When the apple tree blooms
the moon often shows up as a blossom,
paler than any of them,
shining over the tree.
It is the dead summer,
the blossoms’ white sister who returns
to see us
and bless us with her hands
so the burden won’t be too heavy when hard times come.
For the Earth itself is a blossom, she says,
on the star tree,
pale and with luminous
ocean leaves.
~ Rolf Jacobsen
(Night Open: Selected Poems of Rolf Jacobsen)
When the act of reflection takes place in the mind, when we look at ourselves in the light of thought, we discover that our life is embosomed in beauty. Behind us, as we go, all things assume pleasing forms, as clouds do far off. Not only things familiar and stale, but even the tragic and terrible, are comely, as they take their place in the pictures of memory.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Spiritual Laws)
On our way back to the car after a walk at Brumley North, Sally and I were delighted to encounter two male indigo buntings perched in a tree alongside our path. The one in the first and second pictures, taken from two different angles, was easier to spot. The one in the third picture was well hidden.
We heard several birds we hoped to see, like a white-eyed vireo and a catbird, but never managed to find them. We did see a few cardinals, white-throated sparrows, titmice, and Carolina wrens. Little did we know what surprise was waiting for us at the end of our walk. It was a lovely day with a cool breeze and lots of green on the trees.
Sometimes I think that the point of birdwatching is not the actual seeing of the birds, but the cultivation of patience. Of course, each time we set out, there’s a certain amount of expectation that we’ll see something, maybe even a species we’ve never seen before, and that it will fill us with light. But even if we don’t see anything remarkable — and sometimes that happens — we come home filled with light anyway.
~ Lynn Thomson
(Birding with Yeats: A Memoir)
It was good being outside again and while I enjoy taking and sharing pictures, to find the words to narrate the experience seems a little overwhelming. My grieving seems to have entered a new phase, where my brain is catching up with my body. (I was told it isn’t unusual to be in shock for six months after the death of a spouse.) It almost feels like anesthesia wearing off now. The fog clearing and numbness giving way to feelings of a deeper ache, a wound trying to heal. Understanding more clearly what has happened. That this is permanent. Thank goodness for friends and family listening to me and helping me through — I could never do this alone.
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) ♫
Within the grip of winter, it is almost impossible to imagine the spring. The gray perished landscape is shorn of color. Only bleakness meets the eye; everything seems severe and edged. Winter is the oldest season; it has some quality of the absolute. Yet beneath the surface of winter, the miracle of spring is already in preparation; the cold is relenting; seeds are wakening up. Colors are beginning to imagine how they will return. Then, imperceptibly, somewhere one bud opens and the symphony of renewal is no longer reversible. From the black heart of winter a miraculous, breathing plenitude of color emerges.
~ John O’Donohue
(To Bless the Space Between Us)
Groundhog Day was one of our favorite holidays. We had a tradition of taking our groundhog stuffy outside to see (or to not see) his shadow. We named him Basil (Wasyl) after my grandfather, who was born in Ukraine on February 2, 1882. By 2014 Basil had a companion, who was at first named Basil, Jr. At some point Tim, with his endless sense of humor, started calling the little one Oregano, and it stuck.
I cannot bear to continue this tradition without my beloved. So I decided to dig up some of the pictures I took of it over the years, in memory of Tim. I am definitely within the grip of winter, the one outside and a winter of grief. I still can’t imagine how a future without him will ever feel like spring.
Basil, Oregano and I will stay inside and light a candle this year.
You might also notice that leaves growing closer to the ground, where the forest is shady, tend to be larger and softer. This is because trees are trying to absorb as much light as possible with these shaded leaves. Understory trees such as dogwoods live their lives in low light. They not only have larger leaves to absorb all the light they can get but also grow their branches in flat tiers so their leaves are spread out in single layers to make the most efficient use of the light that filters down to them.
~ Peter Wohlleben
(Forest Walking: Discovering the Trees & Woodlands of North America)
Lugh, the Celtic god of Sun and Light, celebrates the sun’s annual path across the sky. Each of the year’s solar events — solstices and equinoxes and the midpoints between these — marks the passing of the seasons on Earth. I have written the name of each solar holiday in Runes around the sun’s face and marked him with Celtic knots that represent this unending cycle.
~ Helen Seebold
(36th Annual Sculpture in the Garden)
A June landscape is incomplete without water. Best of all, the river; but if not this, then a creek, a brook, or even the quiet mill-pond. However pleasant the day may be, the breeze cool, the blossoms bright, the shade dense, the sunshine tempered, there still is something wanting. The world has an unfinished look when there is no water in view, and wild life is largely of the same opinion. I have often found many an upland field almost deserted when the meadows and the river bank were crowded.
~ Charles Conrad Abbott
(Days Out of Doors)
Everywhere, from sunup to sunup, the world is full of song. The days are hot, hot, and all the day long I listen to the bees lifting from flower to flower, to the watchful chipmunk sounding its chock chock chock alarm while the red-tailed hawk wheels, crying, high in the sky. I can’t see the songbirds in the dappled light of a thousand leafy branches, but I can hear them calling from the trees.
~ Margaret Renkl
(The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year)