Color in the backyard…

 

"O hushed October morning mild, 
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; 
Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all. 
The crows above the forest call; 
Tomorrow they may form and go. 
O hushed October morning mild, 
Begin the hours of this day slow. 
Make the day seem to us less brief. 
Hearts not averse to being beguiled, 
Beguile us in the way you know. 
Release one leaf at break of day; 
At noon release another leaf; 
One from our trees, one far away."

-   Robert Frost, October

 

Sometimes the beauty of this time of year is nearly overwhelming but I would still like the day to seem “less brief”.

Apple Picking…

 

The day we went apple picking was yet another unseasonably hot October day…It is probably the first time we did this in shorts and t-shirts and still complained.   It just didn’t seem right.  The heat did increase the scent of the apples though, a wonderful cidery scent that you just can’t blame the yellow jackets for being attracted to…a scent that reminds me how I miss an old apple tree that once grew in our backyard, a tree so tall you would need a ladder to pick the apples if they were any good for eating.  The yellow jackets loved those apples too.

Apples

by Laurie Lee

Behold the apples’ rounded worlds:
juice-green of July rain,
the black polestar of flowers, the rind
mapped with its crimson stain.
The russet, crab and cottage red
burn to the sun’s hot brass,
then drop like sweat from every branch
and bubble in the grass.
They lie as wanton as they fall,
and where they fall and break,
the stallion clamps his crunching jaws,
the starling stabs his beak.
In each plump gourd the cidery bite
of boys’ teeth tears the skin;
the waltzing wasp consumes his share,
the bent worm enters in.
I, with as easy hunger, take
entire my season’s dole;
welcome the ripe, the sweet, the sour,
the hollow and the whole.

A Taste of Spring…

For many years a friend and I would brave the crowds at the New England Flower show in Boston.  We would leave early, plan on having our packed lunches at the show during a lecture, and head home before rush hour.  It was pretty sad when the show was no longer produced.  Happily, for the last few years there has been a much smaller but much closer annual flower show in Providence…the Rhode Island Flower & Garden Show.  This year its theme was “Gardening with Heart” and for the second time my eldest and I took my grandchildren for an early look at spring. 

It was a fun thing to do on a rainy Friday… Mr J and Miss E enjoyed looking out at the traffic as much as the flowers…

Miss E wanted me to take a picture of her smelling every pink flower she passed…

There were hearts everywhere this year…

…including at the sand sculpture where we watched the sculptors forming the castle of Heartland…

The Rhode Island Wild Plant Society is always one of my favorite displays…it  looks the closest to my backyard…

They didn’t last long at the show before tiring but someday I hope they will remember going and seeing spring blooming indoors…

After the kids left I stayed and met Mr O…so I did get a chance to check out the shops and practice taking photos with the 50mm lens which is so great in low light…

Outside a mock greenhouse/office…one of my favorite vignettes…

And inside the mock greenhouse/office…I would love this at my house, including the yellow door…

As always, the garden club displays were fun…How can you not love this bathing suit floral arrangement!

We may be half way through March but I visited the flower show in February and I have been meaning to share this poem since February…it is almost spring but it is still appropriate here in RI…

 

February: Thinking of Flowers

Now wind torments the field,
turning the white surface back
on itself, back and back on itself,
like an animal licking a wound.

 
Nothing but white--the air, the light;
only one brown milkweed pod
bobbing in the gully, smallest
brown boat on the immense tide.

 
A single green sprouting thing
would restore me. . . .

Then think of the tall delphinium,
swaying, or the bee when it comes
to the tongue of the burgundy lily.

Jane Kenyon

Snow Storm…

There is a reason that so many poems have been written about snow…It is hard to describe so well in any other way…

Snow

Billy Collins

I cannot help noticing how this slow Monk solo

seems to go somehow

with the snow

that is coming down this morning,

*

how the notes and the spaces accompany

its easy falling

on the geometry of the ground,

on the flagstone path,

the slanted roof,

and the angles of the split-rail fence

*

as if he had imagined a winter scene

as he sat at the piano

late one night at the Five Spot

playing “Ruby, My Dear.”

*

Then again, it’s the kind of song

that would go easily with rain

or a tumult of leaves,

*

and for that matter it’s a snow

that could attend

an adagio for strings,

the best of the Ronettes,

or George Thorogood and the Destroyers.

*

It falls so indifferently

into the spacious white parlor of the world,

if I were sitting here reading

*

in silence,

reading the morning paper

pr reading Being and Nothingness,

not even letting the spoon

touch the inside of the cup,

I have a feeling

the snow would even go perfectly with that.

After reading this poem I had to discover Thelonious Monk playing “Ruby, My Dear”.  It is as dreamy as the falling snow…

Arcadia’s Autumn Mushrooms…

This is the season for mushrooms.  They pop up abundantly after every rain.  On my walks I meet mushroom gatherers who, hopefully, know the edible from the poisonous…no one wants to share the secret hiding places of the best to eat.  Every year I resolve to take a class on mushroom identification and then forget to sign up for one…and every year I try to take photos of those I find on walks around home.   I don’t own a macro lens so most of these shots are taken with my Canon G9 on macro setting.  I find beauty in these earthy things…and I’m pretty sure Sylvia Plath did too…

 

Sylvia Plath – Mushrooms

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.

A Weekend Walk in Haiku…

All in fun, and inspired by Ruth of synch-ro-ni-zing, I went for a walk with haiku in mind….

So many acorns

squirrels will feast this winter

Oaks will grow in spring.

Young couples picnic

Old hunters start the season

I walk a worn path.

Midas touched maples

Reach out in autumn’s embrace

Gone with the next storm.

Ferns flicker yellow

The forest floor is aflame

No water will quench.

 

Super Harvest Moon…

“The action begins at sunset on Sept 22nd, the last day of northern summer. As the sun sinks in the west, bringing the season to a close, the full Harvest Moon will rise in the east, heralding the start of fall. The two sources of light will mix together to create a kind of 360-degree, summer-autumn twilight glow that is only seen on rare occasions.” 

Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

 

A week ago, on September 22,  we dropped off a car at the mechanics and took a walk on the beach…A beautiful night, there were plenty of walkers, joggers, dogs, surfers and swimmers.   There won’t be too many more nights like this before winter.   What I hadn’t expected, what I had failed to read about in the paper or hear on the radio, was that there would be a special Super Harvest Moon this night…a full moon coinciding with the autumnal equinox.  What a marvelous surprise…What a marvel.   It took my breath away to suddenly see this pale moon rise out of the ocean.  Everyone on the beach seemed to have stopped to witness it…We wondered where the ocean liner was headed and whether the passengers on board were watching the moon too.

 

Sonnet of the Moon
by Charles Best, 1608

Look how the pale Queen of the silent night
doth cause the ocean to attend upon her,
and he, as long as she is in sight,
with his full tide is ready here to honor;
But when the silver waggon of the Moon
is mounted up so high he cannot follow,
the sea calls home his crystal waves to morn,
and with low ebb doth manifest his sorrow.
So you that are sovereign of my heart
have all my joys attending on your will,
when you return, their tide my heart doth fill.
So as you come and as you depart,
joys ebb and flow within my tender heart.