Friday Ramble - Atomy

This week's word comes to us from the Middle English attome, the Latin atomus and the Greek atomos: a- (not) plus -tomos (divided), tomos hailing from the Indo-European temnein meaning to cut. Kindred words (of course) are atom, atomism and atomic, epitome and (not so obviously), tome which now refers to a book or a volume of reading material but once meant simply something cut or carved from a larger entity. Synonyms include corpuscle, mote, particle, speck, molecule and grain, as in "a grain of sand" or "a grain of sugar".

An atomy is a tiny part of something, a minute particle. Scientists once thought atoms were the smallest units of the known physical universe: dense, central, positively charged nuclei circled by electrons whirling around in ecstatic orbit. Complete within themselves, they were thought to be irreducible and indivisible except for constrained processes of removal or transfer or the exchange of component electrons.

Physicists now think the much smaller quark is the fundamental element of creation. Named after a word coined by James Joyce in Finnegan's Wake, quarks come in six eccentric flavors: up, down, charm, strange, bottom and top. Up and down quarks are the most common, coming together to form composite particles like the protons and neutrons in the heart of atoms. Surprise, surprise, everything happens in threes, and three is my favourite number. A proton is composed of two up quarks and one down quark, a neutron one up quark and two down quarks. Other quarks (charm/strange, top/bottom) have no function in the universe as we know it, but they played an important role as it was coming into being. These other quarks become up and down quarks as they decay and take their rightful place within atoms.

Atomies come to mind when I awaken, as I have this morning, to leaden skies and rain on the roof beating staccato time without reference to meter or metronome, to a puckish wind capering in the eaves and ruffling tiny green leaves and buds in the garden like tangy decks of playing cards, to drifting fog wrapping the old trees, rooflines and chimneys in the village.

Every raindrop (or dewdrop) out in the garden this morning is an atomy, a minute complete world teeming with vibrant life. Within each is a whole magical universe looking up and smiling at this ungainly creature bent over in wonder with a camera in her hand. Either that or the little dears are recoiling in dismay. I won't ever get a handle on using my macro lens to its full potential, but its loving eye is teaching me how to look at the world in new ways, and that is a fine thing to be sure.

Thursday Poem - An April Night

The moon comes up o'er the deeps of the woods,
And the long, low dingles that hide in the hills,
Where the ancient beeches are moist with buds
Over the pools and the whimpering rills;

And with her the mists, like dryads that creep
From their oaks, or the spirits of pine-hid springs,
Who hold, while the eyes of the world are asleep,
With the wind on the hills their gay revellings.

Down on the marshlands with flicker and glow
Wanders Will-o'-the-Wisp through the night,
Seeking for witch-gold lost long ago
By the glimmer of goblin lantern-light.

The night is a sorceress, dusk-eyed and dear,
Akin to all eerie and elfin things,
Who weaves about us in meadow and mere
The spell of a hundred vanished Springs.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

Wordless Wednesday - Early Morning Rain

Spring Makes An Appearance

Skies are cloudy, and a gentle rain is falling outside the windows. Beau and I are doing tea and listening to raindrops hitting the roof of the garden shed in a fine staccato rhythm, to the last clumps of snow falling off the peaked rooflines of nearby houses. The watery motifs of two seasons are rolled into one this soggy morning.

Mr. B. does not care much for wet weather, and he is curled up in a corner of the sofa, grumbling. He does, however, appreciate a fine puddle, and there are lagoons in the village deep enough and wide enough for him to swim around in circles. That will cheer him up immensely when we go out for a walk later.

A murmuration of starlings is hanging out in the cedar hedge, and the wily birds are pretending they are something else entirely, cardinals, robins, house finches, song sparrows. What is wrong with just being a starling? A few robins are back, and they have been visiting the garden this week. At sunrise, one was perched high in the ash in the corner, singing his (or her) pleasure in the day and calling for more rain.

Perhaps it is time for a new wreath on the front door, something with sprigs of pussy willow, tulips or eggs (fake of course) in pastel colours. Rain or no, a graceful nod to the season and a small ritual gesture of some sort are called for. 

Perhaps I can finally lug the heavy tub of ice melter in from the veranda? On second thought, I think I will wait for a week or two. 

Sequestered, 347 (CCCXLVII)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment. 

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Returning, Little By Little

Friday Ramble - Homecoming

First come jubilant skeins of of geese flying in from the south and singing their return, then ducks splashing about in the melted alcoves of local rivers and streams. There is a whole lot of happy quacking in roadside ditches and puddles.

A single heron perches on the frozen shore of Dalhousie Lake and wonders why on earth she has come home so early in the season. Trumpeter swans and loons will not return for weeks, until there is more open water.

On the Two Hundred Acre Wood, there are larks and killdeer, beaky snipe and woodcock, a handful of plucky robins, the graceful "v" shapes (dihedrals) of turkey vultures soaring majestically over the trees and rocks and rocking effortlessly back and forth in their flight. From below, the light catches their silvery flight feathers and dark wing linings, and the great birds are as magnificent as any eagle.

A solitary goshawk perches in a bare tree on the hill, and a male harrier describes perfect, languid circles over the western field. Both birds are hungry after their long journey north, and they train their fierce yellow eyes on the artfully frosted field below, always on the lookout for a good meal.

This morning, a male cardinal is singing his heart out in the ash tree in the garden, and an unidentified warbler lifts its voice somewhere in the darkness.

Even the weather foretold for this day will be a friend.

Thursday Poem - Return

Through the weeks of deep snow

we walked above the ground

on fallen sky, as though we did

not come of root and leaf, as though

we had only air and weather

for our difficult home

But now

as March warms, and the rivulets

run like birdsong on the slopes,

and the branches of light sing in the hills,

slowly we return to earth.

Wendell Berry

Wordless Wednesday - In the Pink

Potted Tulips, Crocus Thoughts

Winter's continued presence in the village and the woods of the eastern Ontario highlands is not entirely unforeseen — one can reasonably expect the long white season to lurk in the shadows and make surprise appearances until late April at the earliest, sometimes well into May. This far north, Winter delights in stealth tactics, and one must be prepared. I remember a not so long ago year when storms and killing frost wiped out our newborn veggie patch on the first day of June.

When the long white season finally retreats, the woods green up rapidly, and within a short time the whole forest is carpeted in bloodroot, trilliums, trout lilies and Dutchman's breeches, the tiny blooms of spring beauty and wood violets. No quiet and subtle entrance here for Lady Spring, but a triumphant fanfare, running footsteps, an explosion of shaggy green leafage and a riotous profusion of blooms bursting forth, almost within minutes.

During my scant hours of sleep last night, I wandered along in a cloud of wildflowers and lacy green ferns, listened to rose-breasted grosbeaks singing in the overstory, watched an osprey hunting over the Clyde river. (Sigh) early days yet. Dreams will have to sustain me for another several weeks—at present the north woods are a realm of snow and inky blue shadows, and so they will remain for quite a while.

There are gardening catalogues all over the house, and I dream of putting my hands in the good dark earth of the garden again, but the place is still at least a foot deep in snow. For now, potted tulips and crocus thoughts will have to do.

Sequestered, 346 (CCCXLVI)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

I am a child of the Milky Way. The night is my mother. I am made of the dust of stars. Every atom in my body was forged in a star. When the universe exploded into being, already the bird longed for the wood and the fish for the pool. When the first galaxies fell into luminous clumps, already matter was struggling toward consciousness.

The star clouds of Sagittarius are a burning bush. If there is a voice in Sagittarius, I’d be a fool not to listen. If God’s voice in the night is a scrawny cry, then I’ll prick up my ears. If night’s faint lights fail to knock me off my feet, then I’ll sit back on a dark hillside and wait and watch. A hint here and a trait there. Listening and watching. Waiting, always waiting, for the tingle in the spine.

Chet Raymo, Soul of the Night: An Astronomical Pilgrimage

Dr. Raymo returned to his beloved stars on January 25, 2026. The world is a poorer place for his departure, and I shall miss him.

Chilly Morning, First Cuppa

Friday Ramble for Ostara

Today marks the Vernal Equinox or Ostara, one of two times in the calendar year (the other being the Autumn Equinox or Mabon) when the Earth and her unruly children hover in perfect balance for a brief interval. Humans had nothing to do with this day - it's a pivotal astronomic point ordained by the natural order of things in the astonishingly beautiful cosmos where we live out our days, spinning like tops in the Great Round of space and time.

Today,  day and night are perfectly balanced in length. After a long hard winter that persists in hanging about and making our lives an endless snow removal exercise, that is something to crow about. No matter what the weather is like today (and it is nothing to write home about), brighter, warmer times are on their way.

If I lived further south, this might be a time of greening and enchantment, a day when Eostre, the old Teutonic goddess of greening and fertility, wanders wild places with her arms full of spring blooms. Flowers would spring up in her footsteps as she passed, and she would be attended by hares, her special animal. The air would be filled with birdsong, the heady fragrance of rich dark earth and wild springtime herbs.

Alas, the only snowdrops blooming here at the moment are in a glass jar in my study. It will be several weeks until Lady Spring makes an appearance, but rumors of her imminent presence and the arrival of the greening season persist. We are hopeful. It has been a long winter this time around, and Eostre can't show up too soon for me. The birds in the garden feel the same and are proclaiming their craving for warmth and light. Every feathered visitor seems to be declaring its lofty status as a messenger from the sacred, a harbinger of abundance, fertility and new life.

Early this morning, Beau and I went outside into the garden for a few minutes, and a cold going it was. As we shivered in the star spangled darkness and looked up, it seemed to us that March's full moon (now only a thin waxing crescent a day or two past new) always bears more than a passing resemblance to a great cosmic egg. Its egginess is a perfect expression of this turning of the wheel with its verdant motifs of warmth, light and new life coming into being.

There is, most assuredly, blooming in our thoughts, but the weather is too cold for outdoor celebrations, and it will be very dark tonight since the moon is a thin waxing crescent. We will spend a few minutes outside looking at the stars, and perhaps we will light a celebratory candle on the deck, but our observance will be indoors for the most part. All are welcome at the table, and there are enough chairs and mugs to go around. See you there.

Beannacht (Blessing)

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

© John O'Donohue. All rights reserved
(from Echoes of Memory)

The Irish poet, priest and philosopher John O'Donohue passed away several years ago, but his benediction poem is a comfort with its notions of homecoming, moonlight, calm waters and return.

Wordless Wednesday - Still Cold

Rumors of Spring

Now and then, there are balmy, brilliant blue days in March, but mostly, we lurch along between winter and spring, blue skies and grey skies, scudding clouds and no clouds at all. Temperatures are up, down and all over the place, and we (Beau and I) are never sure what to wear when we set out in the morning for our first walk, a light, waterproof jacket one day, a warm parka the next. Two days ago, we went about in light jackets, and this morning we are back to parkas and boots.

Wonder of wonders, a gnarly old willow down by the creek was putting up lovely furry catkins a few days ago and the icicles suspended below cradled tiny branches and fragile scraps of green. The little stream at my feet was running free and singing, its waters dark and glossy and filled with possibility. Willow, song and flow are still percolating in my thoughts this morning, a day or two later.

A hodgepodge of seasonal images and motifs perhaps, but not unusual for my favorite corner in the great wide world, and I am quite all right with it. There is light in dwindling icicles, in thawing streams and fuzzy little willow buds, and perhaps springtime is not far off. Hardy northerners that we are, we cling to the thought and turn our collars up against the icy wind.

On we go, paw in paw, light flickering through the trees, little scraps of green in the landscape around us, soon (hopefully), flocks of returning geese in the sky above. There are balmy days and cold days; sometimes there is rain, and other times there is snow. The slowly awakening world is a symphony written in sound and light, and even our footsteps have a part to play in the performance.

 Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Sequestered, 345 (CCCXLV)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

One human life is deeper than the ocean. Strange fishes and sea-monsters and mighty plants live in the rock-bed of our spirits. The whole of human history is an undiscovered continent deep in our souls. There are dolphins, plants that dream, magic birds inside us. The sky is inside us. The earth is in us.

Ben Okri, The Famished Road

Winter Has another Go

Here we are again!

Friday Ramble - Getting Through March, Sheepishly

March came in like a lioness, and then the lioness stepped away for a few days. Within her brief absence, plucky birds paired off amorously, and local starlings sang merrily, pretending they were robins. For a while it looked as if there would be an early maple syrup run. For a handful of days, I dared to entertain thoughts of springtime - gardening magazines, nursery catalogs and seed packets bloomed on every surface in the little blue house in the village.

Silly me, I should know better than to succumb to such fancies. There are halcyon days now and then in March, but they are scant, and they are difficult to predict. Storms, frigid days and icy nights persist, the north wind flinging heaps of snow against the door of the garden shed, tumps of earth and faded grasses vanishing after emerging briefly out of the white stuff. There is still a lot of snow about, and our geese, loons and herons are going to be late coming home this year. It will be weeks until they can find food in frozen farm fields.

What is one to do at such times? I drink Logdriver espresso and Yorkshire tea, make soup and cookies, pummel bread dough. In the wee hours of the night, I plot new beds of heirloom veggies and herbs to be dug (hopefully) next month, research heirloom roses, ponder starting another quilt. I cultivate forbearance and try to be cheerful when temperatures drop and ice turns the threshold back into a skating rink. I hope ardently that March will get her act together and morph into a lamb, darn it.

At the end of winter, one becomes a tad maudlin. A friend in the Lanark Highlands told me this week that spring lambs are about to be born in her magnificent old log barn, and I could have cried. Poor wee curly beasties, coming into the world in such bleak and harrowing circumstances.

Enough is enough already. Rain is just fine, and it is easier to shove than snow. One thing about the weather though. When night skies are clear, they are fabulous: flaming sunsets and moons one can almost reach up and touch, planets dancing in the sky at dusk, dippers of starlight strewn by handfuls from vast, streaming cosmic cauldrons up there somewhere in the darkness. What a show, what a trip!

Tobar Phadraic (for St. Patrick's Day)

Turn sideways into the light as they say
the old ones did and disappear
into the originality of it all.

Be impatient with easy explanations

and teach that part of the mind

that wants to know everything

not to begin questions it cannot answer.

Walk the green road above the bay

and the low glinting fields

toward the evening sun, let that Atlantic

gleam be ahead of you and the gray light

of the bay below you, until you catch,

down on your left, the break in the wall,

for just above in the shadows

you’ll find it hidden, a curved arm

of rock holding the water close to the mountain,

a just-lit surface smoothing a scattering of coins,

and in the niche above, notes to the dead

and supplications for those who still live.

But for now, you are alone with the transfiguration

and ask no healing for your own

but look down as if looking through time,

as if through a rent veil from the other

side of the question you’ve refused to ask.

And you remember now, that clear stream

of generosity from which you drank,

how as a child your arms could rise and your palms

turn out to take the blessing of the world.

David Whyte, from River Flow

(with permission)

Wordless Wednesday - Flowing

Fey Dreams and Eldritch Musics

Dancing in this elderly sconce are nighttime dreams of sunlight, warmth, birdsong and green things emerging from the earth. When I am awake, an eldritch music hovers on the edge of my hearing, a fey tune scarcely more than an echo in the wind.

Reed pipes perhaps or a harp? Rose-breasted grosbeaks? The horns of elfland? Bare naked satyrs prancing about in the woods with flutes? The whole thing may be just wishful thinking on my part. I am always restless in March and raring to go, impatient to be putting on my wellies and picking up my gardening tools.

When Beau and I are out on our walks, we listen for geese coming home. We have not heard them so far, but there will be rejoicing when we do. Wherever we are and whatever we are doing at the time, we will kick up our heels and dance. 

Wild magics are afoot in this season of emergence and rebirth and greening. There is magic in the sky over our heads, in the awakening trees in the sunny woods. There is magic in my garden, and I am here to take it all in again this year. Hallelujah.

Sequestered, 344 (CCCXLIV)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

maybe it is her birth

which she holds close to herself

or her death

which is just as inseparable

and the white wind

that encircles her is a part

just as the blue sky

hanging in turquoise from her neck

oh woman

remember who you are

woman

it is the whole earth

Joy Harjo, The Blanket Around Her

(For International Women's Day)

Treasure Within

Friday Ramble - Passing Through

The Bohemian Waxwing (Bombycilla garrulus) passes through the village in October as it heads south to its winter habitat and again in March when it flies back to its breeding grounds in the boreal forests of the north. Some winter in the southern United States; others travel as far as Costa Rica and Panama for the winter.

Traveling in madcap flocks, Bohemians stop along their migration route to fill up on berries, cherries and other fruit, and their appearance makes me smile, a fine thing indeed this year. The birds fly jubilantly around the old crabapple tree, gleefully dance from branch to branch, make crude comments to the nearby crows and starlings, laugh at their own jokes and pelt each other with desiccated crabapples. Getting clear photos of them is quite an exercise because they never stop moving.

Bohemian Waxwings are mainly fruit eaters, and in colder weather, they subsist on frozen  mountain ash berries, hawthorn berries, rosehips, high bush cranberries and other fruit. In late winter, and early spring, it is not unusual for the birds to become tipsy after consuming fermented berries. They fly around erratically, stagger about, have trouble making landings and even fall out of trees at times.

I thought these rowdy visitors were Cedar Waxwings until I noticed their peachy colored faces, rufous (red) undertail coverts and white wing streaks, also their scarlet-tipped secondaries, often rather difficult to see. By the time the birds departed, the old crabapple tree was bare, and the deep snowdrifts in the front yard were peppered with bits and pieces of frozen crabapple. Along came a whole murder of crows and made short work of the leavings.

Bohemians are seasonal harbingers, and their appearance in the front yard in March often means that springtime is on its way, but this year, they should have waited a few weeks longer. It is still cold and snowy here. We have a long way to go.

Thursday Poem - You Can't Be Too Careful

Spring storm and hail of ice cubes
pummels my town and no other.
There was a time when townspeople
would call this fall the wrath of God
or work of witches. A lower profile
may have saved some crones
renowned for bitter herbs, odd dames
you went to in the woods for troubles.
But some would go on being busybodies
and scolds dragged out, dunked, drowned
or hung like limp, forgotten fruit
from gallows trees. Scarecrows and
cautionary tales. And truly the crows
flee from our town screaming
blue murder, scarier than a siren.
Even in these enlightened times,
some of us still go warily,
keeping secret our wild simples,

asking nothing for our quirky blessings.

Dolores Stewart Riccio, from The Nature of Things