A view from our balcony yesterday morning, a little after sunrise.  The sun is reflected in Birch Plain Creek.

As we were buffeted by the wind while out driving yesterday, Tim said it was one of our last chances to look deep into the woods before the leaves come out.  A much more "being in the present" thought than my wishful longing to see some new green leaves!

Mother Earth wants Connecticut to be all woods.  Years ago when the colonists cut down the forests to farm the land, they removed the rocks from the soil and made stone walls around their new fields.  When the pioneers later abandoned their farms and headed out west for better pasture the trees grew back to their natural home here and so our woods are filled with beautiful crumbling stone walls.  Many can be see from the road in the winter, leading deep into the forest.

"The world, we are told, was made especially for humans - a presumption not supported by all the facts...  Why should humanity value itself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation?  And what creature of all that the Lord has taken the pains to make is not essential to the completeness of that unit - the cosmos?  The universe would be incomplete without humans; but it would also be incomplete without the smallest transmicroscopic creature that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes and knowledge.  From the dust of the earth, from the common elementary fund, the Creator has made Homo Sapiens.  From the same material God has made every other creature, however noxious and insignificant to us.  They are earth-born companions and our fellow mortals."
~ John Muir (Meditations of John Muir: Nature's Temple)

Marsh Marigold

"Who can know these and, other myriad children of Chaos and old night, who can know the awe the horror and the majesty of earth, yet be content with the blue sky alone.  Not I for one.  I love the love lit dome above, I cannot live without mine own particular star; but my foot is on the earth and I wish to walk over it until my wings be grown.  I will use my microscope as well as my telescope.  And oh ye flowers, ye fruits, and, nearer kindred yet, stones with your veins so worn by fire and water, and here and there disclosing streaks of golden ore, let us know one another before we part.  Tell me your secret, tell me mine.  To be human is also something?"
~ Margaret Fuller (Meditations of Margaret Fuller: The Inner Stream)

Wild Blue Phlox

"Contemplating the lace-like fabric of streams outspread over the mountains, we are reminded that everything is flowing - going somewhere, animals and so-called lifeless rocks as well as water.  Thus the snow flows fast or slow in grand beauty-making glaciers and avalanches; the air in majestic floods carrying minerals, plant leaves, seeds, spores, with streams of music and fragrance; water streams carrying rocks both in solution and in the form of mud particles, sand, pebbles, and boulders.  Rocks flow from volcanoes like water from springs, and animals flock together and flow in currents modified by stepping, leaping, gliding, flying, swimming, etc.  While the stars go streaming through space pulsed on and on forever like blood globules in Nature's warm heart."
~ John Muir (Meditations of John Muir: Nature's Temple)

Rhodora

"The perception of this law of laws awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness.  Wonderful is its power to charm and to command.  It is a mountain air.  It is the embalmer of the world. It is myrrh and storax, and chlorine and rosemary.  It makes the sky and the hills sublime, and the silent song of the stars is it.  By it, is the universe made safe and habitable, not by science or power.  Thought may work cold and intransitive in things, and find no end or unity; but the dawn of the sentiment of virtue on the heart, gives and is the assurance that Law is sovereign over all natures; and the worlds, time, space, eternity, do seem to break out into joy."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (Divinity School Address)

Early Saxifrage

"I meditate for the last time on this mountain that is bare, though others all around are white with snow.  Like the bare peak of the koan, this one is not different from myself.  I know this mountain because I am this mountain, I can feel it breathing at this moment, as its grass tops stray against the snows.  If the snow leopard should leap from the rock above and manifest itself before me - S-A-A-O! - then in that moment of pure fright, out of my wits, I might truly perceive it, and be free."
~ Peter Matthiessen (The Snow Leopard)

Snow Leopard

"Silently a flower blooms,
In silence it falls away;
Yet here now, at this moment, at this place,
     The world of the flower, the whole of
     the world is blooming.
This is the talk of the flower, the truth
     of the blossom;
The glory of eternal life is fully shining here."
~ Zenkei Shibayama (The Earth Speaks: An Acclimatization Journal)

Mayflower

A few miles into the drive home last night the "check engine" light came on.  The Echo is 9 years old, great on gas and trouble-free.  So I pulled into a parking lot and called the knight-in-shining-armor, who appeared an hour later in the 12 year old Tercel to check the Echo's vitals.  He could find nothing wrong except for the light so he decided to drive it home and follow me driving the Tercel.  The only time I ride in the Tercel these days is when I get a ride home in it while the Echo is getting serviced.  I cannot remember the last time I actually drove it!

It took a little bit of changing gears to get the feel of it, but it started to come back to me.  It's the older car with no air-conditioning and no iPod port, so Tim uses it for his 2 minute drive to work.  I'm no good at multi-tasking so I couldn't safely fiddle with controls after we got under way.  (I don't even use high beam headlights - it's too confusing switching back and forth from high to low!)  As I started to relax a bit, the first thing that penetrated my mind was the non-functioning speaker on the right side of the car, and a pretty crummy speaker on the left, down by my knee apparently.  And what was that music he had on?  There was a weird radio with all kinds of little flashing neon lights our daughter had installed when she had the car during her college years.  I managed to figure out where the volume control was and turned it up.  A radio station having a Led Zeppelin marathon.  I don't mind them, but I'm not a fan.  Oh well, better than nothing.  No moon visible.

Then I started remembering my history in the Tercel.  Fond memories, like when it was new and I drove it all the way to Florida and back.  My friend and I left our kids with our husbands and spent a few days at Disney World - what a wonderful time that was!  And difficult times when my taxi service was in full swing and perimenopausal migraines were more and more frequent, driving to pick up kids from their jobs with a barf bucket in my lap... pulling over to use it...

An hour later we were home.  Wonder what the story will be when we take the Echo to the garage today...  I'm just glad I didn't "spazz out," as my kids describe it when I get overwhelmed and fall apart.  Maybe I'm finally learning to roll with the punches after all...

"Respect the child.  Wait and see the new product of Nature.  Nature loves analogies, but not repetitions.  Respect the child.  Be not too much his parent.  Trespass not on his solitude."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (Education)

The above quote sums up my approach to parenting.  Happily we had no repetitions, but three very unique individuals!

Chionodoxias in my garden, April 10, 2009

A meteor shower.  A crescent moon.  A disappearing planet.  These three things will be on display Wednesday, April 22nd (Earth Day), when the Moon occults Venus during the annual Lyrid Meteor Shower.        information

"The universe is a more amazing puzzle than ever, as you glance along this bewildering series of animated forms, - the hazy butterflies, the carved shells, the birds, beasts, fishes, snakes, and the upheaving principle of life everywhere incipient, in the very rock aping organized forms.  Not a form so grotesque, so savage, nor so beautiful but is an expression of some property inherent in man the observer, - an occult relation between the very scorpions and man.  I feel the centipede in me, - cayman, carp, eagle, and fox.  I am moved by strange sympathies; I say continually, 'I will be a naturalist.'"
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (Journals)

picture: my mother's andromeda bush, April 13, 2009

The cat above is named Bernie, a delightfully domestic old fellow who is still in touch with his inner bobcat.  He was born in New Mexico and is at least 17 years old.  My sister and her husband adopted him from a shelter while they were living there.  They also adopted an iguana named Lizzie and a spider named Olivia - all of them had the run of their hovel, which is what my sister affectionately called their very modest duplex.  When it came time to move back to Connecticut Lizzie and Olivia were left behind to other good homes, but Bernie was brought to the land of trees and snow... 

It was quite an adjustment for him.  He is a very athletic outdoorsy sort of cat who used to love running just for the sheer joy of it.  When my daughter's cat was living there with him for a while he would try and get her to play tag, but she just looked at him like he had to be kidding...  He enjoyed exploring the woods, but his main objection to Connecticut was the long snowy winters here.  Whenever it snowed he would go from window to window yowling, hoping to somehow spot a landscape without snow.  My brother-in-law took pity on him, and to this day shovels a few paths through the snow so Bernie can get his exercise without too much contact with the white stuff.

A few years ago he was taken to a veterinary ophthalmologist for a problem with his eyes.  They think he may have Lyme Disease, but whatever it is it has gradually robbed him of his vision.  They give him eye drops every day to slow down the progression, but he is now blind.  He does very well, though.  He still catches mice - we can't figure out how.  He gets around the house pretty well because most things stay where they are, but he bumps into people, my dad's wheelchair and stray laundry baskets or shopping bags inadvertently left in his path.  He seems to take it all in stride, though.

Since he had a run in with a fisher they aren't letting Bernie outside by himself any longer.  They've also had two coyotes near the house.  He gets several walks a day with whoever is on hand to escort him.  Last week Bernie and I took a walk and had a good time exploring the bushes, flowers and trees.  And I got this picture of him coming toward me, only possible because he doesn't run anymore.  He walks very carefully, but doesn't seem to feel sorry for himself.  I admire his spirit of acceptance and adaptation, making the best of things.

When I checked my email this morning I had received a Ben Harper Newsletter announcing:
Earth Day Nat Geo Music broadcast April 22nd
Reminder! To celebrate Earth Day, Nat Geo Music channel is hosting a live broadcast concert featuring Ben Harper & Relentless7 in Rome's famed Piazza del Popolo. The free concert will air live 4/22 at 8pm in Italy (2pm ET USA) and will be featured simultaneously on Nat Geo Music channel in the USA and Nat Geo/Earth Day internationally.

We're also planning to catch the new movie, Earth, about a year in the life of the creatures on our planet.  The trailer by itself was enough to give me a lump in my throat...  For every ticket sold Disney will plant a tree.  Which brings me to Arbor Day, which is Friday...

When I was in Storrs Grammar School in the mid-1960s, to mark Arbor Day one year, three classes planted three evergreen trees on the corner of the school property.  We all wrote our names on a piece of paper and put the papers into three waterproof jars and buried them with the roots of each tree.  Those trees are huge now!  I drive by them several times a week on my way to visit my dad.  The old grammar school is now the town hall.  This is one of my few memories of my very early years at school, so I know it made a deep impression on me.

In honor of Earth Day today...

"The planet you're standing on
looking out at the stars
is the earth, the third planet from the sun

and the mildest
and softest
of the nine....

If you can stop, and let yourself look,
let your eyes do
what they do best,
stop
and let yourself see and see
that everything is doing things
to you
as you do things to everything.

Then you know
that although it is only a little planet
it is hugely beautiful
and surely the finest place in the world
to be.

So watch it, look at it
see what it's like
to walk around on it

It's small but it's beautiful
it's small but it's fine
like a rainbow,

like a bubble."

~ Lawrence Collins (Only a Little Planet)
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