childhood – In the Woods

under the trees

8.21.24 ~ eastern tiger swallowtail
Cedar Falls Park, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

We are all woodland people. Like trees, we hold a genetic memory of the past because trees are parents to the child deep within us. We feel that shared history come alive every time we step into the forest, where the majesty of nature calls to us in a voice beyond our imaginations. But even in those of us who haven’t encountered trees in months or even years, the connection to the natural world is there, waiting to be remembered.
~ Diana Beresford-Kroeger
(To Speak for the Trees: My Life’s Journey from Ancient Celtic Wisdom to a Healing Vision of the Forest)

At last! A day arrived with low humidity and a chance for a walk in the woods. Though I was tempted to visit the botanical garden I was drawn here to visit a new-to-us park we had discovered some time ago while out running errands in the heat. We found lots of interesting things growing under the trees in this lovely park.

Asiatic dayflower (beautiful but invasive)

The trees at Cedar Falls Park are typical of an upland forest in the Piedmont, with oak and hickory predominating and here and there a pine tree. Second growth trees with a brushy understory line both sides of the trails near the northern part of the park.
~ This Way to Nature website

sweet-gum seedling
(thanks to Debbie for the identification)

upside down indigo milk cap with a tiny snail

They would worry about wearing me out, but I could also see that I was a reminder of all they feared: chance, uncertainty, loss, and the sharp edge of mortality. Those of us with illnesses are the holders of the silent fears of those with good health.
~ Elisabeth Tova Bailey
(The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating)

The march of human progress seemed mainly a matter of getting over that initial shock of being here.
~ Barbara Kingsolver
(Animal Dreams)

a puddle of water left in Cedar Fork Creek

Finding the snail moving across the blue mushroom and then the patch of partridge berries simply filled me with delight!

a midsummer day

6.20.24 ~ solstice sunrise in Bolin Forest

Living in a heavily wooded neighborhood I only get a peek through the trees to catch a sunrise. It happened at 6:00 am on the summer solstice here. Hours later, for solar noon I took my flower fairy out to the moss garden for a little photo shoot. There was a small patch of sunlight available to highlight the very short shadow she was casting.

1:17 pm, solar noon
shortest shadow of the year!

As I was photographing the fairy, mama deer brought her fawn by to check out the scene. It was so hot outside!

In the evening, for some reason, the dew point dropped and even though it was still hot, it became much less humid. Midsummer magic? We packed up the grandchildren and headed to the Piedmont Wildlife Center. None of us had been there before and they were having a summer solstice celebration. What a great time we had! We got a closer look at some of the birds and turtles in rehab.

Katherine showed a lot of interest in the raptors and Finn was enchanted with the turtles.

We were all delighted with Pumpkin, a sweet little opossum. She’s full grown but only about a third of the size of an average adult. She had a rough start in life. The kids asked all kinds of questions, like, does she eat ants? The answer was not usually, unless they happened to be on something else she was eating, kind of like pepper or another seasoning. And opossums only eat the ticks that are in their fur when they’re grooming themselves.

We had a little walk through the woods and saw a few more birds and animals tucked inside their enclosures. Eventually we got to the solstice campfire where the kids could make their own s’mores. A man playing his guitar gently on the side added to the peaceful mood.

Katherine displaying one of her perfectly roasted marshmallows

After a while we were invited to participate in a little solstice ritual: writing on a piece of paper what we wished to let go of from the old year and what we wanted to welcome into the next year. Then we burned our papers in the campfire. It was a meaningful way to pause and take stock of our intentions. I noticed Katherine took it very seriously while Finn, being four years younger, was naturally interested in other things.

The plan was to go to Maple View Farm next, for ice cream and to view the sunset. But, we finished our ice cream (sorbet for me) an hour before the sun was due to set, so we called it a day and headed home. It was wonderful celebrating the summer solstice for the first time with our grandchildren.

Maple View Farm
(an hour before solstice sunset)

the great surge of life

3.20.24 ~ hermit thrush, North Carolina Botanical Garden

I lack roots, I cannot fly on my own wings, and I do not burrow into the earth. But I am a part of something vastly bigger than myself. I am a part of the enduring force, of life itself. And the great surge of life occurs every springtime. It is this that I am made aware of now.
~ Hal Borland
(Hal Borland’s Book of Days)

Another favorite walk in the botanical garden, savoring every possible moment of this memorable spring flowering. Longtime locals have been telling us that this spring has come earlier here than it has in previous years. The last rose I found on this bush (below) was in November and this one in March is the first rose since then.

I’m planning to get a once a month picture from this spot (below) on the boardwalk. The areas on either side here were part of a subscribed burn sometime after we found the seedbox plant in January.

Coastal Plain Habitat boardwalk in March

3.20.24 ~ Courtyard Gardens
Spring Equinox (8 seasons series)

Spring has returned — and now the earth is
like a child who has learned her poems by heart.
So many, so many … and for all her hard
and lengthy studies now she takes the prize.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
(Sonnets to Orpheus)

Cauliflory is a botanical term referring to plants that flower and fruit from their main stems or woody trunks, rather than from new growth and shoots. It is rare in temperate regions but common in tropical forests.
~ Wikipedia

Learning something new every day… I’m trying to remember the word cauliflory by thinking of cauliflower. (I’m still having trouble remembering the word marcescence even after using it countless time on this blog…) This wonderful botanical garden is never the same twice.

a distinctive oak tree

As I step out and down the road I think how each individual human child will grow and be quite their very own being. And then I think how each oak tree also has its own individuality, its own essence in quite the same way, too. Each oak has a distinctiveness which may be seen, felt and known — as with my own children, as with every human that lives upon this earth.
~ James Canton
(The Oak Papers)

In front of our vacation cottage was an amazing oak tree, adorned with plants growing in its fork and Spanish moss hanging from its branches.

3 fan palms growing in the oak’s fork
(thanks to Donna & Eliza for the identification)

Every morning when we left and every evening when we returned to the cottage I paused and wondered at the energy coming from this tree. It seemed to have a self-sacrificing essence, nurturing so many other lives besides its own. And I thought of my own children and what wonderful adults they became with their very different personalities, interests and talents.

they got snow!

2.13.23 ~ after the nor’easter in Connecticut

My sister estimates they got 9 inches of snow from Tuesday’s nor’easter, which left a winter wonderland behind it. I loved the pictures she sent me from the woods surrounding our childhood home.

the birds have found food here since the 1960s

the shed my father built more than 60 years ago

the wheelchair ramp my son and brother-in-law built for my father in the 2000s
(the house my parents built is barely visible behind it)

photos by Beverly

throwback thursday

Yesterday I posted a picture of a tiny cone on a hemlock tree struggling to survive at the North Carolina Botanical Garden. Today I’m sharing a picture my sister took last week back home in Connecticut. The snow covered branches belong to one of the few remaining hemlock trees my brother-in-law has been fighting to save.

And below is an illustrated poem someone shared of Facebook, Dust of Snow, written by Robert Frost.

Playing around and meditating under the hemlock trees in winter kept my heart full of joy all the winters I spent growing up there!

of the cold

How happy I was if I could forget
To remember how sad I am
Would be an easy adversity
But the recollecting of Bloom

Keeps making November difficult
Till I who was almost bold
Lose my way like a little Child
And perish of the cold.

~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #1080)

The first days of November arrived here cold! One morning it was 29°F (-2°C)! With afternoon temperatures around 80°F on the last days of October this was quite a jolt of weather whiplash.

I’m pleased to introduce you to Fred, our friendly neighborhood squirrel. Tim has been feeding him walnuts. Most of the time he runs off with them, presumably to store them somewhere, but once in a while he sticks around and lets us watch him eat it.

The gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) is hereby adopted as the official State mammal of the State of North Carolina. (1969, c. 1207.) § 145-6.
~ North Carolina General Statutes – Chapter 145

When he hears us opening the front door he will come up to the porch to see if a walnut will be rolled out to him. He’s not brave enough to come any closer — not yet. But Tim has a way with squirrels, so…

ancestral remembrance

*The Artist’s Parents* by Felix Vallotton

We achieve some measure of adulthood when we recognize our parents as they really were, without sentimentalizing or mythologizing, but also without blaming them unfairly for our imperfections. Maturity entails a readiness, painful and wrenching though it may be, to look squarely into the long dark places, into the fearsome shadows. In this act of ancestral remembrance and acceptance may be found a light by which to see our children safely home.
~ Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan
(Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors)

that sweet monotony

“A Childhood Idyll” by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, -if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass; the same hips and haws on the autumn’s hedgerows; the same redbreasts that we used to call “God’s birds,” because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved because it is known?
~ George Eliot
(The Mill on the Floss)

It’s been five years since I last shared a William-Adolphe Bouguereau painting, which surprised me because I used to post them fairly often. His pictures of children are so sweet and this one seemed to go along very well with George Eliot’s words.

I spent my childhood experiencing that sweet monotony, endless days playing in the oh-so-familiar woods surrounding the house my parents built. I can still close my eyes and picture the snow-covered hemlocks, the magical swamp and vernal pools, the baby garter snakes sunning themselves on my father’s stone walls in summer, the gray shed, the lovely chestnut tree, and the tiny bluets blooming behind the hens-and-chicks in my mother’s rock garden. My own childhood idyll.