In the Woods

life as it is

I can see this year is going to have a lot of first-time-without-Tim occasions, but I’m starting to embrace them with a little more openness, letting the feelings be. The grief isn’t as raw these days, the waves of it feel more gentle somehow. And so I had a nice time visiting the Coker Arboretum with Sally while the college students were away on spring break.

spring starflower (South America)
with small milkweed bug

I did not notice that bug when I was taking the picture – it often amazes what the camera finds for me. We lingered quite a while near this beautiful patch of starflowers.

This bunch of spirea bushes was breathtaking – the camera tried but couldn’t quite capture the beauty. We also lingered here.

I don’t see nondual spirituality as a path to perpetual bliss. From my perspective, being awake is about total intimacy with life as it is. It’s not about escape or turning away. And it’s not about trying to find an explanation either, because ultimately, we can’t. Everything is the way it is because the whole universe is the way it is.
~ Joan Tollifson
(Right Now, Just As It Is!, August 21, 2025, “The Play of Life”)

Our lives teach us who we are.
~ Salman Rushdie
(In Good Faith)

Every once in a while the energy of a certain tree will attract me. This swamp chestnut oak was huge! There was something wise and majestic about it. I couldn’t get far enough away to get all of it, so I tried to get half of it. Conversely, because there are signs everywhere warning us to stay on the paths, I couldn’t get close enough to touch it, which is what I very much wanted to do.

But then I thought of my old gull friend with the mangled leg, and how I fed off his wise energy even though I never touched him. So I looked up into the branches and with the zoom lens saw some new leaves and catkins. It made me think of the quote about being intimate with life as it is.

Japanese flowering cherry tree (Kwanzan cultivar)

The last two pictures were actually taken on the UNC campus as we were walking back to the car. These special cherry trees were presented to the university by the Class of 1929, making them almost 100 years old!

So many beautiful blossoms on such a lovely warm spring day. And so many peaceful thoughts to bring home with me.

the soft influences of spring

When Nature made the bluebird she wished to propitiate both the sky and the earth, so she gave him the color of the one on his back and the hue of the other on his breast, and ordained that his appearance in spring should denote that the strife and war between these two elements was at an end. He is the peace-harbinger; in him the celestial and terrestrial strike hands and are fast friends. He means the furrow and he means the warmth; he means all the soft, wooing influences of the spring on the one hand, and the retreating footsteps of winter on the other.
~ John Burroughs
(Wake-Robin)

vibrant spring blooms

‘pink sparkles’ phlox
3.8.26 ~ Juniper Level Botanic Garden
Raleigh, North Carolina

Last weekend Susan and I took a Sunday drive all the way out to Raleigh to check out this unique botanical garden, which is only open to the public on nine different weekends over the year. It has 10 acres of plants for education and research and, although privately owned since 1986, is now associated with North Carolina State University.

Our garden philosophy is to promote botanical diversity by assembling the largest collection possible of growable, winter/summer hardy ornamental plants for our region and display them in an aesthetic, sustainably maintained, healthy garden setting. This philosophy includes obtaining plants from all over the world with a strong emphasis on North American native plants, realizing that these are, as a group, no more or less adaptable than plants from foreign lands.
~ Juniper Level Botanic Garden website

We saw these yellow puff balls from afar and couldn’t wait to see them up close and find out what they were. They were very fragrant, and we got a pleasant whiff before we reached them. Some garden websites describe the scent as gardenia-like.

After meandering through several sections of the garden we started to pay attention to the bits of spitting rain hitting us and looked up to see a threatening rain cloud. We headed back to the car, with me protecting my camera under my jacket. We missed one last garden section but were happy we did manage to see most of the place.

rain cloud, time to turn around and head home

The plants were very well identified and I took 146 pictures. It was difficult choosing which ones to share for this post!

wordless wednesday

jonquilles

What I can do — I will —
Though it be little as a Daffodil —
That I cannot — must be
Unknown to possibility —
~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #641)

a very muddy walk

We got a lot of much needed rain on Thursday and Friday so Saturday’s walk in the woods was very muddy. It was nice to see the creek filled with lots of water for a change.

It’s been said that one never steps onto the same path twice and I had that feeling when I spotted a huge boulder on the other side of the creek. It stood out like a sore thumb and I wondered how I had never noticed it before. It can’t be a glacial erratic because “there are no known, scientifically verified glacial erratics in the Piedmont of North Carolina.” I will have to ask my geologist sister about it.

It’s been almost two years since I’ve seen a new life bird so I was pleasantly surprised when Sally, looking through her binoculars, identified the bird we saw flying around the tree canopy with a flock of tufted titmice and other smaller birds. My camera’s zoom lens struggled to get these cropped shots of a yellow-bellied sapsucker!

On a walk through the forest you might spot rows of shallow holes in tree bark. In the East, this is the work of the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, an enterprising woodpecker that laps up the leaking sap and any trapped insects with its specialized, brush-tipped tongue. Attired sharply in barred black-and-white, with a red cap and (in males) throat, they sit still on tree trunks for long intervals while feeding. To find one, listen for their loud mewing calls or stuttered drumming.
~ All About Birds website

On our way out of the woods we found a patch of Lenten roses (aka Christmas roses, hellebores, winter roses) enjoying a little patch of late-winter sunshine. They’re not native and are not actual roses, but belong to the buttercup family. They are very popular in gardens here, probably because they are highly deer-resistant. Spring is around the corner!

weeds, benches, catkins

2.21.26 ~ Bolin Creek Trail
Jim’s Community Bench

The bench features red poppies, which were [Jim] Huegerich’s favorite flowers. The flowers, bench, and tubing have a “whisper” function: people sitting on the bench can whisper into one flower and listen on the other as the piping carries the sound. The bench was created by nationally known sculptor Jim Gallucci, based on input from the Huegerich family.
~ Triangle Blog Blog

Although I have been diligent about walking on my treadmill, due to weather and plans cancelled by winter illnesses, I had not walked outside in over a month! It rained Saturday morning and things didn’t look too hopeful for a weekend walk. But, the weather app promised a dry time slot at 2 pm and my friend Susan was willing to take advantage of it with me. The sun even came out!

I suggested Bolin Creek Trail, a paved greenway, so we didn’t have to get our shoes muddy. Paved trails might be a good idea in the summer, too, as a strategy for avoiding seed ticks. Maybe. We found lots of pretty little weeds along the way, passed by lots of other people enjoying the day, and saw lots of art work painted on concrete pipes and bridge underpasses.

Joe Herzenberg (1941-2007) Memorial Bench, 2018
by Mike Waller & Leah Foushee Waller
(bronze, concrete, aluminum)

Joe Herzenberg was a long-time resident of Chapel Hill and a historian. He served on the Chapel Hill Town Council from 1979-1981 and 1987-1993. After leaving the council, he continued to advocate for environmental preservation as chair of the town’s Greenways Commission and the Merritt’s Pasture Committee. Joe was also a champion for civil liberties. He was the founder and a decade-long board member of Equality NC PAC.

In spite of the gentle, dreary rains we’ve been getting lately after the snow and ice storms, we are still in a severe draught. The weeds seem to be all right, though, but Bolin Creek isn’t very full.

smooth alder catkins
(these shrubs like to grow along creek banks)

Alder Catkins
Male Catkins: Long, slender, and dangling (pendulous), these are initially reddish but turn yellow as they mature, reaching 2–10 cm in length. They produce large amounts of pollen, which is wind-dispersed.
Female Catkins: Smaller and initially reddish-purple, these are located on the same twigs as the male catkins. After pollination, they mature into woody, dark brown or black, cone-like structures that persist on the tree through the winter.
~ AI

There remains a hole in my world, a hole that my being futilely tries to fill in with memory flashes and pangs of heartache. Tim & I started to follow this trail the first year we moved down here, but we didn’t get as far along it as Susan and I did this day. Walking on the smooth pavement was too painful for him and thereafter we focused on trails with uneven terrain. It felt a little strange going past the point where Tim & I had turned around. At the time I was disappointed that we couldn’t continue down the path. Now I could. Part of me didn’t want to go on without him. Maybe all of me. Nevertheless, I did enjoy myself, even without him. It’s weird how both things can be true.

freedom within

“Portrait of a Little Girl” by Jahn Ekenæs

They shut me up in Prose —
As when a little Girl
They put me in the Closet —
Because they liked me “still” —

Still! Could themself have peeped —
And seen my Brain — go round —
They might as wise have lodged a Bird
For Treason — in the Pound —

Himself has but to will
And easy as a Star
Look down opon Captivity —
And laugh — No more have I —

~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #445)

what bird did you see

My dear sister-in-law, Fran, and I attended a Dar Williams concert on Tuesday, February 10, at the A. J. Fletcher Opera Theater, in Raleigh, with Seth Glier opening. We had such a great time listening to her wonderful story-telling melodies. The little anecdotes she shared between songs were very amusing and heartwarming.

The words to one tune in particular, from her new Hummingbird Highway album, resonated with me deeply, especially at this time in my life:

In the parking lot the dark becomes two panes of light
There’s a charcoal slash of ocean and a smoky plank of sky
Now they’re changing colors
Laurel green with alabaster,
Agate blue with snowy aster.
And as the blues are brightening and the cars are coming in,
You see a seagull weave a path upon the wind,
Like a thread that can begin and then begin
While the world just goes about its day
As the ground beneath you falls away
In this time when there’s no time, there is no place to be,
What bird did you see?

You think a goldfinch is enchanting and you know you told her,
Now a goldfinch lands above you like it’s on your shoulder,
Yesterday you saw a red-tailed hawk
Around a corner proud and still
Out of place, a sentinel.
And at the window when sparrows flew away,
A single cardinal seemed to know he had to stay,
He had to be the bright vermillion in the gray,
While the world just goes about its day
As the ground beneath you falls away
In the presence of this absence, was there one bright flash, a simple song, a revery
What bird did you see?

And You will feel the summer sun and autumn rays,
You will return to busy friends and busy days but now,
In this time between the here and the hereafter there’s a feather at your door,
Love will find its way,
In the very life you have today,
You’ll go back to what you understand,
Maybe unbelieve
But tell me now, what bird did you see?
It’s okay to know it’s me.

~ Dar Williams
♫ (What Bird Did You See) ♫