On the Edge of the Hill

Emma Unearthing...

Emma (Mrs. Peel)  is Spencer's best friend in the whole world, and he loves her dearly.  They work and play harmoniously together, quartering in the breeze as GSPs (German Shorthair Pointers) usually do, their elegant noses raised and working furiously to pinpoint the scent of rabbit, deer, wild turkey, grouse or anything else in the woods for that matter.  We love watching them together.

The two friends honor each other's point every time, and they hold their points, never giving chase to the wild creatures they sniff out in the woods.  When the sun goes down and the day is done, they curl up together on the hearth to sleep and snore in happy unison, and sometimes they continue running together in their dreams.

As the elder in the equation,  Mrs. Peel is the boss and no mistake.  Her talent for digging holes and unearthing stuff along the trail (as shown here on yesterday's ramble) knows no bounds.The lady is a champ.

One Among Many, Shining

Thursday Poem - Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Mary Oliver, from Dream Work

Wordless Wednesday - Golden in the Wind

Little Sister, Autumn Joy

Common Eastern Bumble Bee (Bombus impatiens)

and "Autumn Joy" Stonecrop (Sedum telephium)

I know I said it a few days ago, but this little sister was, without a doubt the last, or at least one of the last, to visit us this year. Nights are hovering around freezing or slightly below, and the happy buzzing congregations of a few weeks ago are only an echo in the wind.

After days of silence in the garden (I wrote about it last week), I was surprised to discover a single little sister making her rounds yesterday morning and visiting the sedum, asters and late blooming Russian lavender in turn. There are years when we have bumbles well into October, but this is not going to be one of those years.

The wee girl was alone for quite a while gathering late nectar among the pink and copper garden sedums, and she moved with painstaking slowness in the chilly morning air. As the day warmed up a little, she was joined by a two or three sisters, but gone are the merry throngs cavorting among the stalwart bloomings of autumn.

Why do I love these creatures so? There is a lesson or three to be learned from the ever cheerful and plucky bumbles, fuzzy little propagators of flowers, vegetables and fruit. As days shorten and temperatures plummet, they continue their appointed work, buzzing about and gathering nectar as long as they can. Knowing all the while that winter is coming and their precious days are numbered, they dance from flower to late autumn flower, and oh how they sing and kick up their heels in their last time on the earth. They are smaller by far, but like the herons and the loons and the great geese, I shall miss them when winter drapes the landscape.

Like their kin the honeybees, bumbles are in serious decline, and we should do anything we can to preserve them here on earth.

Morning Offering

At Play in the North Wind

For the Autumn Equinox

This is September 21, traditionally celebrated as Mabon or the Autumn Equinox and one of the three observances dedicated to the harvest, the other two being Lughnasadh (or Lammas) which fell on August 1 and Samhain (or Halloween) which will follow in a few weeks time on October 31.  This year, the precise astronomical date of the Equinox is tomorrow, Sunday, September 22, but many of us observe it on September 21, and so here I am this morning, waxing thoughtful about a cosmic event that celebrates natural equilibrium, harvest and community.

Today goes by many names: Harvest Home, Mabon, the Feast of Ingathering, Equinozio di Autunno (Strega), Meán Fómhair, and in Druidic tradition, Alban Elfed, to name just a few. Mabon is the name by which Autumn Equinox ritual observances are most widely known, but the connection between the Welsh hunter god and September 21 is flimsy to say the least - Mabon's only likely link with the Autumn Equinox is that it may have been the date of his birth, but we don't know for sure.  Lugh, Demeter, Ceres, Persephone or even John Barleycorn might have been better choices for a deity presiding over autumn equinox rites.  South of the equator seasonal patterns are reversed (of course), and this day is celebrated as Ostara or the Spring Equinox.

In the old Teutonic calendar, the Autumn Equinox marked the beginning of the Winter Finding, a ceremonial interval lasting until Winter Night on October 15, and it was also the date of the old Norse New Year. In Christian tradition, the festival is closely associated with St. Michael the Archangel - his feast takes place a few days from now on September 25 and is known for obvious reasons as Michaelmas. The purple Michaelmas Daisy with its golden heart is one of my favorite flowers ever.  Today is about abundance and harvest, but most of all, it is about balance - this is one of only two days in the whole turning year when day and night are perfectly balanced in length. Like all the old festivals dedicated to Mother Earth, this is a liminal or threshold time, and we are poised between two seasons, summer and autumn.

A ballad by Bob Dylan always comes to mind around this time of the year:  "The Times They Are a-Changin". The song was written for Dylan's third studio album in 1963, and it was an inchoate expression of the tumult of the times, especially the civil rights movement - it came only a few weeks before John Fitzgerald Kennedy's tragic assassination.  Dylan's lyrics were inspired by the Book of Ecclesiastes, and he tucked in a reference to Mark 10:31: "But many that are first shall be last, and the last shall be first."  Music critics of the era claimed that Dylan's creation was passé even before it was published, but his words have always seemed timeless to me - as appropriate for present day seasonal turnings as they were for the turbulent social and political movements of the sixties. Dylan's old friend Pete Seeger later adapted passages from Ecclesiastes to write his own folk anthem "Turn, Turn, Turn" (recorded by the Byrds).

One holds out hopeful thoughts on the Autumn Equinox - that skies overhead will be brilliantly blue and full of singing geese, that trees and vines and creepers will be arrayed in ruby, russet and gold, that a splendid yellow moon will be visible when darkness falls.   As always, there is a bronze chrysanthemum in a cauldron blooming on our threshold this morning, and sometimes the flowers are graced by fallen leaves from the old oak watching over the little blue house in the village.  The oak and its companions are our guardian trees, and the "mum" is our personal nod to the season, a homage of sorts. Together, trees, fallen leaves and flowers convey a benediction to everyone who knocks at our door, treads our cobblestones or passes by in the street.

On this day of color and richness and equilibrium, we can be still for a moment and acknowledge our bond with the place where we have been planted this time around.  We can offer up thanks for home and hearth, the bounty we are harvesting and "putting by" to see us through the long winter nights.  We can celebrate clan, tribe, community and sharing - all the fine old qualities that unite us in a dancing train spiraling on down the years, from the ancestors to the present day and our tattered motley selves.

Whatever you call it and however you choose to celebrate it (or not celebrate it), a very happy Autumn Equinox, Harvest Home, Mabon, Feast of Ingathering, Equinozio di Autunno, Meán Fómhair and Alban Elfed to you and your clan.

The Harvest Moon of September

September's moon is my favorite in the whole turning year - it is also (above all others), the one I can't describe adequately or take a good photo of, no matter how extensive my preparations and how hard I try.  Every year, I potter off to a good vantage point, set up camera, telescope and tripod, check my settings and wait patiently. The moon rises over the trees (or sometimes a rooftop), and I stand out there in the darkness like an enraptured fool with my eyes open wide, a heart full of wonder and a shocking paucity of words for describing the glorious golden lady who rules the night.  Bearing witness to this month's full moon is a personal rite, and if I had to brew up a name of my very own for it, that name would be "Hallelujah Moon".

Once upon a time, I described the situation as a cosmic joke, this business of a creaky elder standing out under the trees and taking picture after picture of the full moon but never a good one. Well, gentle readers, here we are again, another glorious Harvest Moon has just gone by, another mediocre image captured and shared.   It brings to mind the old Zen tale in which a monk on his deathbed was asked to describe his mindful life, and he replied merrily, "just one mistake after another..."

Last evening, Lady Moon was as golden as a moon in harvest time ought to be, and whether or not I managed to capture her perfectly does not really matter a fig or a hoot in the greater scheme of things.  She climbed into the night skies like a great golden lantern, and Himself, Spencer and I were standing out in the darkness together hand in paw to witness her ascension.  As we packed up all our stuff and headed indoors later, we couldn't help thinking that such beauty deserved an ecstatic gesture of some sort, a chorus, a chant or a benediction - something grander and more luminous than our deep bows and sighs of rapt contentment.

We also know this moon as the:  Acorn Bread Moon, Acorns Gathered Moon, All Ripe Moon, Aster Moon, Autumn Moon, Barley Moon, Between Harvest Moon, Blood Berry Moon, Eating Indian Corn Moon, Black Calf Moon, Calf Grows Hair Moon, Chrysanthemum Moon, Corn Moon, Corn Maker Moon, Dancing Moon, Deer Paw the Earth Moon, Dog Salmon Return to Earth Moon, Elderberry Moon, Drying Grass Moon, Fruit Moon, Hay Cutting Moon, Her Acorns Moon, Holy Moon, Hulling Corn Moon, Index-finger Moon, Leaf Fall Moon, Leaf Yellow Moon, Leaves Changing Color Moon, Little Chestnut Moon, Maize Moon, Mallow Blossom Moon, Moon of Falling Leaves, Moon of First Frost, Moon of Full Harvest, Moon of Much Freshness, Moon When the Leaves Fall, Moon of Plenty, Moon When the Corn Is Taken in, Moon When the Plums Are Scarlet, Moon When Deer Paw the Earth, Moon When Calves Grow Hair, Moon When Everything Ripens and Corn Is Harvested, Moose Moon, Morning Glory Moon, Mulberry Moon, Nut Moon, Papaw Moon, Rice Moon, Rudbeckia Moon, Seed Moon, Shining Leaf Moon, Silky Oak Moon, Singing Moon, Soaproot Dug For Fish Poison Moon, Sturgeon Moon, Wavy or Snow Goose Moon, Wine Moon, Wood Moon, Yellow Leaf Moon.

Thursday Poem - Mabon, The Autumn Equinox

Ephemeral truce.
The dark begins
its long winning streak.
But for now
in this disheveled garden
a riot of blowsy flowers
hangs on like a chorus
of aging show girls
still with a few good kicks.
The air is ripe
with seedy perfume
and pleasant lies,
the pomegranate shared
between two mouths.
This is our second harvest,
the corn, the squash,
the reconstructed
memories of summer.
Ceres, comfort us with apples,
with grapes and the wine of grapes.
Wheaten breads are baked
in the shape of the sun.
We savor them
with honey.
It will be a long time
before this golden
moment comes again.

Dolores Stewart Riccio

There are fine novels, exquisite poems, enchanting snippets of equinox lore and gorgeous recipes at Dolores Stewart Riccio's home online.  Visit my friend here.

Wordless Wednesday - Turning

Tending the Light Within

The day dawned cold and sunny, skies brilliant blue from here to there and almost cloudless, autumn and the north wind strewing rattling twigs, rustling papery leaves and spicy perfume everywhere.  The Michaelmas asters, fall "mums" and chives in the garden were in ceaseless windy motion, their shadows weaving along the hedgerow and to and fro across the grass like a troupe of flamenco dancers.

Alas, the events of which I wrote only a day or two ago have transpired. This morning, there were no bumbles, bees, wasps and hover flies about.  Temperatures fell drastically overnight, and the tiny fliers passed away quietly, their scant living hours on the sunlit earth brought to an end by deep cold and bitter wind. The garden is silent except for an avian visitor now and then, and I mourn the passing of the legions of fuzzy wee friends who cavorted among the flowers all season long - like the cicadas, they are gone too soon.

What to do in this time of restless change and bluster and tumbling temperatures? The old lantern in the far corner of the patio comes to mind.  There it sits on its square of pavement, worn, rusty and verdigrised, its creaking door eloquently ajar and waiting patiently.  No candle or flame cupped in its latticed roundness, it understands what it is here for, and it cradles and tends remembered light within.  So must I do, until the year turns at the solstice and our days begin to stretch out again.

Coming to Rest

Little Sisters, Soon Departed

Common Eastern Bumblebee (Bombus impatiens)

This weekend's visitors to the asters, the goldenrod and the clover are probably the last "bumbles" of the season.

Temperatures here have plummeted in recent days, and the furnace has been turning itself on in the wee hours of the morning. Putting one's bare feet down on the wooden floor at sunrise is definitely an awakening experience.

When I visit the garden in the early hours of the day, our bumble girls are clinging patiently to the late blooms and foliage, so cold and stiff that they are unable to move, at least until sunlight lights on their windblown lodgings and warms their dear little fuzzy bodies.  We are definitely on our way into the long, dark and cold times at the end of the calendar, and heavy frosts are on their way - our honeyed days are almost over for another splendid year.

To all the little sisters who came to the garden this summer, our heartfelt thanks for your companionship. May the Melissa, goddess of the bees, grant you rest and sweet enchantment, nectar and light, everlasting sunshine and buzzing flight in the green and flowered fields beyond the ones we know.

Looking Up and Through

Just a few cold nights and northern trees are turning, some members of the community dressing themselves  in gold and russet and brown, others wearing a shade of scarlet so vivid it dazzles the eyes, especially when seen through the morning sun.

Red is the color of autumn, and what a color it is... The blue sky beyond the trees and the dancing coins of bokeh are the perfect contrast, harmony and counterpoint. 

Thursday Poem - Unchurched

It’s Earth that breathes around us,
so perilous in its comforts,
so perfect in impermanence.

Autumnal sun streams through
these yellow maple leaves
translucent as stained glass.

The ground beneath my feet
is strewn with pine cones, acorns.
The random pattern of continuance.

Etched columns of pine and oak.
Incense of resin and fungi.
Great glacial stones for altars.

High winds and choirs of
minor breezes, the whispering hush.
It is the Sabbath. It is enough.

Dolores Stewart
from The Nature of Things
(printed here with the kind permission of the author)

For September 11

Wordless Wednesday - Autumn Light Among the Trees

An Enso In My Cup

There is darkness beyond the kitchen window, the sound of wind and spatter of rain falling on the weathered wood of the deck.  Inside the kitchen, there's the burble of the coffee maker, the hum of the old yellow refrigerator in the corner.

By rights, there should be the smell of toast too, but it will be an hour or so before my gnarly metabolism can handle the mere idea of toast.  September is a "bang up" month for migraines, and I have awakened with a whopper - thought about doing meds for it when I opened my eyes, but opted for an earthenware beaker of industrial strength espresso instead.  The stuff in my cup looks to be about the same organic viscosity as solid rocket fuel and it would please any lover of Paris, steam rising in arty curls from its surface and a splendid darker froth ringing the shores of the caffeine pond. Seen from above, the frothy edges look like an enso.

Why is it my thoughts always turn to Paris in the autumn, especially when it is raining?  I find myself looking through my collection of Cavallini notebooks, the small ones with maps of France, French stamps or the Eiffel tower gracing their covers.

Rain or no, it will be a grand day, and a perfect day for vanquishing ye old email issues for good and all.  When the mail "stuff" is working again, and my migraine has drowned in the espresso, I shall curl up in a corner and read one of the lovely books recently sent by my mermaid sister, Kim Antieau, mermaid tales of course.

Thank you, thank you, sister Kim!

All in Their Rosy Ripening

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch,

you must first invent the universe.

Carl Sagan (from Cosmos)

Water, Stone, Leaf and Clouds

Friday Ramble - Monarchs in the Glen

A flash of bright orange, and there he or she was in a clearing on the edge of the trail into the deep woods - a perfect newly emerged specimen of Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus), breathing deeply in and out and drawing strength into wings as yet untried.

The air over the Two Hundred Acre Wood was filled with Monarch butterflies this past week, and they filled the blue with their exuberant flights, unfettered swooping and spiraling in the wind. There were whole clouds of monarchs in motion, and it was lovely to watch their airborne antics.

The word monarch comes to us from the Middle English monarke, thence from the Old French monarque, the Late Latin monarcha and finally the Greek monarkhos, all meaning to be a ruler - to be superior in power and presence and reign by divine right.  Let there be no mistake - these magnificent creatures rule wherever they appear.

My vivid little being was a male, his gender readily identified by a black spot or androconium in the center of each hind wing - scent scales designed to attract females of the same species.  Unlike the earlier generation born in our fields this summer, this handsome lad is configured for long distance flight, and it will not be long until he and his vibrant kin are airborne and bound for a sunny winter abode in Mexico.

Nights are growing cool here now, and in only a few days all our butterflies will be gone along with swallows, swifts and other migratory birds. It seems only fitting that those of us who are staying behind should wish the travelers joy on their long journey south.

Thursday Poem - Words

The world does not need words. It articulates itself
in sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path
are no less real for lying uncatalogued and uncounted.
The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure being.
The kiss is still fully itself though no words were spoken.

And one word transforms it into something less or other—
illicit, chaste, perfunctory, conjugal, covert.
Even calling it a kiss betrays the fluster of hands
glancing the skin or gripping a shoulder, the slow
arching of neck or knee, the silent touching of tongues.

Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot
name them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica.
To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper—
metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa
carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember.

The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds,
painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving
each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it.
The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always—
greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon.

Dana Gioia from Interrogations at Noon

Wordless Wednesday - Going to Seed

Creeping Into Autumn

 Virginia Creeper and Berries

 (Parthenocissus quinquefolia)

In the highlands of eastern Ontario, the first of the autumn scarlets, plums and deep inky blues are already creeping into view, their appearance out of late summer's dusty greens set in motion by cooler evenings and gently ruffling winds at nightfall.

As often as I witness the seasons turning and such vivid things coming into being, the morphing into deeper and more intense hues is always enchanting.  It takes us (and the camera too) by surprise each and every year.

The Old Wild Mother (Nature) waves her elemental wand, and seasonal changes are set in motion, the anthocyanins and carotenoids in plant tissues coming into brilliance as chlorophyll production slows down and plant sugar levels surge.  Leaves bearing abundant anthocyanins dazzle in bright red for the most part, and those enfolding concentrations of both anthocyanins and carotenoids flash bright orange.  Leaves with lavish measures of carotenoids and scant levels of anthosyanins do a sky dance in honeyed golds and yellows.  Absent both anthocyanins and carotenoids, the native tannins rule, giving us the splendid russets, ochers and browns of the great oaks, hickories and beeches.

Such transformations are magics of a wilder and more elemental kind, and I can't imagine living this old life without ever seeing with them or being right here among them as they happen.  In autumn, the north is a fine place to be, and I always wish I could paint like this.  No wait...  Come to think of it, my lens is already doing that.

Laboring Among the Asters

 

Common Bumblebee (Bombus impatiens)

Michaelmas Daisy (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae)

Early Days and Autumn Constellations

Here at last is the first day of September, and the beginning of my favorite time of year.

The days and weeks ahead are grand times for rambling.  One crams the pockets of vest, hoodie and raincoat with photography peripherals and hangs a pack on her back for the stuff that doesn't fit in her pockets.  Then she goes larking about, looking for things to capture on a memory card, and what a splendid tapestry there is to play with - lavender sunrises and fiery sunsets strewn by handfuls, towering cloud banks and rain spattered windows, sodden whiskery trees and fallen leaves in gold and scarlet, little rivers singing their way through village gutters with their merrily bobbing freight of acorns, berries and twigs.

Wherever I manage to tuck the creature in, there has to be an umbrella in the equation this month.  In September, storms blow up here without warning, and they're truly impressive in their theatrics and elemental force, their thunder and lightening and driving rain.  Perhaps this is the year when I shall find the perfect big green cotton "brolly" and bring it on home.  There is a whole stand of umbrellas standing by the door in their plaids and paisleys, but nary a fine green one.

As I tap this out, the constellation Orion makes its way above the south horizon with sword and belt twinkling, Gemini over one shoulder and Taurus over the other. The giant starry harbinger of autumn wears Auriga like a crown of lights and dominates the sky as other constellations seldom do at this time of the year.  I have a personal rite of sorts in these early days of September, rising long before dawn to look for the giant with his upheld club.  At the same time, I give a respectful nod to the radiant crescent of waning moon dancing in the east. 

Who is that creature in the window hiding behind raindrops, foliage and a big bad lens?  With her face concealed and hair sticking up all over the place, she looks a few decades young than she really is, and the thought tickles her greatly.

Happy happy September everyone!