change – In the Woods

content to bloom

Down in a green and crowded box
A modest pansy grew
Its stalk was bent it hung its head
As if to hide from view.
And yet, it was a lovely flower
Its colors bright and fair,
It might have graced a rosy bower
Instead of hiding there.

Yet there it was, content to bloom
Its modest tints arrayed,
And there it spread its sweet perfume
Within the silent shade.
Then let me to the window go
This pretty flower to see
That I may also learn to grow
In sweet humility.

~ Author Unknown

I found this poem back in August, written or copied by hand, on a slip of paper hidden between other papers in one of the family history boxes I was diligently sorting through. I don’t know if one of our ancestors wrote it or if they copied it down from some other source. Naturally, I thought it would make for a great post when pansy season came around.

Well, I was still pondering how different the seasons are down south here, after experiencing apple picking for Lammas Day instead of on the Autumn Equinox. I was in for another big surprise. It turns out pansies are considered cool season annuals in North Carolina, and they bloom from fall through spring! They are usually planted from late October through the month of November!

Then I remembered noticing last fall that the local nursery was selling pansies right alongside mums. Another memory surfaced, too, seeing pansies in flower boxes along the sidewalks back in January 2019, when we were down here visiting. It seemed like they were out so early, but they had probably been there since November.

These discoveries are leading to a paradigm shift in how the wheel of the year looks to me. So I decided to be a careful observer for a year or two, letting my old assumptions go and gradually finding a new way of thinking about (and celebrating!) the seasons.

Pansies for All Souls’ Day? In honor of an ancestor who loved and wrote down this poem? Why not? “Learning to grow in sweet humility…’

at the autumn equinox

At the Autumn Equinox, as with the spring, we take this moment of equal day and night to focus on a point of balance. In the mellowness of early autumn, we can quietly observe this brief stillness. There is a certain relief in letting go of the hectic growth of summer. With the slowing that autumn brings comes a certain restfulness and acceptance.
~ Maria Ede-Weaving
(The Essential Book of Druidry: Connect with the Spirit of Nature)

in the middle of things

It has been a difficult couple of weeks dealing with the side effects of vaccinations and an unwelcome osteoporosis diagnosis but we finally got out to enjoy some pleasant weather and a walk in the woods. We returned to Cedar Falls park to take a different trail and see if we could find a waterfall mentioned on a website. I think we heard the waterfall but could not see it from the path. The foliage was pretty dense and the terrain very steep so we didn’t dare go off-trail.

To pay close attention to the natural world is to exist in medias res. Life is an unfolding that responds to the cues of seasonal change, but for our purposes it is also suspended in an everlasting present. We can see some of the creatures we share our world with, or at least some evidence of their nearness, but we cannot know the full arc of their story. Every encounter in the outdoors is an episode with a cliffhanger ending.
~ Margaret Renkl
(The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year)

We definitely share our world with the squirrels and crows we saw and heard, and there was plenty of evidence of other creatures nearby, including deer scat deposited on the trail and countless cobwebs clinging to twigs and branches. I had to smile when I noticed once again, it’s that time of year when Tim is still in shorts and I needed my sweatshirt. Not quite time to pull out my gloves, though.

some of that uneven terrain that works so well for Tim

It felt so good getting out into the woods again!

as we mark the longest day

“Summer Landscape” by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Counting one’s blessings has a particular poignancy at this festival because, as we mark the longest day, we are reminded that from this point the year will begin to wane and the days will gradually shorten. Transience is a reality for all of us and so we learn that our capacity for joy and happiness — like an inner sun — must radiate from within. It’s worth taking a moment to ponder the mystery that at the height of summer winter plants its own seed.
~ Maria Ede-Weaving
(The Essential Book of Druidry: Connect with the Spirit of Nature)

worlds of difference

5.14.24 ~ Via Calimala, Florence, Italy
photo by Tim

Now we need a new definition of the self: I am not what I know but what I am willing to learn. Mystery waits in the mirror. Curiosity and learning begin before breakfast. Growing, we move through worlds of difference, the cycles and circles of a life, fulfilled by overlapping with the lives of others.
~ Mary Catherine Bateson
(Full Circles, Overlapping Lives: Culture & Generation in Transition)

the purposeless life misses nothing

4.24.24 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden

On this visit to the botanical garden there wasn’t much change in the American columbo’s flowering stalk, but we’ll keep checking back. In the meantime there were more new blooms to appreciate as spring continues along its way.

Paradoxical as it may seem, the purposeful life has no content, no point. It hurries on and on, and misses everything. Not hurrying, the purposeless life misses nothing, for it is only when there is no goal and no rush that the human senses are fully open to receive the world.
~ Alan Watts
(The Way of Zen)

Back in Connecticut we had eastern blue-eyed grass.

I heard a towhee singing “drink your tea” and was determined to locate him somewhere in a nearby tree. At last I spotted him and did my best to get a picture of the elusive bird. My last attempt was in 2020, when we heard one rummaging around in the brush on the ground. If you’re interested see this post, eastern towhee. What a treat to get a picture of him singing!

It is only when singing that the Towhee is fully at rest. Then a change comes over him; he is in love, and mounting a low branch, he repeatedly utters his sweet bird s-i-n-n-g with convincing earnestness.
~ Frank Michler Chapman
(Life Histories of Familiar North American Birds)

wildflowers in a sassafras sapling grove

marshallia
2009 NC Wildflower of the Year
(these reminded me of the Sno-Caps candy I used to love)

Georgia false indigo aka Georgia indigo bush (rare)

As for the wild spontaneous Flowers of this Country, Nature has been so liberal, that I cannot name one tenth part of the valuable ones.
~ John Lawson
(A New Voyage to Carolina, 1709)

The finches seemed to be a pair. He kept coming down from the tree to the feeder but she wouldn’t follow him. Wish I could have gotten a picture of them together. And so ended another lovely morning in the garden.

green woods laughing with joy

Six months ago, in the autumn, we visited this gorgeous nature preserve for the first time. It turned out to be equally enchanting in the springtime. It was so green! We started at the other end of Robin’s Trail. It was cold out, however. After days in the 80s on this morning I was back in my winter coat and wore my gloves the whole time.

When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy,
And the dimpling stream runs laughing by
~ William Blake
(Laughing Song)

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.
~ John Muir
(The Wilderness Essays)

wildflowers and orbs at the forest’s edge

As it was last time we visited, a very pleasant spring morning ramble along the creek and in the woods. 🍃

the intelligence of a place

3.30.24 ~ ‘old blush’ rose
North Carolina Botanical Garden

It’s always a pleasure to be greeted by the roses dangling from their arbor each time we visit the botanical garden. It never gets old! Like sunrises and sunsets, I suppose. A steady presence. But we were on a new mission this day to locate a Virginia dwarf trillium, another tiny ephemeral we heard was blooming. Along the way we saw…

This (below) was the only undamaged dwarf trillium we could find, surrounded by other kinds of plants. We had torrential rains for a couple of days and I think they did a number on the tiny trilliums. But I’m grateful we got a chance to see this one. It is much smaller than all the other regular size trilliums we’ve been seeing this spring.

Only by living for many moons in one region, my peripheral senses tracking seasonal changes in the local plants while the scents of the soil steadily seep in through my pores — only over time can the intelligence of a place lay claim upon my person. Slowly, as the seasonal round repeats itself again and again, the lilt and melody of the local songbirds becomes an expectation within my ears, and so the mind I’ve carried within me settles into the wider mind that enfolds me.
~ David Abram
(Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology)

squirrel going out on a limb to reach maple seeds
what a mess he made discarding the “helicopters”

carpenter bee
(thanks to Eliza for the identification)

As we were making our way back to the parking lot this giant bee (above) was hovering over the walkway, blocking our path. Well, if it was just going to stay there I might as well get a picture of it. I don’t know if these creatures are unique to this area but sometimes they hover outside our windows and crash into them repeatedly. It sounds like someone is throwing pebbles at the window.

So we’ve lived here for ten moons I think, not very many so far, but our senses are slowly getting familiar with the seasonal changes.

sweet little ruby-crowned kinglet

3.12.24 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden

On this botanical garden visit we were totally captivated by a new life bird. We couldn’t get over how tiny it was! How could any songbird possibly be smaller than a chickadee? I couldn’t stop taking pictures.

A tiny bird seemingly overflowing with energy, the Ruby-crowned Kinglet forages almost frantically through lower branches of shrubs and trees. Its habit of constantly flicking its wings is a key identification clue. Smaller than a warbler or chickadee, this plain green-gray bird has a white eye ring and a white bar on the wing. Alas, the male’s brilliant ruby crown patch usually stays hidden—your best chance to see it is to find an excited male singing in spring or summer.
~ All About Birds website

Of course there were other things to notice on that beautifully sunny day.

the frog egg embryos are looking more and more like tadpoles

snails presumably climbing a rock
(we didn’t actually see them move)

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy, that we can scarcely mark their progress.
~ Charles Dickens
(Nicholas Nickleby)

red-shouldered hawk
(might be the same one we saw five days earlier)

wild columbine (aka eastern red columbine)

We enjoyed seeing all the redbud trees, promising spring, with their vibrant blossoms appearing to accent the gray landscape well before any leaves come out. So many delightful changes are in the offing. It will be fun noticing as many of them as possible!