 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, |
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. |
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"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
Well, I'm back. These golden woods are home, and it is good to be among them once again. I wonder if sometimes the greatest adventure is the return from a journey, the homecoming. And what a perfect season to return to! The world is aglow with golden browns and oranges and greens, the familiar carpet of bermuda grass and clover is soft underfoot on these dwindling Indian summer days, and crisp with frost in these chilly autumn mornings.
Every traveler has a home of his own, and he learns to appreciate it the more from his wandering.
- Charles Dickens
| There is tremendous satisfaction in slowly planting each footstep in a familiar hollow. I hear the grasses swish, the dried wild mint rattle and hiss, the brown and gold and auburn leaves crunch with every step. There's the friendly chatter of crickets, a steady trilling hum that I have missed, and the spurts of familiar bird song - cardinals, house wrens, the hollow drilling of a woodpecker. I can smell wood smoke from my thoughtful spot today, and slowly composting leaves, and the warm scent of sunshine on damp moss. The maple by the back door is splendid gold, and its ivy covered trunk, the darkest of indigo greens, makes the most beautiful contrast. I love this mingling of the transient and the evergreen. It's a bit like home and me - the one |  |
constant and ever-present, the other touched by changing seasons, relishing the life-giving constancy for a while, then flying from the branches. Someday I, too, hope to root myself into the bark of some old tree and trade my golden deciduous adventures for the evergreeness of home.
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I've rediscovered this year how exciting wild harvesting can be. The persimmons are ripe and falling from the tree by the basketfull, sweeter now after a few frosts. It's an incredible thing to gather these odd and uninspiring little fruits from the ground, and know that they will add their peculiar spice and citrus flavor and host of healthful benefits to a multitude of breads and pies and scones. A smattering of very early frost flowers have appeared over the last few mornings, the surest herald of winter.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers - / That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words - / And never stops - at all -
- Emily Dickinson
| But best of all, this homely Thoughtful Spot is filled with chatter, laughter, and the family who, far more than my beloved woods, make this little corner of Middle Tennessee my home. And though I know they have heard over and again all my stories of how exciting and different these wandering thoughtful spots have been over the past months, they listen to me generously. I marvel at how far away and wonderful those places now seem, and at how real and vibrant is this present moment. |  |
I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.
- Herman Melville, Moby Dick
It's a dangerous business, going out one's door, you never know where you might be swept off to... this year I've been swept off to many a thoughtful spot, and seen many a wonder, and walked Providential paths that I wouldn't trade for anything. But on this sunny day of a fleeting September I know for sure that it's this thoughtful spot at home, and those who share it with me, that will always hold my heart.
I'm sitting here with the splendid beams of a late summer sunset spreading across my page, and a raging wind billowing in from the sea. This little bench is a thoughtful spot I have visited frequently over the past month, but this evening is the last time I will see it awash with gloaming light, I am leaving the Channel Islands tomorrow. The ocean is all aglitter. As I've explored this tiny island it seems to me that the sea, not the land, has the greatest character here. It rushes into caves, plays around great monoliths, warms itself on sun-baked black pebbles, and ensures that there is never really silence, it is always crashing and chattering just a stone's throw away.
But there are other companions here at my thoughtful spot this evening, besides the happy sea and the regal light, there are those most homely and peculiarly comforting of creatures, the cows. They meander and mumble and lift their long-lashed eyes as I pass by, contemplatively. They are gentle, and they make me think of home.
God made the petreous rocks, the arboreal trees...
The movements of the sea, the wind in boughs,
green grass, the large slow oddity of cows...
- J. R. R. Tolkien, Mythopoiea
The gorse (Ulex europaeus) is blooming here and there, little golden clusters on ferociously prickled shrubs. Those who have lived here for years have told me that, no matter what the season, the gorse is always in bloom, even in the midst of rainy, icy winters, or windy, late summer droughts like this one, at least one or two sunny flowers can be found. No one today seems to think of gorse blossoms as a wild edible and there is very little information about its potential uses, or potential dangers. But an old wildflower guide claims that gorse flowers and buds, tinctured in vinegar, are an effective remedy for coughs and sniffles, and have a pleasant flavor of vanilla and almonds.
When Gorse is out of blossom, then kissing is out of fashion...
- Old Cornish Proverb
Another fiercely thorned shrub grows in abundance around this thoughtful spot, the wild blackthorn (Prunus spinosa). Just now it is covered in powdery blue sloes, and local residents are excitedly planning the making of sloe gin to be ready in time for Christmas celebrations. Though folklore surrounding this angry-looking plant is often ominous, the sloes have been a wild-harvest staple for centuries, and studies have shown that they are anti-inflammatory, support healthy digestion, soothe sore throats, and ease winter colds and flus. Fairies are said to live in both these wild, windswept shrubs, kindly little folk among the sunshine-colored blossoms, and mischievous ones perched on the sharp blackthorns.
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Mountain blossoms, shining blossoms, / Do ye teach us to be glad
When no summer can be had, / Blooming in our inward bosoms?
Ye, whom God preserveth still, / Set as lights upon a hill,
Tokens to the wintry earth that Beauty liveth still!
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lessons from the Gorse
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The sea is gushing in frothy rivulets from the cliff-sides. As it tumbles back the surrounding water is actually turquoise, an almost unearthly color that no photograph can capture. Its roar is deafening and cheering, frightening and friendly at once. The wind is strong, but it's odd how an ocean wind feels so different from that wind on the moors only a few short months ago. Here it is gustier, unpredictable, less constant and persistent. I leave this thoughtful spot tomorrow, and I will miss this sea. But there is oh so much joy in the prospect of returning soon to a more familiar corner of this glorious creation...
I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
- John Masefield, Sea Fever
Many have thought in this Thoughtful Spot. Great minds have pondered wondrous things beneath this old London plane tree (Platanus hispanica). Somehow I think their thoughts have lingered, and have changed this place. Is that possible, I wonder - can the thoughts, conversations, ideas seep into the fiber of a place and leave some vestige of their power when the thinkers have long since gone? I doubt it, yet my imagination likes it so. And if ever there were a place to make one believe such a thing, it is this place.
I wonder anyone does anything at Oxford but dream and remember.
- William Butler Yeats
...that peculiar air of Oxford -
the air of liberty to care for the things of the mind...
- Henry James
The sky is grey with patches of brilliant white, the wind is gusty and hale, as though glad to be at work in such a beautiful place. Beside my little bench is a weather-worn limestone pillar, and dancing over it is a wisteria tree (Wisteria sinensis). It's the sort of wisteria that only exists in very old places, with a trunk that rivals a young oak, and branches that spread and cling to four storeys worth of stone. It is in the midst of a summer bloom, a gentler display than the spring abundance of purple, these drooping blossoms hide among long tendrils of leaves. Those tendrils look as though they intend to ensnare passersby, or at the very least peer into windows uninvited.
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All that is gold does not glitter/Not all who wander are lost...
- J.R.R. Tolkien
A magpie scampers across the grass in front of me, and two ravens strut by. Could it be they enjoy smugly walking across that grass that students' steps may not touch? Magpies are beautiful creatures, blue-black and purest white, they seem to sparkle in the sunlight. And the sunlight is brilliant now, for the wind has driven the grey sky away. The banks of the water are alive with goldenrod (Solidago canadensis) and blue woodland phlox (Phlox divaricata), and cattails (Typha latifolia) bob placidly along the path. The bells have rung, all out of time and characterful. Jagged, cross-tipped spires reach for heaven, towering cross-tipped spruces reach beside them. Ancient ivies and climbing hydrangea (Hydrangea anomala) hide man's handiwork with God's, granting these stones a harmony with creation, and a sense of belonging in these woods and fields. It is a strange, nostalgic, contemplative place. Will my thoughts, too, linger here, waiting to be reclaimed?
The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing... to find the place where all the beauty came from...
- C. S. Lewis
Magdalen College, Oxford
There is a wild wind here on my Thoughtful Walk, but not the sort that heralds a storm or threatens a change. It’s a constant, steady wind, the sort that shapes trees over years, bending them into fluid shapes, the sort that races into your lungs with every breath you take, and makes the grasses with their filigree seed heads ripple like the marks left in the sand of a gentle shoreline. I’m in love with the moor.
It’s been raining most of the day, which has been just right. I was thinking a moment ago that this place would not be right in the sun, it’s so gloriously alive in the rain and mist. But then the sun came out, and it was like a new world had been lowered down for a moment and swallowed this one in one gulp, then it was gone again. The sunlight is resting on a distant hilltop for a instant, racing now across the land, here for a fleeting breath, then off again. The cloud's shadows whisk the light along, but never for more than a moment or two, it always returns.
And the peace which I always found in the silence and emptiness of the moors filled me utterly.
- James Herriot
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One or two fireweed torches (Chamaenerion angustifolium) are just beginning to bloom, fields of them are in bud. Between those blooms and the heather (Calluna vulgaris), I imagine these moors will be a sea of pinks and purples in a month. Birds whose names I do not know squabble among the ripening wild blueberries, and the wind-sculpted hawthorn trees (Crataegus monogyna) are covered in green berries. The clouds are low, or perhaps the land is high and closer to them, yet they do not settle as dreamy mists in the hollows and dells as I would have expected. These clouds alternately float and race just over my head, like an ever-changing roof of painted greys.
... A lonely moor / silent and dark and tractless swells,
The waves of some wild streamlet pour / hurriedly through its ferny dells.
- Charlotte Brontë
Stone walls and old stone homes are etched into this land, not built upon it. They cut, in beautiful disorder, through the coarse, sponge-like grass, through the sturdy heather, through the deepest imaginable moss, all the way down to the sandy soil beneath. It looks as though these stone structures have grown out of that soil.
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So sweet, so soft, so hushed an air;/And, deepening still the dream-like charm,
Wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere. /That was the scene, I knew it well;
I knew the turfy pathway's sweep,/That, winding o'er each billowy swell,
Marked out the tracks of wandering sheep.
- Charlotte Brontë
This is a place of contradictions, or perhaps of an odd balance. The vastness and the wind gives a sense of wildness, yet somehow the clouds and the little hollows make it feel sheltered, and homely. The land looks untamed, yet sheep graze it placidly. Tufts of wool are caught in the grasses, self heal (Prunella vulgaris) dots its bright purple face among great swaths of nettles (Urtica dioica). The horizon seems limitless, and strangely reachable.
I’m in familiar forests today. A trail that I’ve walked several times before is just visible amidst a jungle-like chaos of weeds and wildflowers and undergrowth, the river is misty and lazy down a cliff on one side of the path and a canopy of green and birdsongs overhead obscures the sky, but not the sunlight. And best of all, I’m not wandering this thoughtful spot on my own. Chattering along the trail before and behind are my family, the best people to share in a thoughtful walk.
Flowers were the sun and fiery spots of sky strewn through the woodland.
-Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
Countless daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare) bloom along the way, and purple explosions of wild bee balm (Monarda fistulosa) are dotted in little clusters. That surest scent of spring, the perfect harmony of moss, wild privet, and honeysuckle are in the air. All three plants line this trail in abundance, the viney honeysuckle (Lonicera periclymenum) and privet shrubs (Ligustrum vulgare) almost touch across the path above my head, creating an archway of flowers. I wish I could blend a perfume of that scent!
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And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
Indian Pinks (Spigelia marilandica) in yellow and scarlet pop up here and there, tucked in little rocky crevices rocking into the steep slopes or in between the gnarly roots of old trees. And Mum has made a new wildflower discovery- a small bell-shaped bloom on a vine, perfectly shaped with thick yellow petals turned back at the tips like a fuchsia, in the loveliest shade of pink. It’s a wild clematis variety, (Clematis pitcheri) and not a very common one. Its vine and leaves look similar to its cultivated relatives, but its unique blossom, with thick, sturdy petals, give it the common name Leatherflower.
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…there are so many things that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring there is a different green.
- J. R. R. Tolkien
At home the first day lilies are blooming, the roses are just passing their prime, and the vibrant green of early summer is beginning to overtake the land. I’m glad to be returning there when I leave this thoughtful spot. It is good to turn my steps towards home for a while, and delight in the familiar companionship of family. Particularly as my next Thoughtful Spot will be very far away indeed…
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It's Spring. Full-blown, gleeful Spring. I've found a field today, off of a little trail that has been the site of many a pleasant walk. I've no idea who the property belongs to, and I'm not entirely sure if I'm supposed to be here or not, but here I am, nestled in a clover patch, delighting in the reassuring excitement of a friendly, familiar sun.
... April, dressed in all his trim,/Hath put a spirit of youth in everything.
- Shakespeare, Sonnet 98
There are few delights comparable to laying in an un-mown field of spring grass. No stalk is grown enough to be prickly or uncomfortable, and the tiniest of flowers are hiding beneath the Johnson grass and clover. There are wild strawberries, and violet wood sorrel (Oxalis violacea), and the first of the dovesfoot cranesbill (Geranium molle), and two dainty Venus looking glass stems (Triodanis perfoliata). And the world looks so wide and different from this grassy vantage, I imagine this is how the little rabbit I passed on my way here might look at this field. Isn't it odd how we tend to love the idea that we have the ability to see the world the way birds do, yet we rarely stop to look at it the way squirrels and rabbits do. Don't you think their view is quite lovely too?
Spring won’t let me stay in this house any longer! I must get out and breathe the air deeply again.
- Gustav Mahler
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While on the topic of quotidian joys, I must stop and praise the lovely experience of writing with a pencil. My pen fell out of my hair as I biked here, no doubt I'll find it on the path when I ride back, but until then I'm using the pencil that I found in the depths of my purse to write this, and am remembering how pleasing it is to write with a pencil, and feel lead instead of metal move smoothly across a page. A honeysuckle (Lonicera x bella) is blooming across the field. It's a cloud of white and yellow blossoms, with slender trumpet throats and that unmatchable scent they simply can't contain, it must leap out of those trumpets and flood the air with fragrance. And in the very middle of this field blooms a single, shockingly yellow ragwort (Jacobaea vulgaris). I'm tempted to pick it, yet it stands so tall and proud I think I should leave it be. Oh and the cornflowers! (Centaurea cyanus) What a color! Of all blue flowers, they must be the truest blue, like late afternoon skies without a cloud in sight, the color of an indigo bunting when the light hits the feathers just so.
Tiny green aphids crawl across my page and onto the magenta bud of a vetch flower (Vicia americana). I love it when the vetch begins to bloom. Though I hear the sounds of heavy equipment nearby as work proceeds on a new highway that I fear will cut far too close to this wild haven, the sound of the wind in the trees is louder, and the chatter of birds and squabble of squirrels is nearer, and I am grateful this haven exists. The mundane and the spectacular of creation thrive together in this thoughtful spot, awaiting marvelers. What a perfect gift is spring.
