Beyond the Fields We Know

Grandmother Spider

2009-07-14T06:39:00.005-04:00

Nursery Web Spider
(Pisaurina mira)

Mother Spider is more like it. I was actually looking for Monarch caterpillars this past weekend when I discovered several nursery web spiders guarding eggs on milkweed specimens in the western field. For the most part they were hanging straight down with their legs dangling, so I tickled their toes with a leaf - they curled up and posed for the camera, most obligingly.

While I was pottering about, the first of the season's Monarchs flew over my head, but it was the only one I encountered on the weekend. Seasonal rhythms have slowed down considerably this year because of our long wet springtime and the cooler (and wetter) summer weather. I am a little worried about the beautiful Lanark cicadas - they should be emerging just about now and beginning their courtship songs, but there is no sign of them so far.

All right already - the scribe likes all sorts of wild things, spiders and snakes and cicadas and coyotes and little red foxes and big black bears. Yes, she does... They are part of the Old Wild Mother's weaving, and they make interesting neighbors.

Scarlet

2009-07-13T09:39:00.005-04:00

The indecently sumptuous red bloom belongs to a Chrysler Imperial rose in a pot, a gift from my daughter and son-in-law over the weekend, and it was a lovely surprise. We are preparing a space for it in the garden behind the little blue house in the village and will plant it this afternoon.

The Chrysler is a voluptuous creature, all vivid velvety scarlet petals and perfect old rose shape, a truly remarkable fragrance. It is an exuberant repeat bloomer, and I am looking forward to sharing the garden with it all this summer and (hopefully) in the autumn too. A hybrid tea rose, it will require a fair bit of protection to overwinter successfully this far north, but it can be done, and given the beauty and fragrance of the rose, I am willing to do anything and everything that is needed.

Obviously, Spencer feels the same way about the new rose as I do - he headed straight for it this morning when I let him out into the garden, sniffing it thoughtfully and indulging in much expressive tail wagging. His expression was one of pure bliss and rather like mine when I saw my gift for the first time this weekend.

Youngster

2009-07-12T07:01:00.000-04:00

Dragonfly Resting

2009-07-11T07:19:00.004-04:00

Widow Skimmer (Female)
(Libellula luctuosa)

Perhaps it is the heat or the punishing humidity, but lately I am less than satisfied with the pictures I am taking, and I am always admonishing myself not to correct, retouch, enhance and embellish the day's recorded activities. If the Old Wild Mother dishes out heat, humidity and wind on a sunny summer day (or an overcast one), who am I to tinker with her arrangements, and She does perfect dragonflies...

Friday Ramble - Splendor/Splendour

2009-07-10T11:49:00.007-04:00

Splendor...... The word is an old one dating from the early fifteenth century at least. It has its roots in the Latin splendēre, in the late Middle English and archaic French splendure, all meaning to shine, and NOT in a quiet or understated way. To be robed in splendor is to shimmer and sparkle and glisten and spangle, to be lit from within as if from a sacred source. That which is truly splendid captures our attention and holds us bewitched and enthralled within its light.

Splendor is the first roses of the summer blooming in the garden behind the little blue house in the village - their color, their fragrance, their velvety dew-dappled texture a few minutes after sunrise, the rich cream at their verges moving through shades of rosy pink and apricot, inward to a perfect cupped golden heart.

Later, as the roses pause for breath in their exuberant blooming, splendor is the crinkly pink of dancing poppies, the perfumed scarlet perfection of whole colonies of bergamot nodding along the old wooden fence.

In July, my garden doesn't just shine or cultivate splendor - it dazzles the eyes.

Thursday Poem - Morning Prayers

2009-07-09T06:35:00.006-04:00

I have missed the guardian spirit

of the Sangre de Cristos
those mountains
against which I destroyed myself
every morning I was sick
with loving and fighting
in those small years.
In that season I looked up
to a blue conception of faith
a notion of the sacred in
the elegant border of cedar trees
becoming mountain and sky.

This is how we were born into the world:
Sky fell in love with earth, wore turquoise,
cantered in on a black horse.
Earth dressed herself fragrantly,
with regard for the aesthetics of holy romance.
Their love decorated the mountains with sunrise,
weaved valleys delicate with the edging of sunset.

This morning I look toward the east
and I am lonely for those mountains
though I've said good-bye to the girl
with her urgent prayers for redemption.
I used to believe in a vision
that would save the people
carry us all to the top of the mountain
during the flood
of human destruction.

I know nothing anymore
as I place my feet into the next world
except this:
the nothingness
is vast and stunning,
brims with details
of steaming, dark coffee
ashes of campfires
the bells on yaks or sheep
sirens careening through a deluge
of humans
or the dead carried through fire,
through the mist of baking sweet
bread and breathing.

This is how we will leave this world:
on horses of sunrise and sunset
from the shadow of the mountains
who witnessed every battle
every small struggle.

Joy Harjo,
from How We Became Human

The Mead Moon of July

2009-07-08T07:03:00.014-04:00

Sometimes the moon gifts you with her presence on fine summer nights, and then there are other evenings when you know she is shining up there somewhere beyond the dark clouds and rain, but she does not appear for the longing human eye. Last evening was one of those other times - it is turning out to be a remarkably wet and moderate summer here, and Lady Moon in all her radiant fullness could not be seen for even a moment, although we (Spencer and I) went hopefully out to the garden whenever the rain stopped.

Thankfully, we have the memories of other moons to engage our thoughts, and sometimes, our revisitations of other moons are so complete that we can see moonlight shining across the water, hear long ago waves lapping the shore, touching the silent reeds like a benediction, wrapping themselves around the long legs of herons wading in the shallows.

Last year at this time, my beautiful Cassie was here with me by my side, and we sang a haunting moon song with the timber wolves over the hill. There will never be another summer moon when I don't think of Aloha and Taylor, two beloved friends who passed away last July, and Cassie who followed them across the bridge into the next world a few weeks later.

We also know this moon as the: Black Cherries Moon, Blackberry Moon, Blessing Moon, Blood Moon, Blueberry Moon, Buck Moon, Claim Song Moon, Corn in Tassel Moon, Corn Moon, Corn Popping Moon, Crane Moon, Daisy Moon, Fallow Moon, Feather Molting Moon, Flying Moon, Grass Cutter Moon, Ground Burn Moon, Hay Moon, Holly Moon, Horse Moon, Humpback Salmon Return to Earth Moon, Hungry Ghost Moon, Index Finger Moon, Larkspur Moon, Lightning Moon, Little Harvest Moon, Little Heat Moon, Little Moon of Deer Horns Dropping off, Little Ripening Moon, Lotus Flower Moon, Manzanita Ripens Moon, Meadow Moon, Midsummer Moon, Middle of Summer Moon, Moon of Blood, Moon of Claiming, Moon of Claiming, Moon of Fledgling Hawk, Moon of Much Ripening, Moon of Ripeness, Moon of the Home Dance, Moon of the Horse, Moon of the Middle Summer, Moon of the Young Corn, Moon When Cherries Are Ripe, Moon When Ducks Begin to Moult, Moon When Limbs of Are Trees Broken by Fruit, Moon When People Move Camp Together, Moon When Squash Are Ripe and Indian Beans Begin to Be Edible, Moon When the Buffalo Bellows, Moon When the Chokecherries Begin to Ripen, Moon When the Wild Cherries Are Ripe, Mountain Clover Moon, Peaches Moon, Raspberry Moon, Red Berries Moon, Red Blooming Lilies Moon, Red Cherries Moon,, Return from Harvest Moon, Ripe Corn Moon, Ripe Moon, Ripening Moon, Rose Moon, Salmon Go up the Rivers in a Group Moon, Seventh Moon, Smokey Moon, Strawberry Moon,, Strong Sun Moon, Sun House Moon, Thunder Moon, Warming Sun Moon, Water Lily Moon, Wattle Moon, Wort Moon

Little Green Apples, Nuts and Baseball

2009-07-07T12:54:00.006-04:00

Yesterday's potter along the wet hedgerows confirmed what I had begun to suspect - that the north is showing the first signs of waning sunlight and shorter days.

Apple, crab and plum trees are covered with the first small hard green fruits, and the same goes for nut trees like butternut, beech, hickory and walnut. Local squirrels are already collecting nuts for their winter larders, and there is hardly a butternut, beech, hickory or walnut to be seen anywhere, although the nuts are still far from their proper mature size - the top of each and every nut tree is filled with squirrels frantically gathering and storing the nutty bounty of the season for the winter to come.

Rain, rain, rain... We are enjoying one of the wettest summers on record, and it is perplexing to think that we already on our way toward autumn and the harvest, when it really does seem as though summer has not arrived here yet.

What does one do on rainy evenings when it is raining, and she must remain indoors rather than wandering around field and fen with Spencer, notebook and her camera? She pulls the draperies closed, lights a beeswax candle and makes a pot of tea, then pulls out a good book and evokes the golden summers of other places and other times. This week, I am reading (again) Michael Chabon's magnificent Summerland. He stirs up a heady magical brew in which baseball, fairies, Old Man Coyote and mythology go together perfectly. Tofu hot dog anyone?

Fairy Rose

2009-07-05T19:02:00.002-04:00

Northern Crescent

2009-07-05T05:47:00.000-04:00

Butterfly, Northern Crescent
(Phyciodes cocyta)

After the Rain

2009-07-04T07:34:00.004-04:00

Hedge Bindweed or Wild Morning Glory
(Convolvulus sepium )

Bindweed is nasty stuff according to the vast majority of gardening tomes and gardeners - an ebullient, tenacious and invasive weed which should be uprooted from one's patch of greenery as soon as it appears. The flowers and vines are lovely to see though, intertwining their way through the hedges in the park and beaded with rain at sunrise.

As Spencer and I walked along this morning, we noticed that some of the Virginia creepers are acquiring a rosy hue. Our days are growing shorter now, and although there are still several weeks of good summer weather to come, autumn is on its way.

Friday Ramble - River

2009-07-03T14:29:00.009-04:00

To trace the history of a river, or a raindrop, as John Muir would have done, is also to trace the history of the soul, the history of the mind descending and arising in the body. In both we constantly seek and stumble on divinity, which, like the cornice feeding the lake and the spring becoming a waterfall, feeds, spills, falls, and feeds itself over and over again.

Gretel Ehrlich, Sisters of the Earth

The journey of water is round, and its loss, too, moves in a circle, following us around the world as we lose something of such immense value that we do not yet even know its name.
Linda Hogan, Northern Lights, Autumn 1990

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.
Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It

The ancient Irish bards knew the Salmon of Knowledge as the giver of all life's wisdom. In the salmon's leap of understanding like a leap of faith, we can see ourselves "in our element," immersed in the river of life. The cycle of the salmon's journey reminds us that all rivers flow to the same sea.
Lynn Noel, Voyages: Canada's Heritage Rivers

I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.
John O'Donohue

-----------------

The words river and riparian share a common root emerging through the Middle English and Old French rivere, riviere, thence from the Latin ripa, rīpārius meaning "bank, or of the bank". Riparian is a lovely watery adjective and simply refers to someone or something located or dwelling on the bank of a river.

How does one write about rivers anyway? Like Norman Maclean, I am haunted by waters, so much so that it is difficult to write anything at all without getting all choked up and being carried away entirely. After writing the words, trying to tuck in a photo is an even greater problem. I pull out CD after CD of past travels, and I am somewhere on the bank of a great river again. In the stream of memories that bubble up from somewhere deep underground, choosing an image is almost impossible, and I sit here like an idiot gazing open-mouthed at the screen as the images roll by. Whatever I say here is going to be woefully inadequate, and I know it. Ditto the image or images...

I was born (or let loose) near the banks of the St. Lawrence, and it often seems to me that the songs of rivers great and small are the true music of my life: the roaring rivers of mountainous Algoma country on Lake Superior's wild north shore where I passed the happiest hours of my youth — the distant rivers of the far Canadian north wandering through the boreal forest — the deeply incised inky-blue rivers of the Lanark Highlands where I have spent so many years paddling, rambling and just sitting lost in riparian thoughts.

There are rivers running right through our lives, and if we are fortunate, we will come to know many during our earthly days: to understand their ancient language and cadence, sense their ebb and flow, plumb the mysteries of their currents and eddies, learn their rumbling chants and fluid harmonies — when we are so blessed, the canticles of the great rivers become the music of our journey. Listen, can you hear them?

Thursday Poem - Looking for Gold

2009-07-02T13:24:00.004-04:00

A flavor like wild honey begins
when you cross the river. On a sandbar
sunlight stretches out its limbs, or is it
a sycamore, so brazen, so clean and so bold?
You forget about gold. You stare—and a flavor
is rising all the time from the trees.
Back from the river, over by a thick
forest, you feel the tide of wild honey
flooding your plans, flooding the hours
till they waver forward looking back. They can’t
return; that river divides more than
two sides of your life. The only way
is farther, breathing that country, becoming
wise in its flavor, a native of the sun

William Stafford, Looking for Gold
from The Way it Is: New and Selected Poems
(Grey Wolf Press 1998)

Wordless Wednesday - Ripening

2009-07-01T06:09:00.001-04:00

A Rose By Any Name...

2009-06-30T08:38:00.006-04:00

I call this rose "Sweet Mystery", and the title suits it wonderfully. Beyond knowing that it is an antique and a true old garden rose, I have no idea what my splendid "once blooming" beauty is called - I suspect it may be a Great Maiden's Blush.

Whatever my mystery rose is, it has all the characteristics and habits of a vigorous old Alba (most ancient of roses except for the glorious Gallicas). The word Alba springs from a Proto-Indo-European root albh, meaning white. The deliciously fragrant white (or pale pink) Alba roses were plentiful in Britain long before the Romans arrived, and when the first of Caesar's legions arrived in Britain, they named the island Albion for the roses which were already there, blooming in clouds of perfume and wild abundance. The ancient Romans were rose lovers themselves - they imported masses of roses from Egypt, and wherever the legions alighted in their westward travels, they brought roses with them to grace the courtyards of their fortresses and camps.

It should be noted, that as passionate as I am about roses, I cannot claim to be a rose gardener. I live too far north for that, and for a variety of reasons (mostly the length of our winters and our summer humidity), modern roses do not do well in the garden behind the little blue house in the village. Nevertheless, for a few weeks in late June and early July, I permit myself to wander about in the garden like a pre-Raphaelite maiden (better make that pre-Raphaelite crone or hag) smelling the roses and dreaming. This rose is always my first stopping place.

Budding After Rain (II)

2009-06-29T09:38:00.004-04:00

This is an Abraham Darby rosebud unfolding, and the photo, taken on a gray day after a night full of rain, does neither the rose nor its leaves any justice.

Abraham Darby was one of the first David Austin roses, one of the loveliest and most fragrant. It is the result of a cross of two modern roses, Aloha, a truly sumptuous climber, and Yellow Cushion, a particularly lush floribunda. In moderate climes, the rose has an overall apricot appearance with hints of pink, but this far north, the bloom is a delicate pink on the fringes of its petals, shading toward apricot and gold at its heart. The perfume is deliciously heady, a true old world rose fragrance with hints of fruit and spice - I so wish I could share the fragrance with you this morning.

This year's addition to the garden will be another David Austin rose, Crown Princess Margareta (Auswinter), but really, there are a number of magnificent creatures crying out to be added to the rose garden behind the little blue house in the village. So many exquisite roses - only a small garden in which to plant them and a single lifetime in which to befriend them...

The Music of a Summer Night

2009-06-28T07:40:00.004-04:00

The music of a summer day varies, Bach, Scarlatti (Spencer's favorite), Dylan, Robbie Robertson and the Band, Jessie Cook, the happy sparkling confections of a whole stack of Putumayo recordings.

Summer nights hold other melodious magics, and sometimes, they make me wake up smiling - in the midst of the heated summer rains this week, an old dream has returned. I am playing the Dvorak cello concerto on my Strad at Carnegie Hall. Because of the heat, I am in cutoffs and a sleeveless "T", and I am performing barefoot.

The dream gave me back a lovely long forgotten memory - Simon Rattle performing in the old tithe barn at Charleston Manor many years ago. On that steamy summer night he was wearing tie and tails, but he wore no shoes. The music was (I think) the overture and incidental music from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by Felix Mendelssohn.

My dream performance this week was flawless, and the ovation afterward lasted for some time.

Rose After Rain

2009-06-27T05:23:00.002-04:00

David Austin Rose
Heritage (Ausblush)

Friday Ramble - A Wild Patience

2009-06-26T06:07:00.011-04:00

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 with that word.

Patient is what I am trying to be at present, as I lurch and totter and scramble my way through a whole series of medical diagnostic procedures - some are invasive and uncomfortable, others are no problem at all. Off I go from one doctor to another, clinic to laboratory to hospital, then back again. Patience, I say to myself over and over, patience, patience, patience...

The tests will not all be completed until late July, and there is nothing I can do until then except breathe in and out, cultivate patience and forbearance, think positive thoughts and wait for my results. I can't permit myself to be undone by fear and anxiety, and I try to remember that, but there are times now and then when I freeze up entirely and wonder if I am about to go as mad as a hatter. Then the dark clouds roll by and my fearful moment passes - I pick up my camera or paint brush, make a pot of tea, go for a walk with Spencer, curl up in my favorite Morris chair with a good book.

For some reason, the elegant keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti (Mikhail Pletnev's recording) and the Bach preludes (Glenn Gould) put everything back into place now, and so does the magnificent voice of Dechen Shak-Dagsay, particularly her soaring sung rendition of the Om mantra.

Whenever I can, I head for the woods, watch the sun rise over the lake or go down in flames at the end of the day, watch cattails sway along the shore and listen to the wind in the trees above the gorge. Last evening, I watched a radiant crescent of waxing moon dance aloft in the western sky just after sunset. Sometimes, I lean against an old rail fence and watch dragonflies zooming around the hill like ecstatic whirling dervishes. Whether or not I can muster any energy when I am out in my favorite wild places, I am most comfortable there, peaceful and completely at home.

Patience/patient 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. Patience is a good word for someone aspiring to authenticity or enlightenment, but it is not for wimps and sissies, and it is anything but limp and docile. I am learning that it is a truly wild and fierce emotion.

Thursday Poem - Thirty Words

2009-06-25T07:10:00.002-04:00

Knowing, not owning.
Praise of what is,
not of what flatters us
into mere pleasure.
Earth speaking earth,
singing water and air,
audible everywhere
there is no one to listen.

Robert Bringhurst
(from Pieces of Map, Pieces of Music)

Wordless Wednesday - The Morning Visitor

2009-06-24T07:20:00.001-04:00

Adolescent Common Grackle
(Quiscalus quiscula)

Thoughts Among the Orchids

2009-06-23T07:32:00.005-04:00

One logs in here every morning with coffee in hand and writes a little something about her early thoughts of the day, and sometimes, she wonders what this place is all about, what the point of it is - she wonders if this is not just an exercise in self-indulgence and futility, a jagged heap of shored fragments with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

There are reminders here about what matters (or ought to matter), sticky notes, exhortations to myself and pep talks, odd bits of grumbling and peevishness about life's potholes, large and small, an occasional sharp tap on the ear and terse suggestion to get my act together and stop whining. I know for sure that there are a lot of bad photos along with my stray thoughts and random potterings - perhaps something a tad more thoughtful and profound a few times a year, but then again, perhaps not.

Is that all there is to this place? Sometimes it seems so, and I was seriously considering writing something longer here this week and then being away for a while, but as I sat among the orchids at the bottom of a dank sunny Lanark bog this past weekend, all my odd cronish notions, aches and nausea and grumpy bits went sailing off into the sunlight like cavorting motes of leaf dust.

One simply cannot be snarly or morose in the presence of wild orchids. There is mindfulness and rapt attention in their perfect nodding velvet heads, elegance in every stem and leaf. They haven't a care in the world, blooming gloriously (and for the most part unseen) for a few days in late June, then fading into the shadows and waiting patiently for the wheel to turn again, for their blooming time to come again.

Looking at it another way, it seems to me that what I am doing here is scratching out the text of my life on the wall of this cavern (or rather bog) with an antler. Whether or not this badly told story of mine belongs to the shared patterns of the great, true stories—the myths— it is how I am journeying along this trail, how I am finding out my relation to the sacred, to others, the great wide world and the self (to paraphrase Linda Sexson and one of my favorite books, Ordinarily Sacred).

This is my song - the orchids told me so.

Viceroy

2009-06-22T08:04:00.006-04:00

Viceroy Butterfly
(Limenitis archippus)

She was discovered clinging to a wildly blowing blade of grass in the high wind at the bottom of the orchid bog yesterday afternoon. Lovely delicate creatures and wonderfully marked...

In the Community of Orchids (for Litha)

2009-06-21T06:25:00.006-04:00

Showy Lady's Slipper
(Cypripedium reginae)

Can it be here already, the longest day of the year? Obviously so, since I spent yesterday pottering about in the bottom of a deep bog in Lanark and marveling (as I always do at summer solstice time) at the colony of native orchids blooming there.

This rare wild terrestrial orchid of the highlands blooms gloriously in a hidden corner of the Two Hundred Acre Wood, and we guard the knowledge of its residence jealously - only a handful of close companions know where it sends roots deep into the fertile muck, puts up spiraling brilliant green leaves and blooms gloriously for a few days in late June.

It seems that summer has only just arrived here, and we are already on our way to shorter days and longer nights. Let us enjoy these golden days and starry velvet summer nights.

Happy Litha to each and every one of you, Happy Summer Solstice!

Blooming

2009-06-20T06:00:00.000-04:00

One of those little "aha" moments which add a soupçon of pleasure and quiet thought to a crone's wandering days....

All through the year, I try to avoid approaching the wicked blackberry bushes in one corner of the garden behind the little blue house in the village. To approach them, even in the most humble and congenial frame of mind, is to risk being torn to shreds by the wicked thorns on their long gracefully arching canes. For a week or two at the end of June, there are berries, magnificent, fat, juicy berries (think preserves, dessert sauces and sorbet), and we take our chances. For the rest of the calendar year, we try to remember that the blackberry bushes take their role as silent assassins very seriously indeed, and we give them a wide berth whenever possible.

There have been many times when I pondered just taking a machete to the northwest corner of the garden. Then I think about the time when a burglar climbed over the fence in the wee hours of the morning and landed right in the middle of the blackberry canes. Needless to say or write, his night's work proceeded no further. Never mess with a mature blackberry bush on guard duty, particularly a wild one with attitude.

I've been passing by the blackberry corner of the garden (mostly at a distance) for time out of mind, and until a few days ago, I never noticed how lovely the red fringed blossoms are. Shame on me.