Friday Ramble - Splendor/Splendour

Splendor...... The word is an old one dating from the fifteenth century at the very latest. It has its roots in the Latin splendēre, the late Middle English and the archaic French splendure, all meaning to shine - not to shine in a quiet or understated way, but to capture one's attention and hold it, bewitched and entranced.

Splendor is the first roses of the summer blooming in the garden behind the little blue house in the village - their color, their fragrance, their velvety dew-dappled texture a few minutes after sunrise, the rich cream at their verges moving through shades of rosy pink and apricot, inward to a perfect cupped golden heart.

Later, as the roses pause for breath in their exuberant blooming, splendor is the crinkly shell-pink of dancing poppies, the perfumed scarlet perfection of whole colonies of bergamot nodding along the old fence.

In July, my garden doesn't just shine or cultivate splendor - it dazzles.

Thursday Poem - Morning Prayers

I have missed the guardian spirit

of the Sangre de Cristos
those mountains
against which I destroyed myself
every morning I was sick
with loving and fighting
in those small years.
In that season I looked up
to a blue conception of faith
a notion of the sacred in
the elegant border of cedar trees
becoming mountain and sky.

This is how we were born into the world:
Sky fell in love with earth, wore turquoise,
cantered in on a black horse.
Earth dressed herself fragrantly,
with regard for the aesthetics of holy romance.
Their love decorated the mountains with sunrise,
weaved valleys delicate with the edging of sunset.

This morning I look toward the east
and I am lonely for those mountains
though I've said good-bye to the girl
with her urgent prayers for redemption.
I used to believe in a vision
that would save the people
carry us all to the top of the mountain
during the flood
of human destruction.

I know nothing anymore
as I place my feet into the next world
except this:
the nothingness
is vast and stunning,
brims with details
of steaming, dark coffee
ashes of campfires
the bells on yaks or sheep
sirens careening through a deluge
of humans
or the dead carried through fire,
through the mist of baking sweet
bread and breathing.

This is how we will leave this world:
on horses of sunrise and sunset
from the shadow of the mountains
who witnessed every battle
every small struggle.

Joy Harjo,
from How We Became Human

The Mead Moon of July

Sometimes the moon gifts you with her presence on fine summer nights, and then there are other evenings when you know she is shining up there somewhere beyond the dark clouds and rain, but she does not appear for the longing human eye. Last evening was one of those other times - it is turning out to be a remarkably wet and moderate summer here, and Lady Moon in all her radiant fullness could not be seen for even a moment, although we (Spencer and I) went hopefully out to the garden whenever the rain stopped.

Thankfully, we have the memories of other moons to engage our thoughts, and sometimes, our revisitations of other moons are so complete that we can see moonlight shining across the water, hear long ago waves lapping the shore, touching the silent reeds like a benediction, wrapping themselves around the long legs of herons wading in the shallows.

Last year at this time, my beautiful Cassie was here with me by my side, and we sang a haunting moon song with the timber wolves over the hill. There will never be another summer moon when I don't think of Aloha and Taylor, two beloved friends who passed away last July, and Cassie who followed them across the bridge into the next world a few weeks later.

We also know this moon as the: Black Cherries Moon, Blackberry Moon, Blessing Moon, Blood Moon, Blueberry Moon, Buck Moon, Claim Song Moon, Corn in Tassel Moon, Corn Moon, Corn Popping Moon, Crane Moon, Daisy Moon, Fallow Moon, Feather Molting Moon, Flying Moon, Grass Cutter Moon, Ground Burn Moon, Hay Moon, Holly Moon, Horse Moon, Humpback Salmon Return to Earth Moon, Hungry Ghost Moon, Index Finger Moon, Larkspur Moon, Lightning Moon, Little Harvest Moon, Little Heat Moon, Little Moon of Deer Horns Dropping off, Little Ripening Moon, Lotus Flower Moon, Manzanita Ripens Moon, Meadow Moon, Midsummer Moon, Middle of Summer Moon, Moon of Blood, Moon of Claiming, Moon of Claiming, Moon of Fledgling Hawk, Moon of Much Ripening, Moon of Ripeness, Moon of the Home Dance, Moon of the Horse, Moon of the Middle Summer, Moon of the Young Corn, Moon When Cherries Are Ripe, Moon When Ducks Begin to Moult, Moon When Limbs of Are Trees Broken by Fruit, Moon When People Move Camp Together, Moon When Squash Are Ripe and Indian Beans Begin to Be Edible, Moon When the Buffalo Bellows, Moon When the Chokecherries Begin to Ripen, Moon When the Wild Cherries Are Ripe, Mountain Clover Moon, Peaches Moon, Raspberry Moon, Red Berries Moon, Red Blooming Lilies Moon, Red Cherries Moon,, Return from Harvest Moon, Ripe Corn Moon, Ripe Moon, Ripening Moon, Rose Moon, Salmon Go up the Rivers in a Group Moon, Seventh Moon, Smokey Moon, Strawberry Moon,, Strong Sun Moon, Sun House Moon, Thunder Moon, Warming Sun Moon, Water Lily Moon, Wattle Moon, Wort Moon

Little Green Apples, Nuts and Baseball

Yesterday's potter along the wet hedgerows confirmed what I had begun to suspect - that the north is showing the first signs of waning sunlight and shorter days.

Apple, crab and plum trees are covered with the first small hard green fruits, and the same goes for nut trees like butternut, beech, hickory and walnut. Local squirrels are already collecting nuts for their winter larders, and there is hardly a butternut, beech, hickory or walnut to be seen anywhere, although the nuts are still far from their proper mature size - the top of each and every nut tree is filled with squirrels frantically gathering and storing the nutty bounty of the season for the winter to come.

Rain, rain, rain... We are enjoying one of the wettest summers on record, and it is perplexing to think that we already on our way toward autumn and the harvest, when it really does seem as though summer has not arrived here yet.

What does one do on rainy evenings when it is raining, and she must remain indoors rather than wandering around field and fen with Spencer, notebook and her camera? She pulls the draperies closed, lights a beeswax candle and makes a pot of tea, then pulls out a good book and evokes the golden summers of other places and other times. This week, I am reading (again) Michael Chabon's magnificent Summerland. He stirs up a heady magical brew in which baseball, fairies, Old Man Coyote and mythology go together perfectly. Tofu hot dog anyone?

Fairy Rose

Northern Crescent

Butterfly, Northern Crescent
(Phyciodes cocyta)

After the Rain

Hedge Bindweed or Wild Morning Glory
(Convolvulus sepium )

Bindweed is nasty stuff according to the vast majority of gardening tomes and gardeners - an ebullient, tenacious and invasive weed which should be uprooted from one's patch of greenery as soon as it appears. The flowers and vines are lovely to see though, intertwining their way through the hedges in the park and beaded with rain at sunrise.

As Spencer and I walked along this morning, we noticed that some of the Virginia creepers are acquiring a rosy hue. Our days are growing shorter now, and although there are still several weeks of good summer weather to come, autumn is on its way.

Friday Ramble - River

To trace the history of a river, or a raindrop, as John Muir would have done, is also to trace the history of the soul, the history of the mind descending and arising in the body. In both we constantly seek and stumble on divinity, which, like the cornice feeding the lake and the spring becoming a waterfall, feeds, spills, falls, and feeds itself over and over again.

Gretel Ehrlich, Sisters of the Earth

The journey of water is round, and its loss, too, moves in a circle, following us around the world as we lose something of such immense value that we do not yet even know its name.
Linda Hogan, Northern Lights, Autumn 1990

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.
Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It

The ancient Irish bards knew the Salmon of Knowledge as the giver of all life's wisdom. In the salmon's leap of understanding like a leap of faith, we can see ourselves "in our element," immersed in the river of life. The cycle of the salmon's journey reminds us that all rivers flow to the same sea.
Lynn Noel, Voyages: Canada's Heritage Rivers

I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.
John O'Donohue

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The words river and riparian share a common root emerging through the Middle English and Old French rivere, riviere, thence from the Latin ripa, rīpārius meaning "bank, or of the bank". Riparian is a lovely watery adjective and simply refers to someone or something located or dwelling on the bank of a river.

How does one write about rivers anyway? Like Norman Maclean, I am haunted by waters, so much so that it is difficult to write anything at all without getting all choked up and being carried away entirely. After writing the words, trying to tuck in a photo is an even greater problem. I pull out CD after CD of past travels, and I am somewhere on the bank of a great river again. In the stream of memories that bubble up from somewhere deep underground, choosing an image is almost impossible, and I sit here like an idiot gazing open-mouthed at the screen as the images roll by. Whatever I say here is going to be woefully inadequate, and I know it. Ditto the image or images...

I was born (or let loose) near the banks of the St. Lawrence, and it often seems to me that the songs of rivers great and small are the true music of my life: the roaring rivers of mountainous Algoma country on Lake Superior's wild north shore where I passed the happiest hours of my youth — the distant rivers of the far Canadian north wandering through the boreal forest — the deeply incised inky-blue rivers of the Lanark Highlands where I have spent so many years paddling, rambling and just sitting lost in riparian thoughts.

There are rivers running right through our lives, and if we are fortunate, we will come to know many during our earthly days: to understand their ancient language and cadence, sense their ebb and flow, plumb the mysteries of their currents and eddies, learn their rumbling chants and fluid harmonies — when we are so blessed, the canticles of the great rivers become the music of our journey. Listen, can you hear them?

Thursday Poem - Looking for Gold

A flavor like wild honey begins
when you cross the river. On a sandbar
sunlight stretches out its limbs, or is it
a sycamore, so brazen, so clean and so bold?
You forget about gold. You stare—and a flavor
is rising all the time from the trees.
Back from the river, over by a thick
forest, you feel the tide of wild honey
flooding your plans, flooding the hours
till they waver forward looking back. They can’t
return; that river divides more than
two sides of your life. The only way
is farther, breathing that country, becoming
wise in its flavor, a native of the sun

William Stafford, Looking for Gold
from The Way it Is: New and Selected Poems
(Grey Wolf Press 1998)

Wordless Wednesday - Ripening