresses. Also, a comfortable bed for their elderly dachshund who travels with them. No boarding kennel for Willy (Wilhelmina). Where her family goes, she goes.

Watching the process unfold takes me back to the long ago days when friends and I used to load up a VW bus and take to the road for a week or two before starting classes in September. Our chariot (Freija) was burgundy and cream rather than the fetching shade of orange here, but she was a grand girl, and we adored her. The image on her wheel cover was a peace symbol and seeing a Volkswagen Westfalia camper adorned with that old hippie symbol still makes me smile.

One summer we opted for an elderly Vauxhall instead of the VW, and its reverse conked out somewhere in the wilds of northern Ontario. We had to nudge it out of its parking spot every morning, one of us in the driver's seat and the others in front of the bus pushing it frantically. The exercise was fun, but the next summer we went back to using the VW. Freija was a trooper, and she never let us down, ever.

Sequestered, 366 (CCCLXVI)

Male American Goldfinch

(Spinus tristis)

A Gift From the Squirrels

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

Wordless Wednesday - Little Green

Sequestered, 365 (CCCLXV)

Rosy Under the Sun

For most of the year, I adore the old crabapple tree in the garden, its whiskery branches in winter, the new leaves and blossoms in springtime, its tiny, hard green fruit in July. Not so much in August though.

Ripe crabapples are lovely pickled, juiced or jellied, but picking the little dears out of the veggie patch and raking them out of the grass before mowing is something else entirely. The fallen fruit  turns the garden into an obstacle course of sorts, and it hurts to walk on them. The intoxicated bees and wasps do not agree.

Little Singers in the Trees

An annual cicada's song is the quintessential music of August, a sonorous vocal offering from exquisite 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 and ecstatic element in the slow irrevocable turning of one northern season into another.

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

I often find abandoned cicada shells on poplar trees in the woods, but always feel fortunate when I encounter a newborn in all its pastel green splendor, sometimes still clinging to its discarded self. Imagos (adults) darken as their new exoskeletons harden and wings expand, but there is a fair bit of variation in coloration. Some will retain greenish wings all the days of their lives.

For the last week or so, Beau and I have been rescuing cicadas from sidewalks, driveways and roadways and moving them to places where they will not be trampled by pedestrians or moving cars. On early morning walks, we usually encounter at least two or three before we return home. 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 and singing wherever we happen to be, then dissolving effortlessly back into the fabric of the world when the time comes.

Sequestered, 364 (CCCLXIV)

Heal-all (woundwort, heart-of-the-earth)

(Prunella vulgaris)

This wild purply herb grows almost everywhere here. It goes by many names, and it has many uses in traditional herbal medicine. I like to think of it as "heart-of-the earth" rather than one of its other common names.

Happy Lammas

Friday Ramble - Lammas (Lugnasadh)

Here we are on the last day of July, and the eve of Lammas,sometimes called Lughnsadh, Lúnasa, Calan Awst, "First Harvest" or "Loaf Mass". The festival celebrates summer, farming and harvesting, particularly the gathering, milling and putting by of grains and cereals.

Humans have gathered and consumed grains and cereals since Neolithic times, and the beginning of domestic grain cultivation is an important moment in our evolution. It marks the transition from an ancient, nomadic lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of farming and settlement. Sickles, sheaves, stooks, mill wheels and grinding stones are common motifs in almost every culture on island earth.

Gods and goddesses? Oh yes, our festival has a throng of harvest gods: Lugh, Tammuz, Osiris, Adonis and Attis to name a few. Then there is Dionysus or Bacchus -  the grapey god is in a class all by himself, deity of vineyards and harvesting, wine making, drunken revelry and ritual madness.  He stands at the gate between summer and autumn, and his magical tavern with its ever turning mill wheel and rapture inducing brews is the stuff of legend. According to folk tales, its doorway can be entered from any street in the great wide world if one is in the right frame of mind and receptive to the alluring tug of the wild, the intoxicating and ecstatic.

In the ninth century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, August 1st was called "the feast of first fruits", and the occasion also marked the end of the hay gathering that had begun at Midsummer (June 21st). Loaves of bread were baked with freshly milled grain and placed on church altars. After they were blessed, the loaves were used in simple charms and rustic enchantments. 

At Lammas, tenant farmers paid an allotment of grain to their landlords as rent, and a tithe (one tenth of a farm's yield) was given to the local church. Farmers delivered their portion to parish tithe barns, and a number of the elegant timber, brick and stone structures survive today. The oldest standing tithe barn in existence is one in Essex erected by the Knights Templar in the early thirteenth century. Analysis of its timbers has yielded a date for them of circa 220. 

Tim Powers' novel The Drawing of the Dark always comes to mind around this time of year. The book is full of harvest and brewing metaphors, and it has a cast of fabulous characters including King Arthur (reborn as an Irish mercenary named Brian Duffy), the wizard Merlin and the Fisher King. Dionysus and his magical tavern put in an appearance. So do the woodland god Pan, Gambrinus (mythical brew master), Finn MacCool, the Morrigan, Guinevere, Morgan le Fay, Odin, Thor and Hercules. There's a shipload of Vikings sworn to defend the ancient brewery at the heart of the story and stave off Ragnarok, and there are other mythical creatures too numerous to mention. I usually reread the novel again around Lammas, and I am about to do so. 

The first day of August marked the beginning of the harvest for the ancients, but it also marked summer's end in some cultures, and so it is for moderns. Days are still blisteringly hot for the most part, but mornings and evenings are often cooler. Some mornings, Beau and I find fallen leaves in the birdbath when we go out, and the air is filled with the splendid whiff of herbs going to seed in the garden. There are still many warm and sunny weeks before us, and it is difficult to believe that summer is waning, but it is doing just that. Our days are growing shorter, and autumn is not far off. 

We've come a long way from our early "hunting and gathering" days, but traces of old seasonal rites remain here and there. When I arrived in Lanark county years ago, I was delighted to learn that Lammas festivities are alive and well in the eastern Ontario highlands. They are called céilidhs or "field parties", and the attendees are unaware of their origins for the most part, but all the festival trappings are there: bonfires, corn, grilled munchies and fresh baked bread, wine and beer, music, storytelling, dancing, parades by lantern light and merrymaking in abundance. Once in a while, there is even a ritual or formal harvest observance. Blessed be.

Wordless Wednesday - Going Gold

 

The Music of a Summer Night

I lean against the railing on the deck with an iced coffee in hand and watch fireflies frolicking through the shrubbery in the garden.

Midsummer has come and gone, and Lammas is only a few days away, but I think of a watercolour (1908) by Robert Edward Hughes called Midsummer Eve. Hughes was acquainted with members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and their influence on his work shows. In his painting, a young woman stands in a forest clearing, surrounded by a circle of fairies holding softly glowing lanterns. It is night, and the forest behind her is alight with fireflies. There is magic in the air.

In our darkening garden, there are the last cicada raspings of the day and a few crickets are doing their thing - I say "our garden" because it is Beau's garden too, and he loves it. Classical guitar wafts from the speakers on my neighbor's veranda, and a hound around the corner is singing soulfully to the waxing moon. Bats describe perfect circles over our heads, and a light wind blows through the old trees. There is an occasional crackle from the lantern burning on the deck. By rights, a Pan flute or harp should be playing. Perhaps something by the Breton harper, Alain Stivell?

On nights like this, I feel ancient and young at the same time, and I know right down to my blood and bones that there is wild, elemental magic at work in the great wide world. I can almost reach out and touch it, and it gladdens this wild old heart.

Sequestered, 363 (CCCLXIII)

Nectar and Light

 Eastern Tiger Swallowtail and Bergamot (Bee Balm)

Wordless Wednesday - After the Rain

How the Trees Love Summer Light

Morning light and trees, smoke from the wildfires burning out west and up north.

Breathing is difficult in such conditions, and visibility in any direction is limited. We are all going about with dry coughs, headaches, watery eyes and sniffles. When we are outside, there is the taste of embers and charred wood in the back of our throats, and sometimes, there is also the acrid taste of burning rubber.

Several northern communities have been rendered homeless by fires this summer. Vast numbers of wildlife have died, and three million hectares of magnificent forest have already been wiped out. There are heavy rains in the forecast for the next few days, and we cling to the hope they will quench the fires and end the destruction. 

There were ash particles on the deck and floating in the birdbaths when we went out to the garden a few minutes ago. One of the day's appointed activities will be checking the receptacles regularly and replacing the tainted water in them with fresh stuff for the bird people to drink and splash about in. 

For all that, the great trees in the park seem to be reaching for the light.