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The world is dressed in diamonds. The branches of the bald cypress are draped one to another with sparkling gossamer hairs, glistening like spiderwebs in the dew. Leaf buds are encased in transparent mirrors, glinting coded signals in the sunlight.
Nothing looks made of what it is. Earth, wood, water, even the coil of old fencing wire - today it is all blown glass, silver, and cut crystals. Light flashes in every clearest color from frozen prisms in the tree tops. It’s like stepping into a fairytale set dressed by artists of the finest skill and imagination, but it’s real, and dangerous, and so much more perfect. 
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Our lone duck swims in contented circles against the pond's low current, though the cold has set icicles dropping from her feathers. From a frozen branch hangs the ice-crusted chrysalis of a promethea silkmoth. Deep within a curl of leaves, secured with sturdy threads, encased in coldest glass, sleeps a tiny worm, dreaming of unfurled accordion wings.
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Everything in nature called destruction must be creation - a change from beauty to beauty.
- My First Summer in the Sierra, John Muir
With a series of cracks and a thunder a tree splits under the weight of the ice, and tumbles down the hill, pulling branches and brush with it. The wind blows a palmful of glitter against our cherry faces, then darts around to tug at cold ears and dust my hair with dampening sparks. The sunlight turns its flashing eyes towards the hilltops, then the white rooftops, then gazes back across the glinting pastures, scattering rainbow lights between each cloud wisp blink. And we, we smile at the smoke that curls from the chimney of a powerless house, and continue our wander through this world of shattered diamonds.
 | -Tyler Knott Gregson |
 | The new year has arrived in sunshine. Young henbit and onion grass have forced their new leaves above a covering of bald cypress fronds here on the creek bank. A lone honeybee has awoken in the warmth, and is eagerly searching the deadnettle buds for the few fully opened blooms. Glossy new grass and spider threads tremble in the breeze and sunlight, and a crowd of tiny, iridescent-winged gnats hover close to earth. The ground is alive and rippling with light.
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A single red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) is across the creek, small and shaped like a Christmas tree from a picture book, on a bank covered in silvery deciduous brush. There's a little grove of slender mimosas (Albizia julibrissin) next to it, smooth-barked and almost white, with a chaotic crown of pale seed pods, papery little adornments that never stop their movement and barely audible chatter. The trees' reflection in the creek is almost perfect - the bright white of the trunks against the algae-covered dark of the creek bed. Their image is only disrupted by a constant gentle zigzag of ripples that makes them look rather like they're in a movie, being fast-forwarded though.
...Beyond all towers strong and high, / Beyond all mountains steep,
Above all shadows rides the Sun...
-J. R. R. Tolkien, Return of the King
A bonfire of the creek-bank brush is hissing out a steady spiral of palest blue smoke, casting bizarre and warbling shadows across the grass, the sort of shadows that a tank of water sometimes makes when light shines through, constantly moving and hardly there. The world cannot stay still in this thoughtful spot. It is so close to silent, gentle, and so very calm on the surface.
Don't the question beg an answer?/ Don't the song beg a dancer?
- Marc Scibillia, More to This
But if you listen, all around there are whisperings of grand plans and delight. The earth is growing in a conspiratorial glee, building strength, gaining energy. Slowly, in the light winds and beamish light, it's beginning to dance.
...it is only rarely that we realize, like a vision of the heavens filled
with a chorus of giants, the primeval duty of Praise.
- G. K. Chesterton, Chaucer
| Chickweed is the most dazzling green. It's not quite lime, not quite neon. There are under shadows of indigo in its corners, and glossy, sea-glass veins, and when the light hits it just right, it is positively yellow. But mostly, it is green, living and vital in an autumnal world of gold and brown. I'm in a patch of chickweed at my Thoughtful Spot today, surrounded by clattering trees and a rusty haze of final leaves, home again. The earth was all trimmed in frost this morning, but the sun has had its hours to work, and is now leaving the world a warmer place. I've felt quite untethered these past weeks in an unfamiliar world of street lights and asphalt, but this patch of green is home, close against the earth and listening to the world of tiny living things. |  |
I feel my boots / trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart / pumping hard.
I want to think again of dangerous and noble things.
-Mary Oliver, Starlings in Winter
A small pond is close by, a way point, at the moment, for migrating geese. They are peaceful enough, no more haughty or tumultuous than an average flock of migrating geese deigning to stop for a while at your particular pond are generally wont to be. But a lone loon has found this pond as well. He has observed the newcomers from a distance. Now he has darted down, deep under water by the bank, and surfaced precisely in middle of the loud and lordly geese. The surprise appearance sends them flurrying into a cacophonous uproar of indignant honks. The little loon slips away unnoticed. Only to repeat the show over and over again - I think he is quite enjoying himself.
A very slow and chilly wasp has wandered across my page, a sad and gentle reminder that autumn is not always kind to tiny creatures.
This Bird – observing others / When frosts too sharp became
Retire to other latitudes – / Quietly did the same –
-Emily Dickinson, All overgrown by cunning moss
| There is lady's thumb, in this little patch of grass, clusters of bright pink buds that never fully open. They look like clusters of miniature tulips, bundled together on a single stem. Dusty deadnettle too, with downy leaves that have donned grey winter coats. Decomposing black walnuts, half green, half brown, and a steadily growing layer of fallen leaves... The rust is all in the sky now, the trees all black and grey. The sky looks like a slice of a peach, magenta at the center, disrupted by the dark treeline, pale and paler yellow towards the clouds. |  |
Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
-John Keats, To Autumn
The amber sun is setting in a pale and purple sky. Yesterday this sky wept its fill, in torrents, thunderclaps its keening. But tonight, its somber eyes are dry. Courage shall be the sterner - minds must be this much more resolute. There's a rhythmic cricket hum.
... the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.
- John 1:5
Why was the town so quiet? Why weren’t the church bells flailing in a wild call to prayer? Last night as I was walking I wanted to run up to knock on doors and stop strangers and cry out, "don't you know? Wake up! A good man died today, for you, for us..." And then it occurred to me - perhaps this is the honor he would choose. Could there be a better legacy, one more akin to his voice, than to leave us calling out from door to door, "wake up! remember! The good man who was God once died for us...” Because of that death this hero lives. But here in the evening the earth is bereft: compassion, ambition, and truth without apology - silenced in an instant.
A quail of some sort is moaning over and again, somewhere in the grass not too far away, what will you do? what will you do? One wild and precious life.
Thoughts shall be the more resolute, Hearts the keener,
Spirits shall be the greater, Though our strength grows less.
- Battle of Maldon
In every free and living breeze - don't let this be in vain. Let us be the sleeping giant wakened, let us be filled with a terrible resolve. Resolve to do what, I don't yet know, but idleness, stagnation, silence - these are no longer options. The nagging old voice in my head says, "what could you do?" Be gone. Here I am - send me. I cling to Your promise to Jeremiah: my words will not be heard. Yours will.
Hearts shall be the keener - let us sharpen our hearts, let them love more, discern more. Spirits shall be the greater - what will you do? what will you do? One wild and precious life.
Threads of clouds are pink now, with bright orange underbellies beneath a sedge-grey roof. The sun itself has vanished behind Rorschach spots of trees. The hero died. Courage shall be the greater, we battle on, though our strength grows less. Here I am - send me. Though there's only a remembrance of a glow on the horizon now, by it I can see the whole world. A dark world. Yet how little a light can illuminate it.
...the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.
- 1 John 2:8
The way things grow fast in movies... this is Fitzgerald's description of Spring, and I think he's rather right. There's always a moment in mid-march when I think "Oh what a lovely long Spring we're having, the blooms are just starting to appear and there's all the time in the world..." Then I blink. And it's Summer.
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This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes...
- D. H. Lawrence, The Enkindled Spring
Not all at once though, it happens in a happy haze of love and labor. The seeds that slept beneath carefully dampened soil for what seemed like ages - testing your patience, toying with your hopes when that first spindly sprout appeared overnight, then remained, no bigger than a thread, for ages longer - suddenly start darting up everywhere and deciding to grow so quickly you could swear they are an inch or so taller in the evening than the morning.
The days alternate between vibrant sun and torrents, sometimes both visit in the same day. The downpours come and go, and I survey my beleaguered little plants with woe. Then the light crashes through to sort things out, in a determined and put out kind of way - the Spring sun always reminds me of a jealous toddler, determined to have his way and not share the sky with rain clouds any longer than he absolutely has to - and what do you know? Stems straighten by the moment, leaves unfurl and flatten their palms heavenward, and roots, I like to imagine, stretch and revel and wiggle their toes deep in the warmed and sodden earth.
"Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?"
...It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine...
...It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine...
- Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
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Have you ever been perfectly silent on a very still day, and heard the wind arrive? First it is a distant "hush," telling the world to quiet, to expect it. Then it's in the trees, still leafless now, and the branches begin to knock together - a gentle, prickly sort of noise as the wind blows through the small twigs at the treetops, a deep rushing sound as is wends through the older, sturdier growth, the occasional dull clatter as a dead limb falls, and the almost painful creak, like arthritic joints, as it sweeps through a cluster of full grown pines. Yet where I sit it is still, waiting - until now, at last, it's here. The chimes begin a wild chorus, the fruit tree blooms tremble and take to flight, the pages of my book open, fan-like, leaves and twigs and bits of bark dance down from the woods and across the grass in front of me, and now the sound of the wind has reached me.
The sky was almost blue, the trees were almost budding,
the sun was almost bright.
- Millard Kaufman
It's an almost warm morning at my Thoughtful Spot, the forsythia is in full sunshine bloom, and bright faced dandelions dot the newly greening grass. The henbit (Lamium amplexicaule) reached its dazzling magenta peak on the hay fields last week, and has been overtaken by the dusty purple deadnettle (Lamium purpureum), whose sweet, bitter, wonderfully green smell is just about my favorite scent in spring. I found some growing this January, in a garden bed that had been covered through most of the harshest cold. I crushed a leaf when I found it and suddenly smelled April.
That little patch of deadnettle froze when the snow came a week later, but for one warm moment in that frost-protected soil it grew, full of hope, yet without certainty of survival. I do love that about Spring growth - sometimes it’s destroyed by a late frost, sometimes buds form too early, some tiny blooms last only a fleeting week and might be missed if you don't pay attention. Despite all this, the moment a bit of earth thaws and a few breezes warm, even if conditions are not perfectly ideal, even though there's a chance they won't last more than a frosty overnight, without certainty, without expectation that
everything will go their way, new shoots burst out of neglected gardens, tender tendrils reach towards the nearing sun, old trees shudder through the wild winds and stretch out their twig tips into new leaf buds. Don't they know that it isn't yet safe for certain? That this wind is blowing in a cold front that might destroy all their hard work? That their efforts might be useless, their energy wasted? Perhaps. But I like to fancy that they have hope, that they know it is their purpose to grow and bloom, and that they find joy in the effort, for the very fact that they can try is a gift, not to be neglected.
Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been,
I have great faith in a seed… Convince me that you have a seed there,
and I am prepared to expect wonders.
I have great faith in a seed… Convince me that you have a seed there,
and I am prepared to expect wonders.
- Henry David Thoreau
The wind has moved on to draw a pale grey cover over this morning's brilliant sky. The bare trees look stark and cold against it, but here below the songbirds chat and the neon green chickweed (Stellaria media) crawls up the tree trunk beside which I write. March is like that - a month of contrast, it is winter in the sky and spring on the earth beneath.
In this Lenten season of frailty and forgiveness, I find myself feeling my own fragility more keenly than usual. Perhaps I needed the reminder this conflicting day brings, with its brave and joyous sprouts of new life, a reminder that the expectations I hold might not always align with the eventual reality, yet to embark, to strive, to grow, to aspire is part of our purpose, in our nature. And the ability, the wonderful privilege to hope is in itself a gift, undeserved, yet given. The quickening earth might not know that the next few weeks will surely hold those biting spring rainstorms, uneasy tornado watches, a flash flood, or more freezing nights. But perhaps it does know what we too often forget - that, just as surely, these harsh spring winds bring us nearer to summer.
The sun is shining on a sodden world beneath a milky sky of wedgewood blue. There's constant music out in the midst of this damp and sparkling day, all suffused in the steady rhythm of a drip, drip, drip from every branch and rooftop, like the ticking of a clock. But still, in the shadows, the remnant of our lovely snowfall can be seen. We only get one snowfall each year it seems, blustering into the quiet southern winter on not quite the coldest week and hushing the world. It closes down the towns and opens hearts to a gleeful sense of wonder.
All the lichens seem to brighten in the snow melt, I don't know that I usually pay them as much attention as they deserve, but today they were beautiful. There's the coral-like cartilage lichen (Ramalina americana), and the flat, creeping monkshood and green shield lichens (Hypogymnia physodes and Flavoparmelia caperata) and, of course, and wiry and wild old man's beard (Usnea strigosa), whose medicinal properties are legendary, yet with which I, sadly, have not yet experimented. They look weird and magical adorned with ice crystals, don't you think?
Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather,
only different kinds of good weather.
- John Ruskin
I sought the wood in winter | “How sure a thing is Beauty,” I cried. |
- Willa Cather, I Sought the Wood in Winter
 | But the hibernation ends before the week is gone, and now the only snow to be seen is in little white patches in the shade of trees and houses, speckled with dark holes like giantish lace spread beside the bushes. There and in great piles by the road side, muddied and iced over and looking as though it plans to settle there for the rest of the season, not exactly picturesque, but snow nonetheless. The sun that melted the snow sets early on a bedraggled yet rejuvenated world, and there's a brightness in the damp air that conjures thoughts of garden plans and seedlings. But for now the evening comes early, and the afternoon air turns biting, and I must say, I am glad of it. |
"And above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfectness." - Colossians 3:14
"Let me hear in the morning of Your steadfast love, for in You I trust." - Psalm 143:8
Many flowers have been used to represent love throughout history and lore, but
the delicate red tulip most often appears as the symbol of Perfect Love.
the delicate red tulip most often appears as the symbol of Perfect Love.
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Merry Christmas!
"And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy,
which shall be to all people." Luke 2:10
which shall be to all people." Luke 2:10
"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing..." Romans 15:13
The flowering herbs of the Origanum genus, which includes the familiar culinary herbs marjoram and oregano, have, throughout history and legend, represented Joy and Brightness.
Shout! As you journey home, / Songs be in every mouth...
- Charles Oakley
- Charles Oakley
"Peace I leave with you: my peace I give unto you... Let not your heart be troubled, nor fear." - John 14:27
"...and he shall call his name, Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God,
The everlasting Father, The Prince of peace." - Isaiah 9:6
The everlasting Father, The Prince of peace." - Isaiah 9:6
The Star of Bethlehem (Ornithogalum umbellatum) represents Peace and Purity. Legend has it that, once the magi arrived in Bethlehem and found Christ, the star that had led them there burst into innumerable pieces and fell all over the world. Everywhere a fragment fell a tiny white flower grew, and they've been blooming every spring since.
"... Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." - Hebrews 11:1
"You are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long." - Psalm 25:5
The Iris has, throughout history, symbolized Hope and Valor.
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"... Be the Goal of my pilgrimage, and my Rest by the way.
Let my soul take refuge from the crowding turmoil of worldly thoughts
beneath the shadow of Your wings ..."
Let my soul take refuge from the crowding turmoil of worldly thoughts
beneath the shadow of Your wings ..."
- St. Augustine
The leaves on the ground are still light enough in color, and still resting on the surface of the soil before mingling with it, so that they seem to glow in this evening light. The pale ground-cover is illuminated, and illuminates by reflection the stark grey trunks of the trees that stand against a soft darkening sky. The stone-floored creek bank is a black gash through the fallen leaves. I'm back in the woods at home. It feels a cathedral of sorts, here in these woods where my thoughts have lived, and I am off on a thoughtful walk down old and familiar paths.
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods...
- Childe Harold, Lord Byron
Only last week the end of the garden's tomatoes and peppers came in before the first hard frost. It seems rather miraculous - fresh produce on Thanksgiving! But today the air is brisk and almost sharp. Winter has ceased its hesitation on the doorstep of the year, it has blown wide the door in a chilly blast, and is ready to take up residence in earnest.
The rose bushes, adorned with bright red hips, are taller than me, and they catch in my hair as I scramble up the long steep bank, towards a pasture just tinged with evening light. The cow paths are narrow but well-traveled and clear. A little turtle shell is on the edge of one of them, almost disappearing as it blends into the fallen leaves. A rabbit scurries out of my path, its tail a flash of bright white in the greys and browns of this wintery evening.
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There's a gust of cold, clear, earth-scented air at the top of the hill, but the cows are grazing nonchalantly, unconcerned by the racket I've made in the crunching leaves. The clouds in the barely lit sky run like streaks of paint across a textured wall of grey, their undersides all soaked in gold. The sun is setting quickly and the light is all in the sky, the earth in peaceful dimness.
| I must get out to the woods again, to the whispering trees and the birds awing, Away from the haunts of pale-faced men, to the spaces wide where strength is king; I must get out where the skies are blue and the air is clean and the rest is sweet, Out where there’s never a task to do or a goal to reach or a foe to meet.  |  I must get out on the trails once more that wind through shadowy haunts and cool, Away from the presence of wall and door, and see myself in a crystal pool; I must get out with the silent things, where neither laughter nor hate is heard, Where malice never the humblest stings and no one is hurt by a spoken word. |
- The Call of the Woods, Edgar Guest
Now to traipse down again, a gentler slope this time, pocked with armadillo holes and tangled in low-growing blackberry shrubs. Down under the giant, dying tulip poplar that has seen more life than I ever will. Down over the low boggy patch where the underground spring peers out at the surface world. Tumbling down the spongy grass, carefully down the cascading gravel, down to a ledge where you can pause a moment. It's perfectly flat, and there's a tree that you can lean on to look down to the cluster of buildings below. The windows of the house are bright, an outside light twinkles, welcoming and homely. As I get closer I smell wood smoke, and the dark air almost seems warmer, because it smells warm. The sun has well and truly set now, the world is dark, and the friendly windows glow.
- The Road Through the Woods, Rudyard Kipling |  |
It's a dusky sort of morning, and the crickets are confused. A trilling frog is in the tree in front of me - I wonder if it is so dark in the depths of those branches that he thinks the sun is still quite low on the morning horizon. Perhaps Dawn has yet to lift her head and stretch her rosy fingers towards the drowsy thoughts of little living things. But no! A sunbeam has found the little singer through the fir needles, and he is silent. I don't know why the morning seems so dim. The sky above me has few clouds, the patches of blue are bright, but the world here below is dusted in gray.
It is enough - / To smell, to crumble the dark earth,
While the robin sings over again / Sad songs of Autumn mirth.
- Edward Thomas, Digging (1)
Summer lingered this year. Every time I think it must be time to pull up the tomatoes and zinnias, I bring in an armload so beautiful and abundant that, though the soil is cold as I plant winter seeds and I'm wearing a sweater as I water most mornings, I simply cannot say goodbye to summer. In this year's garden, it seems that each late summer fruit is the color of autumn leaves, so, as the foliage has gone, or is going, mostly straight from green to brown this fall, still the yellows and rusts and reds and pumpkin oranges that some years are in the trees, are in this year's fruits and flowers.
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But autumn, though sometimes hiding, is well and truly here. Each day the air sharpens, the leaves moulder, the days shorten. What is it about this season that stirs contradictions? In every chill morning gray there is a call to adventure, in every soft evening amber there is an invitation home. October always seems the time to begin something new, almost more than spring, I think. In May the call of the outdoors is impossible to resist, and the bustle of possibility and planting and blooming and daylight abundance is so all-consuming and vibrant that there is simply no time or need to plan or to think that you might be accomplishing some great task.
But October beckons us to wander. It is a time that wakens the mind, that pulls us out of the daily routine that has so beautifully fallen into place through the summer, and instills a hunger for greatness and wonder and change. Even little changes - the beginning of a new book in the extra hour of evening darkness, the rerouting of a morning walk to find those particular acorns with caps that look trimmed in fur - these are full of greatness and wonder. One has to wander in October, and make time to cultivate mighty thoughts, for these will be our companions through the winter, when the hummingbirds and crickets and flurry of garden beauty is vanished awhile.
There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;
We must rise and follow her,
When from every hill of flame
She calls and calls each vagabond by name.
- Bliss Carman, Vagabond Song
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With last weeks' rain the grass has begun to green. After a summer of crispness and brown, it is lush again at last, just in time to don the first frost. I am back in the Greenhouse garden now, seeds are ripening all around me, each so different, from morning glories in their paper wrappers, to calendula in curling clusters, (each seed looks rather like an octopus' tentacle, I've always thought), and even the giant Osage oranges I found on my walk this morning, brightly scented and brain-shaped, filled with a hundred future thorny hedges. If that doesn't make one marvel I don't know what can.
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We live our lives in unknowns. Perhaps this autumn in particular, as confusions and uncertainties in country and culture burrow into my thoughts, co-opt them and turn them from faith, hope, constancy. A honey bee is going from bloom to blossom in the lemony nasturtium beside me, disappearing for an instant, then clumsily backing out to the fragile petals. His fat pollen sacks almost glow bright orange. The hum of crickets and the tree frog's chirrup has begun again - it is evening.
We were created in a world of patterns. Isn't that a beautiful thing? The bees will retire to their hives in a few weeks and hide until March. I will be a committed homebody again by Thanksgiving. The tree frogs will be silent until May. But now, at this precise moment, they sing. The gardens shout their last colorful hurrah. The misty roads whisper tales of adventure to my nomad heart. Perhaps October is a reminder to hold fast to the constants, and delight with patience in the transients. For we are very little creatures in a very wide world, after all. Thank God for that.
So come, sweet October / All this will come together
Sunsets in sweet October skies...
- Aoife Scott, Sweet October
Is there a better way to spend a late summer evening, than by reading in the grass? I cannot think of one, except perhaps to spend it reading in the grass with people I love.
There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make men rejoice.
- John Calvin
The days are growing shorter here, but the evenings still are long. The grass is green and soft beneath the trees, despite the drought, and the first wisps of something like autumnal scents are in the air. It's the scent of the low sun on green leaves, the smell of a warmth that engulfs but doesn't stifle. We've gathered in this grass and late-light to read aloud - a short story that makes us laugh, a poem that makes us think, a memory of early summer that makes us smile, a prayer that makes us ponder, a familiar line from a novel that we all quote and listen to simultaneously. It is restful here in the grass.
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-Emily Dickinson, The Grass |
The low-angle sunbeams make the gnats in their morphing amoeba look like sparks, dancing. Even the dust when we shake out the picnic blanket looks beautiful and fairyish in this light. Perhaps it is because the words we've read this evening have awakened our minds more fully to the splendor of the ordinary. Perhaps it's because reading, in nature, with companionship is quite a powerful way to bridge the created and the Divine. I really do mean it truly, I cannot think of a better way to spend a late summer's evening than in the grass, with a friend, and a book.
Pride of trees, / Swiftness of streams,
Magic of frost / Have shaped our dreams.
- Eiluned Lewis, from 'Dew on the Grass'
It's windy at my thoughtful spot, truly windy after several weeks becalmed. It's the sort of wind that makes you realize just how accustomed you've grown to the stillness. Stillness in the air is a beguiling thing, a nourishing thing, it is restful and sleepy, and gives permission, somehow, for everything around it to be still too, to be easy. The seedlings grow straight at the sun, effortlessly, without dancing to the wind's rhythm; the birds plot their course from tree to roofline without hindrance from a passing current; small fledglings perch on thin branches, their balance unchallenged by a visiting breeze; and my bike routes are free of headwinds, yet unenlivened by tailwinds. Even thoughts themselves seem to slumber sometimes in the stillness, or perhaps to just step comfortably along from daily duties to daily delights, happy and hobbitish, without much concern for meandering down rabbit trails, or delving into definitions, or racing through possibilities. But stillness cannot last forever. Today the wind has returned, and now I realize just how much I missed it.
I saw you toss the kites on high /And blow the birds about the sky;
And all around I heard you pass, / Like ladies' skirts across the grass--
O wind, a-blowing all day long, / O wind, that sings so loud a song!
- Robert Louis Stevenson, The Wind
Despite a lengthy dry season, the zinnias are in a tremendous bloom. Their colors are gloriously varied, orange blooms with tinges of blush in the center, pink petals with plum-brushed tips, and gradient sunbeams of peaches and yellows. Each blossom is completely different, even when blooming on the same plant, it's marvelous.
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The rich meadow-grass seemed that morning of a
freshness and a greenness unsurpassable.
- Kenneth Grahame, Wind in the Willows
While watering the other day I had to laugh at the determination of these flowers. A generous handful are blooming, not in the flower bed where they were planted, but from fallen seeds that have sprung up through cracks in the pavement. The plants in the carefully prepared and watered bed were struggling in the heat and dryness, their heads drooped and leaves furled in on themselves. But the stout little volunteers in the pavement, unwatered but courageous, grew with stems straight and heads held high, heedless of drought and sun.
Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have
always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.
- Henry James, quoted by Edith Wharton in A Backward Glance
Then last night the rain came. The first heavy rainfall in over a month washed all complacency from the air, and all those smudges that you never know are on the window glass until you wash it have suddenly vanished from the face of the world. The day is still in its cooler hours as I write, all green and lively, and it is back into this clean, refreshed world that the wind has come. Lusty and glad, with those slowly building breezes that seem lazy at first and then turn into great gusty billows that soar through open windows to slam doors shut and send papers sailing from desk to floor. It starts as a coolness on the back of your neck and then fairly bowls you over in a wild crosswind, gleefully including you in its return to the still world. It's intermittent now, like an ocean breeze. If I close my eyes perhaps I can smell the sea, perhaps this wind has been there, before it visited me.
Listen! The wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves...
- Humbert Wolfe, Autumn Resignation
The leaves on every tree are turning backflips, and an odd little crowd of carpenter bees appear to be hovering in midair as they wend their way directly into a sturdy wind. It flies back and forth through this space where I sit, as though bringing thoughts and ideas from its travels, dropping them in my lap and then running off laughing to find new ones, a childish zephyr sharing simple treasures.
Burst into my narrow stall; / Swing the picture on the wall;
Run the rattling pages o'er; / Scatter poems on the floor;
Turn the poet out of door.
- Robert Frost, To the Thawing Wind
I've always loved southern summers. I love the humidity that adds just a touch of a curl to the straight flyaways in my hair, the warm evenings alive with bullfrogs and crickets in competitive chorus, the midsummer sunshine that burns through every cloud, and I do indeed love the stillness and the calmness and drowsiness of the world as it wades patiently through the warmth towards September. But stillness is not selfish, it lets the wind take its turn. And when the wind returns, even if only for a day, it's impossible to linger in the peaceful calm. One simply has to wake up.
I am going to see what the sky and the air are doing, and to hear the messages of wind and water from the hilltops.
- Bilbo, J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
The wrenlings fledged. They ventured out of the nest one morning and convened on the windowsill for an hour or so, until their tireless parents coaxed them into flight, and then into the sheltering security of the trees. I will miss them.
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Defer thy flight a moment still / To clean thy wing with careful bill.
And thou are feathered, thou art flown; / And hast a project of thine own.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay, The Fledgeling
And the little finch finally built her nest. She did, at last, change her tactics and decided to construct her little home in the asparagus fern, hanging in a basket just below the ledge she was so determined to make her foundation. Perhaps a fellow of her's, one with a greater dose of logic and a slimmer sense of romance, informed her that those perpetual efforts to build on the ledge were leaving the realm of virtuous perseverance and entering that of the infamous definition of insanity.
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Regardless, she has moved on with admirable adaptability and doesn't appear to regret it. In fact, she is currently chirruping in a scolding tone to three bald-headed, open-beaked, cacophonous young ones. I like to think she is feeling quite satisfied with life.
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There's a shift that happens in late April - the temperature of the air remains the same, but the temperatures of the breezes change. In early Spring they are chill and lively, they whisk in rain and mist and cool evenings and cause endless perplexity regarding the warmth of one's wardrobe. But by May Day they are warm and comfortable, peaceful movements of the air, as if it just wants to let you know every so often that it's there, and it likes you. That is the breeze that surrounds my thoughtful spot today.
| Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I: But when the trees bow down their heads, The wind is passing by. - Christina Rossetti, Who Has Seen The Wind? |  |
I sit on a deep old porch filled with ferns and birdsongs, where I've been watching the determined efforts of a house finch trying to build a nest. She is not the cleverest of her kind, it seems, as the ledge above the porch that she has chosen is barely an inch wide, and her construction materials seem to consist primarily of long, unwieldy lily leaves. Every time she balances two or three of the wily leaves on the ledge, our friendly breeze sends them sailing picturesquely earthward. Yet she persists. For three days now I have watched her steady efforts, and I have dearly wished she would consider other real estate. There's the stately spruce tree not four feet from where she's trying to build, or an old walnut just a little farther, and if she'd consider the other side of the street, which is just as lovely I'm sure, there's the deep quiet eves of a little brick church that are already home to at least one other of her compatriots. Yet she must build on her tiny ledge, she will persevere, and I rather love her for it.
 | “Hope” is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul - And sings the tune without the words - And never stops - at all - And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard - And sore must be the storm - That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm - - Emily Dickinson, “Hope” is the thing with feathers |
In a charming contrast to the risky architectural choices of the finches, a pair of wrens have constructed an avian hobbit hole deep in the geranium pot beside me. It's the coziest looking home I could imagine, and today I spied, deep in its soft cavern, three tiny, yellow beaks. Their little grumpy frowns are just barely visible in the shadows of the grass-woven cave, they seem the epitome of security and comfort in their little home.
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Spring drew on...and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning brighter traces of her steps.”
- Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
The honeysuckle and privet blooming season is in full swing, so even in the midst of town every breeze is laden with clear, sweet fragrance. I love the permeating power of honeysuckle, it isn't heady or perfumed, like a hyacinth, and it only takes a few of its pale, unassuming blooms to scent a room. Recently my evening meanderings have taken me to a hay field behind the school, a wide open field of ragweed and vetch in the middle of town that takes your breath away in the late afternoon light. Along the way there's a mulberry tree, (Morus rubra) covered with its odd red berries. I'm hoping to catch them at that precise moment when they've just turned ripe and black, but before the birds devour them all! It truly is the perfect story book tree, with its slender trunk and shaggy head of green that looks like it could be drawn in crayon curlicues, it makes me think of silk worms and travelers and ancient Chinese fairy tales. The single wizened hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) that I've found in town is shrouded now in heavy lace, and the yarrow is popping up in full bloom by the roadside, creamy patches of white in both the tree line and the grasses like little bits of ribbon embroidery, clusters of white French knots against ripples of green satin. The lushness of that green, the brightness of the blue sky, it all is just too giddily good! The companionable breezes follow me on a Thoughtful Walk, and I think May Day is a mite grand, don't you?
Don’t you know what that is? It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is.
And when you’ve got it, you want—oh, you don’t quite know what it is you DO want,
but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!
And when you’ve got it, you want—oh, you don’t quite know what it is you DO want,
but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!
- Make Twain, Tom Sawyer
The snow seems far behind us - today the air smells like Spring! Though I realize, theoretically, that there are still weeks of frosts and ice between me, sitting at my kitchen table on this February day, and the golden garden season, this sunshine is intoxicating and I am delighted by thoughts of green and growing things. It seems the little plants along my walk today share this preoccupation, for on this sunshiny day they are beginning to bloom...
Planting trees in early spring / We make a place for birds to sing
In days to come. How do we know? / They are singing there now.
- Wendell Berry
Daffodils are budding! Violets bloom! Sparks of brilliant yellow in the grass mark the center of hardy, rusty dandelion leaves (Taraxacum officinale). And my favorite, the creeping speedwell (Veronica filiformis), spreads its ethereal blue flowers over every walkway. These tiny blooms tumble in such happy abundance right under the feet of passersby, yet they never seem to be trampled or crushed, they just bloom on, contentedly.
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February brings the rain/ Thaws the frozen lake again...
- Sara Coleridge
This week had been one of steady rain and occasional bursts of sun. The last lingering snow drifts melted at last in the rain and now the springtime scent of very damp earth wafts through every open window. All in all, I cannot think of a more perfect day to discover in my mailbox this treat:
Flower seeds! And aren't those seed packets beautiful? Since moving to the Greenhouse, I have enjoyed finding walking paths around the town and you can imagine my excitement when, along a path by a creek, I discovered three large raised garden beds. They are prettily situated along the sidewalk, but have been empty for many years. Long abandoned, these sunny, brick lined beds are filled with moss and weeds and debris... but just look at that potential! So we've been mulling over how to plant these lovely flower beds in a way that would bring a bit of sunshine to the walkers and joggers and homes along this little path. Then an email arrived from the beautiful Floret Flowers offering a generous bundle of flower seeds to community flower gardens... and the idea solidified.
"Might I,” quavered Mary, “might I have a bit of earth? ... To plant seeds in—to make things grow—to see them come alive..."
- The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
Look at this empty bit of earth, then close your eyes and imagine it exploding with poppies, clouds of feverfew, dainty, breezy love-in-a-mist, perhaps a trellis of sweet peas, or creeping moss rose softening the brick corners. Can you see it? Over the next few weeks, we'll be working to reclaim these forgotten bits of earth and, with the delightful help of Floret's seeds, turn them into secret (or well-know!) gardens.
- Christina Rossetti |  |
The first daffodil bloom opened in the cemetery today, its ruffled trumpet lifted towards the sun. I'm doing my best to rein in my springtime enthusiasm, but I fear it will and must run wild until another frost dampens it for a time. Let's delight in this beamish light while it lingers. And let's rejoice in the promise of spring to come... as well as the rest of a few more wintery weeks.
A day like this is rare in this little corner of the earth, rare and precious. It began last night, in the gloaming, as the poem says. Isn't that a lovely word, gloaming? One that should be used more often, don't you think? So it began in the gloaming, and steadily the deep drifts grew, the sky turned from grey to dark to blinding white, and gradually every beautiful thing was softened and every ugly thing was smothered in sparkling mounds of snow. The woods are so peculiarly silent in snow, not a sleepy silence, but a wildly awake, silent, living jubilee. Every freezing gulp of air seems full of dancing diamonds that prickle your lungs and race through you until you, like the world around you, cannot help but sparkle.
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Today on my Thoughtful Walk I have experienced snow in a new way - a snowy town. Never before have I lived so near a town during a snow fall that I could walk into it, straight down the center of unplowed roads. And oh, it's a jolly sight! Only a few other bold wanderers are out and about, and in each one there's a spark of goodwill and gaiety and a hearty greeting that just warms one's heart towards one's neighbors in a very pleasant way. The storefronts are dark and the roads are unburdened by traffic, and, with very little imagination needed, this little town has returned to a bygone age, and I feel the slightest touch of sorrow at the realization that it cannot remain there.
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| I'm always astounded, when the snow falls, at the animal tracks that can be found. Whether deep in the woods or on my doorstep, the world of the little creatures, that scurry about their daily lives unnoticed when the ground is hard, is suddenly visible in the snow. Dainty bird prints cover my step with zig-zagged patterns beneath the pine cone bird feeders. I found the tiny hand-prints of a raccoon crossing a log that fell across the creek, the heart-like prints of dozens of deer meandering in the old cemetery, and the widely spaced hopping prints of a rabbit. The one that made me smile the most was the wide, deep trail of a duck's webbed feet, which led to the duck herself, sitting quite perplexedly on a frozen pond. |  |
Thus, having prepared their buds / against a sure winter
the wise trees / stand sleeping in the cold.
- Winter Trees, William Carlos Williams
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Spring green still glows beneath the white, in a patch of watercress (Nasturtium officinale) still vibrant in a half-frozen creek, or a soft moss cushion clinging to a snow covered stone. At home fragrant narcissus are blooming against my frosty window panes, reveling in the light while protected from the cold. All around me new life seems eager to emerge, but spring must wait its turn today. Today is for peaceful exuberance and wintery good cheer. Today is The Snowy Day.
The way a crow |  |
It has been far too long since I sat down in this online thoughtful spot. This has not been for want of thoughts, or places to think them in, but rather for want of direction for this little page. It has stayed consistent to recording the same place for a year, it has travelled around a continent, across an ocean, and returned home. But, as both BlossomArts and I moved over the past months to a new home, The Greenhouse, it seemed only fitting that the Thoughtful Spot should move there too.
Green is the grass / and the leaves on the trees;
Green is the smell / of a country breeze...
- Mary O'Neill, What is Green?
The Greenhouse is a happy little place with a green kitchen big enough to house friends, abundant cuttings rooting on the windowsills and a potted garden in the back that looks out over an expanse of grass and old trees, and is valiantly trying to provide me with herbs despite a few too many hours in the summer sun. There is a heavy summer rain falling as I write, and yet again I am called to marvel at God's graciousness in providing this little house, for among it's many cheery virtues, it has wide windows that let the sunshine in, and deep eves that allow those windows to remain open even when it's pouring. So today I sit at an indoor thoughtful spot for once, at a green table in a green kitchen with the sweet scent of rain on earth that needs it wafting through the wide open windows.
Who loves a garden loves a greenhouse too...
There blooms exotic beauty, warm and snug,
While the winds whistle and the snows descend
- William Cowper, The Garden
It is my prayer that at this kitchen table strangers will become friends, and that from here BlossomArts will grow, from here our cheery gatherings of herb craft will be recorded, and from here many future Thoughtful Spots will be written. And so, while I'm quite sure there will be occasional wanderings to Thoughtful Spots far and wide, I am delighted to be able to welcome you today to The Greenhouse. Come and be welcome, herbal chums!
...a great welcome makes a merry feast.
- Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors
