the snow on the mountain groundcover creeps under the fence. it tries to take over the ornamental grasses, winds its way around our peonies, fills in spaces we didn’t necessarily need filled in. it’s invasive dressed in pretty. it has even given the wild geranium a run for its money. fortunately, the geranium – particularly under barney – has survived the overbearing groundcover and its sweet pink flowers are getting ready to bloom now.
i saw a post the other day that was a gut-punch. the words on the post read: “it’s illegal to feed wildlife at national parks because they get dependent on handouts and forget how to survive. it kinda sounds familiar, doesn’t it?‘ the photograph with the post was depicting minority moms and children in line with shopping bags and grocery pushcarts.
it literally made me ill. because it was posted by a neighbor with a comment that read, “hmmmm.” just despicable. and downright hard to believe that there are people who really feel that way. haughty. sickening. overbearing. uncaring. bigoted.
creepy and invasive.
that kind of bullshit post enrages me. it’s unconscionable. the hatred is just exhausting. how dare he/they be so righteous, so pompous, so entitled? with clearly no heart at all – no empathy – no love-one-another in their soul, no we-are-our-brother’s/sister’s-keeper. the judgment and demeaning attitude.
i could go on.
but i won’t.
because i am hoping that most of us in this country will be like the intrepid wild geranium. that we will bloom despite the invasive stuff that purports to be pretty.
that we will be able to spread goodness and kindness and compassion.
that we can possibly be the nation we were destined to become in a world that needs the caring interdependence of all people.
that we aren’t dreadful people who believe despicable things and then share those extreme racist views with the world, hoping for “likes”.
snow on the mountain is “incredibly invasive and will spread indefinitely if not restrained.”
*****
sorry about the language. but sometimes it fits. 🤷♀️
d just painted over a huge canvas that prominently featured a star. i asked him why he painted over it, for i like stars, the universal message of stars, just the whole thing of stars. he said he thought that the painting looked like a hotel print, so ixnay on that aintingpay.
he has since continued painting this canvas – with earth-toned hues. day is done is clearly – to me – a portrait of the end of day beyond a dramatic hill landscape, the sky glowing a pre-dusk orange, the sun setting.
“day is done/gone the sun/from the lakes, from the hills, from the sky/all is well, safely rest/god is nigh.
fading light dims the sight/and a star gems the sky, gleaming bright/from afar, drawing nigh/falls the night.
thanks and praise/for our days/’neath the sun, ‘neath the stars, ‘neath the sky/as we go/this we know/god is nigh.” (“taps”)
star-flowered lily of the valley are important pollinators and – later in the season – develop berries which are a perfect food for birds. they truly hold an important place in the ecosystem in the woods…’neath the sun, ‘neath the stars, ‘neath the sky.
the star-flowered lily of the valley is native, its white star-shaped flowers delicate. they are little constellations of beauty, nestled in the green of their frond-y leaves. they are joyful little flowers; they simply make me happy as we hike.
because stars are like that.
and we can all use a reminder of comfort and protection of the universe. particularly now.
“we might think we are nurturing our garden, but of course it’s our garden that is really nurturing us.” (jenny uglow)
we have had a journey with breck. as a baby aspen, we brought it home in 2017 – a tiny sapling in a black plastic pot, bouncing along with us across the country in littlebabyscion.
there were more than a few times – in the first years – we thought we would lose breck – to the weather, the conditions, the displacement. we wrapped breck’s roots in its then-clay pot in blankets and black plastic. we planted breck and discovered it was the wrong place. we transplanted breck. and we always talked to breck, affirming its importance to us, its place in our lives, the meaning it had for us, cheering it on.
and now – breck is as tall as the garage roof and full of gorgeous quaking leaves. sparrows and cardinals regularly land on its branches and we can see it smile and sigh from our place on the deck, watching like proud parents, quietly grateful for its happiness – just like with our grown children.
to have breck in our backyard is to have a little piece of breckenridge in our backyard – a little piece of the high rocky mountainsfrom where it came. it feeds us to look out back and see our aspen, standing taller and taller. it makes us dream and ponder, reminisce and just gaze at it in wonder – that what was a tiny aspen in a plastic pot has turned into a real tree.
it is not unlike artistry and artists – also real trees in a real world. even during the periods of fallow, when creativity is merely a pilot light, there is what comes next. there is the tiny spark that makes ideas come alive – the first stitch on a new quilt, the first note in a melodic gesture, the first paint in the underpainting, triggers of nurture.
and the ideas begin to quake – with or without wind – as they take hold of us.
“to plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.” (audrey hepburn)
time goes on. and on.
and breck grows taller and fuller.
it is a constant source of both contentment and awe to watch.
soon now, we will plant our basil, parsley, mint, chives, jalapeños, tomatoes.
if you purport to be a weed – and only a weed – growing helter-skelter- invading lawns and gardens everywhere – then it is likely that people will see you – perceive you – as a weed.
if, instead, you believe you are vital early-spring nourishment for pollinators, recognized as a nutrient-dense food source, then it is likely that people will see you – perceive you – as beneficial.
it is all in what you believe about yourself and – here’s the tricky part – what you actually do about what you say you believe.
and why is that tricky? you ask.
i’m pretty sure you have stumbled across the vast hypocrisy – out there – that rears its ugly head from grandiose and magnanimous mission statements of organizations and institutions – even the current government (you don’t say!). these places that purport to be about, say, one thing or another – to stand for something.
i’m pretty sure you have been gut-punched – at some time – by the sheer hypocrisy that you have seen – that exists when push actually comes to shove – when the rubber actually meets the road – when the chips are down – at the moment of truth – that stubbornly squelches any culpability for what-they-say-they-believe – that atones in words but not in deeds. ohmygoodness, it is too prevalent to count, to even begin to depict.
human rights, the lgbtq community, racial divisions, birthplace bigotry, gender discrimination in the workplace, sexual abuse survivorship, places that foster accountability – the list of possibilities goes on and on. and yes, the hypocrisy goes on and on.
it all begs the question – what do you really believe?
and isn’t that just incredibly sad?
because how hard would it be to state what you believe in and then be what you believe in so that the statement “we are what we believe” would be a truth, a consistency in your business/organization/institution, something positive, life-affirming?
i guess the fact of the matter – in the end – is that just because you say you are what you believe doesn’t make you what you believe.
you have to live what you say you believe in order to be what you say you believe.
the wood anemone is a “spring ephemeral“. the plant “dies back to the ground by mid-summer“. there is not a lot of time to be as delicately beautiful as anemone is.
so the anemone put on a fine show in their months of prime, the only months their performance is open. they waste no time fussing around, angsting over the circumstance of their sprouting – their place of origin, no time arranging every single thing to their benefit so as to live a grand life in the months of their lives.
instead, they shine. they grow – in community with every other plant and fungi, in and amongst the trees, fallen logs and dried leaves. they unfurl their five or six petals, their leaf whorl fragile, trembling in the breezes – this “wind flower” is standing vigil for spring.
they make the best of it.
and when their turn is done – when it is time for their last bow, their last quake in the wind, their petals slowly dropping one by one, their stamen no longer sheltering seed, their stalks withering with the sun – they quietly take leave and return to the ground to wait – for next spring.
anemone don’t wonder about their ascendancy, their import, their legacy. they do what it is they are here to do – providing early season nectar for pollinators, preventing erosion by retaining soil moisture.
their herald of spring, their succumb to summer’s hot sun – part of the greater plan. their job fits right in symbiotically with the rest. they do not abdicate to other wildflowers what is theirs to do; neither do they overreach, trouncing all the other wildflowers in their midst.
they are what adults should be. adult humans, that is.
white flowers in the forest. with delicate petals – like the wood anemone – or the three sweeping waxy petals of the great white trillium – these white flowers dotting the underbrush of the woods are stunning, really beautiful. these seemingly fragile white blooms in and amongst a landscape not quite green, a landscape still rummaging around, waiting for spring’s full chorus.
we stop sometimes – just to take it all in – past ourselves, our thoughts, our conversation, our footsteps on the dirt. it gives us pause and slows our breathing.
the landscape design is immaculate – perfection. downed trees, leaves naturally composting, the canopy towns of mayapples bursting up through the ground, enchanting purple phlox, flowering pear trees. it is a slice of heaven.
in these days – when mosteverysinglething we read in the news makes us despondent, it seems that we must balance out our equilibrium a bit. for us, as you already know, that is the trail. the dirt paths in our area help us thrive as we all live in the shade of the current political chaos and the wreckage of our democracy. tiny bits of dappled light get through, but the challenge is to still keep going, despite the vast amount of dark.
white trillium prefers shade. these exquisite blooms find their home to be best in part or full shade. they are slow-growing, but long-lived – a combination that seems to push back against threatening negative influences, that rises out of deep winter, that sustains despite the odds, that shines in beauty. trillium live in colonies, interdependent on all the shrubs, trees, composting soil, insects, bacteria and fungi around it. its brilliant star shines alongside those it shares space with, symbiotically life-sharing companions.
pause for thought. yes. it gives us pause for thought.
wearing a traditional scandinavian jumper, i danced around the maypole. holding a ribbon tethered to the pole, i danced to and fro with other young girls also holding ribbons. it was an ancient spring festival – at an arboretum on the island – and my sweet momma happily got us involved in taking part in it.
may day – the first of may. it seems impossible that we are already at may. time has a way of zipping by while at the same time taking-its-sweet-time. langsam – slowww – one of the few german words i remember from six years of studying the language.
but the return of spring it is and we are both grateful for it, despite its exceedingly stormy arrival.
we wake in the morning even earlier now, the sun streams in on our quilt, the breeze through the open window. everything is greening…gorgeous new-green crayon tones against easter-egg blue sky…tiny buds bursting into leaves, stalks of peonies growing taller before our eyes. the aspen is filling out, the ferns are unfurling, the daylilies are daylilly-ing – they require no help whatsoever.
and the birds and squirrels and raccoons are taking full advantage of our zeal to keep the feeders full. they linger on the top of barney, on the top of the potting stand. they gather in the pine tree next to the birdbath, waiting turns at the water.
and we can hear the call of the cardinals – beautiful song punctuated by sharp chirps. they stick around during the winter; their presence is always reassuring…a sign from the universe reminding me that my sweet momma and poppo are nearby, just on the other side, having slipped from this dimension to the next.
we’ve sat on the back patio a few times now, on the back deck in the sun. we’ve watched these creatures of our yard, narrating for them as they move about. wanting a photo of the cardinal at the birdbath, perched on its side, getting a drink, i grabbed my phone. but i was, regretfully, too late and he took off as i snapped the picture.
it wasn’t until much later – hours, really – as i looked at my photos of the day when i saw this photograph, the cardinal taking off, flying away from the birdbath.
so much better than a static perch photo, the cardinal taking flight – its may dance – its own celebration of the arrival of spring, of renewal, of new life.
we sit in our adirondack chairs and plot out our spring. we talk of our gardens, of an annual flower or two we might choose, of the herbs and vegetables we will grow on our barnwood stand.
it is hard not to feel passion for our very earth watching it come back alive all around us. it is impossible not to take deep, cleansing breaths, to turn our faces to the sun. it is time – for all good things – to dance around the maypole, to take flight.
the ferns are curly-cuing their way up – out of the ground – taller and taller every day. they are spectacular, these fiddleheads, coiled fronds answering the beckoning of the sun.
this particular photo of our ferns in our fern garden strikes me as very maternal…as if the momma fern is looking out for the young ferns following suit – the one with tilted head, the one not yet fully unearthed. i am reminded of one of d’s paintings…mother-daughter…the never-ending inclination to protect, to hold close, to comfort.
but unfurling-life doesn’t provide us with the never-ending opportunity to physically hold our children, to physically protect them, to physically comfort them. instead, they scatter – like wildflower seeds – as they must – as they should – and we parents are left to watch over them from afar, to celebrate their successes and hold fast their hearts when they are mourning. we have not given up our connection, but it is stretched out far and we find we must also rely on the grace of the universe to protect, to hold, to comfort them.
as our own beautiful children – now in their thirties – move about the world being who they are, i miss them, the preciousness of their presence.
i sometimes miss the days when they were reliant on me (and their dad) for most things. those days were intense, busy, skewed mostly in the direction of making sure their needs were met, that we provided for them the best we could, that we offered up opportunity as well as critical boundaries, that we cheered their journeys.
i sometimes miss the days when they had new freedom…those days they were in college and littlebabyscion was the moving van again and again, taking them to and fro, witnessing year by year their growing independence.
i sometimes miss the days when they were newly out of college, when they weren’t quite as established as now, when home still kind of meant wisconsin.
in going-through the basement, the attic, the closets, all the rooms of the house, i try hard to remember that the things of those times will not help me hold onto those times. i try hard to remember that their baby clothes, their early toys, the old trinkets from their rooms, their junior high notebooks will not keep those times at hand. i try to release all that as i go, my heart trying to just gently hold the memories i can remember, my heart trying to tenderly – empathetically – hold my heart. i try to be a good fern in a big world of fern gardens.
and now, as the frond that burst out of the soil first, the frond that unfurled first, the frond that aged first, i glance at the verdant fiddleheads following. i could not be more proud. i could not love them more. and i will never not miss physically holding, protecting or comforting them as they answer the beckoning sun.
the drive was going to be about 9-10 hours or so. we knew that the front end would be belabored by traffic – taking hours to get through the city, but, once on the interstate, figured we’d be cruising. ahh….not the best of figuring.
there was the hour we spent at the delaware water gap…not outside enjoying the views and a trail…but inside big red, crawling our way out of new jersey into pennsylvania.
then the hour plus we spent just lingering – barely moving – through this one section of i80 in the very wide state of PA – where the department of transportation had decided that – for miles – it would be necessary to have cones blocking a lane so that eventually – miles later – they could do roadwork. now, i am all for safety for the workers on these roads, but cones for miles with no indication of any work is a tad bit frustrating.
so, then, finally, we were moving along. we had a whole bunch more hours to go – about 4-5 when we stopped about 70 miles from the ohio border to get gas and have a little pit stop. we could see the sky getting darker to the west and thought we’d get ahead of the necessities.
and then we got our first tornado warning. warning, not watch.
d pumped gas while i checked the weather radar. it looked ugly to our west and the prediction was for extended storms, hail, extreme wind and, yes, perhaps a tornado or two.
we pulled next to the station and sat while the first of the storms came through, pummeling us with torrential rain and wind. we were grateful we weren’t driving in it.
pulling up the radar again, i looked at some points along our journey to that night’s airbnb. things did not look good for the rest of the evening. it was already close to 5, we had been driving for 9 hours by then and we still had hours to go – through the weather mess on our app. we didn’t quite know what to do.
i looked around as we sat there in that lot. to my left – high on a hill next to us – sat what looked like either a hotel or a condo building which, given the exit we had taken, didn’t seem likely. pulling up google maps, i found out it was, indeed, a hotel.
i pulled up their website.
just to check.
because we were already tired and the road ahead looked pretty scary and long.
about a half hour later we checked into the hotel, forfeiting our airbnb – erring on the side of safety. the couple behind us in line at the front desk – about our age – were doing the same thing, forgoing their reservations several hours down the road.
many times over that night and the next day we marveled at the serendipity of the hotel-on-the-hill location next to us and were grateful for it and for our ponderous decision.
the dawning morning fog the next day lifted before we started driving and there was no indication of storm until we were closer to home. we had tornado watches for the last couple hours while we were driving, which made us jittery – well, it definitely made me jittery.
the tornado sirens went off when we got home.
because, well, climate change is real. global warming is real. weather events are becoming extreme as a result of humans’ lack of care about greenhouse gases, fossil fuels and pollutants in the air, water cycles. ridiculously hot heatwaves, intense droughts, insane amounts of precipitation and flooding, supersized hail, coastal storm surges, damaging winds, severe widespread wildfires, and destructive tornadoes caused by warmer, more humid air. this could potentially all be catastrophic, yet the current administration is ignoring all the signs of peril to our earth, gluttonous greed intentionally perpetuating the damage.
a few days later, in our backyard and starting to prepare the gardens for spring, we looked up.
the clouds – mammous and with these rope-like threads – were suddenly overhead. the same kind of clouds as the night we arrived home. we both sighed, suddenly nervous about what front was coming.
there have been plenty of scary looking clouds. there have been plenty of emergencies across our land. there has been plenty of devastation. there have been plenty of catastrophes due to weather events.
“the united nations intergovernmental panel on climate change’s sixth assessment report in 2021 (five years ago!!!) noted that the human-caused rise in greenhouse gases increased the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events worldwide.”
you gotta wonder when those “in charge” might care.
i read a quote while perusing around the issues of this extreme weather, climate change, this earth. it seems sadly apropos: “unfortunately for some of those people, it won’t hit home for them until it really hits home for them.”
“the white trout lily humbly bows on the forest floor. much like people, though on a different scale, their presence is ephemeral, fleeting. on sunny days, their petals will curl back, up, towards the sun; on shady days these small flowers may not even open. their simple beauty a mystery to the passerby, their faces shyly downward, they fill the underbrush on the side of the trail, dotting the landscape with fragile white blooms. i trust they are not concerned with the impact they make on the world nor do they wonder about their footprints once they are gone. they are simply there – love – dressed in white floral.” (from a post on august 26, 2021)
the tiny trout lily forest – as seen from the ground – stretching on and on, dotting through dry underbrush, the accumulation of fall and winter now giving it up to spring.
the day was stunning…warm, sunny, blue skies. a gift of a day, indeed. it was our first time back on our loop since we arrived home. it was time to process it all and that trail is one of our touchstones for processing. we wandered along the dirt path, talking, being silent, noting how this new season was transforming our woods.
when you travel to or through places where you are not known – where you are a stranger – there is a sense of humility. we immerse in little towns on back roads when we can, finding our way through someone else’s place, through a community of ‘others’ – those in the know about local customs, local gems, local folklore. we are just passersby – soon to be on our way somewhere else.
but we have discovered some of our favorite spots this way. we’ve found places to which we must return some day, places with which we have connected, places that seem magically aligned with us.
discovery is like that. our steps take us past the familiar, into the unknown, the mysterious.
as i got down on my knees to photograph the trout lily forest, i imagined being tiny and walking amongst the lilies. like walking in a city of towering buildings, anonymous to most.
this trail – so familiar – each twist and turn, the spots where we know there will be standing water, the spots where the sun bathes the path, the places where the scent of pine is strong. we are lucky to know this place.
it is not likely that hikers after us will wonder about our footprints. they will be intent on the awakening forest and the swollen river, on their own silence, on their own talk–talk.
but we were there.
and – again – i realize we are each just one of the trout lilies in the woods, just as fragile, just as ephemeral, bowing to time.
reverse threading 