Kate Hemenway

Still July 2025

It would appear you can’t shut me up this month.

Yesterday I spent the day at the annual Folk Festival in Lowell, Massachusetts. I’ve been attending regularly for 21 years, so, since 2004. It has gone on since at least 10 maybe 15 years before than that. Parents have borne their newborns to the Folk Festival. White haireds move sibilantly to music they remember from their child-bearing, no, their child-selves lives every year, now, some, themselves, having begun as a thought, or a stroller rider at an earlier Festival; many having begun their lives not only not in Lowell, not in Massachusetts, and not in English. And the Lowell Folk Festival honors that, celebrates it–the music each year is different from the year before, with different artists, and different music traditions, different regions, and different nations. It’s always a musical adventure. Yesterday–note, the Festival is always on the last weekend in July, aka, it’s hot! and each year, the Festival putter-oners get better at providing shade in the four concurrent stage areas, yesterday, one act dressing in traditional clothing wore fur hats. Oh, I could feel their sweat rolling down their faces, necks, while they fingered on stringed instruments complex, complex tunes to which they added words. And each act, no matter how overdressed, how active–and salsa music does not allow static musicians, nor audience; nor does Quebecois; nor does Chicago blues; nor does cajun; nor, even, Irish folk, or klezmer, nor many I haven’t named. The audiences, the myriad visitors roaming the multi-national food stations strategically located near the four stages, sitting within the well covered (by a combination of trees and tree shade–So Valuable, those trees!!! and huge canvas roofs) audience spaces at each stage are all ages, and are all aware of and mindful of everyone else. And, this is a free event operated by volunteers, hundreds maybe a thousand of them (even though it, being an arts thing, non-profit funded both by donations-personal and from some sponsors, and by public funds as a non-profit art thing, got its approved public funding removed in May or June…) It is OMG my favorite place and time each year. If you have not been, consider it next year, make a trip of it from wherever you live.

All this talk, and I took no photographs this year. Ugh. Go to their website: lowellfolkfestival.org. Treat yourself. I meet friends there I haven’t seen in months, once I met someone I had lost touch with years ago, very nice experience among all the other that come to mind.

Onto the smaller local, my back yard. I am pretty sure I mentioned the plethora of fledglings who graced the space at various times these past two-three months. The last were, a bit to my dismay, grackle and starling youngsters. Usually these bigger, not so nice, neighbors visit for a few days, harrass the songbirds and then move along. Their year they nested (most likely in robbed or otherwise pillaged spaces) and fledged right here. Again, I took NO photos. I was too frustrated on behalf of the finches (gold, purple, and house), the titmice, woodpeckers (downy, hairy, redbellied + flickers), chickadees, nuthatches, robins, cardinals, sparrows, warblers, vireos, wrens, mockingbirds, catbirds — some of whom, admittedly, can be less than kind neighbors, and on behalf of me, because all I got to hear was the rather ratchedy screeching of insistent young grackles and starlings, plus the one teenage bluejay who seems to refuse to move house. I think, as of maybe yesterday, they may have moved on. Teenage bluejay is still here. As is, I think, teenage female downy woodpecker, as every single day I witness dueling downys (sp?) out back.

Upper left, adult downy, bottom right child? or unhappy mate at the turned back

It’s been on and off hot, and on and off humid. Saturday was perfect, hot, not humid, after two days of lie on the floor under the ceiling fan with the cats and pant humid. So there was nothing, nothing to spoil that Festival.

Today it rained. The Festival continues until this evening. Attendees are hardy, they will come, and, besides, the rain was only for the first hour, and, also besides, the tent-roof coverings protect from rain as much as from sun.

So here is where I stepped today:

A friend of mine recently taught me something about hy in hydrangea, that I think was mnemonically focused, but I forget what she said! And her information also included the lo in lobelia. I hope when she reads this, she calls me to remind me of the wisdom I have already let slip.

________________________________

So, as I am sitting here typing this, a “heat advisory” popped up in my computer’s information line down below. Starts tomorrow. Lasts for, looks like (yes, I just popped over to the site) it hangs on for three days.

Take cover.

This day is beautiful

As opposed to the previous few here in New England. But it has been dramatically more offensive elsewhere.

I would offer you this to read: https://emergencemagazine.org/essay/becoming-earth/

It is so important to know this about trees-woodlands-forests. Even if you are not able to accept all the spiritual focused contemplation she offers, just read and consider and understand that which is about how life here supports life, how life of the natural after its standing life is concluded, still gives life always.

I have no more words to provide today. If you have read the article through, you have already spent a good length of time reading my offering.

I bid you a good evening. I bid you a wonderful day, each day.

It’s July 2025

My intent was, perhaps still is, subsequent words will tell, to offer one of my “places” of observation, a vague meander into what surrounds us where and a curiosity about why.

But I am kind of keening today. I am feeling a lament surging. It is hot in so many places on earth right now, increasingly HOT hot. And sources of relief–water, trees, breezes even, are increasingly being commandeered (or razed) for too rapid, unnecessarily abundant, personal and corporate and governmental storage in search of additional profit, in service to the desire for more. I am sad today.

I am stepping away right now for a bit, in hopes that my mind travels elsewhere before I continue this day’s blogpost. It is 12:13PM EDT right now. I’ll be back.

Returned. The bicycle is a ruse today. Not the day for pushing pedals nevermind in shorts and tank tops, not in, as my shadow indicates, full length jeans and long sleeves.

This, below, is from my backyard just about 15 minutes ago.

I am most appreciative that I cannot see the junk littering the skies above those fast moving clouds.

Here is a good statistic that I report from the backyard this year. There have fledged: two blue jays, a male downy woodpecker, two chickadees, a titmouse, a nuthatch, two female and one male house finch, a female house sparrow, a mockingbird, and a grackle. Most have proceeded through fledgling to immature to mature, and children then away. The nuthatch and blue jay immatures look to be a day, no more, from moving out. This morning I saw my first brown headed cowbirds of the season, happily, after the nests have hatched and mostly flown.

Immature/nearly mature blue jay, chasing through dogwood tree leaves after just ducked-out parent blue-jay.

Here is a bad statistic. In my town, about five streets away, they tore down four trees in deference to granite curbs and repaving, along a quiet, two lane, unmarked, headed nowhere major four block long street, and, based on the “grass” they have seeded in the earth edge between granite curbstone and asphalt sidewalk, these maples and lindens will not be replaced with new shade providing, nicely cooling trees. It will be another asphalt, granite, asphalt alley, inducing residents to install yet another air conditioner or whatever the latest multipurpose “energy saving” inhome unit combination may be, “efficiently using” piped in fuel sources rather than shade-giving, cooling, pleasing to the eye and body-temperature, trees. I stop at the top of the street, mid-street and look down its length and I am sad.

Around the corner and along a street one block from me, three homeowners have blacktopped the majority of their properties so to make room for parking their electric vehicles, their hybrid vehicles, and their low-riding audibly evident otherwise intended compact cars and ___-Tough pickups. What are we thinking?!

___________________

It’s July. It’s hot. The air weighs more than I do. What is wrong with our heads?

Here, cool down.

As I typed, the air has gained weight. I am ready to dive into this lovely, spring day Concord River, were it still this height.

I’m stopping. You are free to go, if, indeed, you stayed through to here.

As Dawn Emerges this June Morning

Good morning! I lay awake for near to an hour listening to robins outside my windows, and Maria purring beside me. I lay there, and as the robinic chorus increased in number and volume, I began thinking about my job, my last job, the one from which I retired quite a few years ago now, and that I had held for 28 years. Fifteen years into my working life, it involved a complete change to my presumed career path; it was not a route I expected to take, and typical to my way of being, not the one planned.

I thought, hmm, I think I am going to share about it in a blog post. I started remembering it–what it comprised, who my fellow employees–my colleagues, reportees, bosses, intimates and not-so-intimates–were, where I traveled for it, what I accomplished, what I didn’t–and then the sparrows woke up and began their less than tuneful, but certainly neighborly chirps and chips, and Maria began tapping me, and the clock marked 4:45AM, and I said, okay, I am getting up, I am going to write the blogpost, but, nope, not about my job. Because, really, who cares?

I can’t answer that question. I am not in your head, nor yours, nor yours. But, more I will just say, I met and knew a lot of people I like a lot. I traveled to local and somewhat distant places in this country, learned different takes on what I thought I was profoundly knowledgeable and right about, learned how much being the rightest in the room isn’t always possible, and surely isn’t always necessary, nor, in fact, right. I am grateful for this job, these people, these 28 years with them, and very grateful for now, sitting at this desk, at this very old laptop, looking out into the curtain of my weeping birch trees, and listening.

Thus–this morning, this day. The sparrows just, maybe 30 seconds ago, stopped their chorus. I need to go out to the kitchen to listen for the finches and mourning doves, who are likely emerging now, with substantially quieter voices than the sparrows and the robins. So I am pausing for a bit.

I’m thinking I may tell you about a bicycle trip I took in the US Southwest about 24 years ago. It was a magnificent trip, experience, time. I do want to suggest now–never let your body and head conspire to tell you you can’t. Your body may tell you so, and if it does by itself, probably listen and accommodate. But if your head is part of the telling, close your ears, step away! By listening, you will only divert yourself from something you can do.

Hoodoos in Bryce Canyon in the early morning. Photo courtesy of NPS (support it!)

For seven days we bicycled to and hiked into and out of Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon, Zion Canyon. In Bryce, traipsed among the hoodoos! I had before seen them from above, but to wander among them, and to wonder. At the Grand Canyon, to meander down to the river, kicking up ancient dust, steadying oneself on rock millenia-billenia-zillenia old, and, when seen from across the canyon, so many hues, yet here among it, just present and touchable. Ah yes. In Zion, trouped through the Virgin River and Gorge at dawn, ankle, knee deep, prickles of cold in a day that then climbed to barely bearable heat. Climbed a ridge to a place called Scout Lookout, reaching that height, at times by scrabbling on hands and knees. And on the way, while pedaling to and between these canyons, passing through red, rose, dusky, bisque, beige, golden, tan, ecru, magenta, ochre, umber, rouge walls near and distant, miles of floor, with a single roundhead, glaringly green tree poised mid-desert offering brief shade. Naming places on the horizon and at hand–Escalante, Angel Canyon, Kanab, Panguitch.

Virgin River in Zion National Park. photo courtesy of NPS (support it!)

And, not wandering so far from home, pedaling here, in Massachusetts, pedaling beside Hondas, Mercedes, Hyundais, Nissans, Mazdas, Fords, Rams and Jeeps, F150s and Tundras, turning off, leaving rubber-on-road rumblings and pedaling beside and under tall red oaks, red maples, cottonwoods, aspens, white and red pines, hemlocks, spruces, green ashes, white oaks, black oaks, yellow poplars, paper birches, grey birches, black birches, copper beeches. Dismounting and whisper stepping within pine woods, shushing through deciduous woods. Stopping and fingering mud and packed, sodden, not-yet-mud tree-fern-reed-shrub leaves; standing before a bird-shelter and feast riddled once thriving pine counting its ladder of holes, squatting before a long fallen oak to visit its four and six and eight legged residents, before a spider web and its captives. Discovering.

Spider web suspended within two specific eras–former factory, long collapsed, and second or third or fourth growth woodland both fallen and growing new; living giving life

Morning has broken, like the first morning… It is 9:45am. I have breakfasted, enjoyed coffee, sat through a thunderstorm, and here we are. 9:46am now. Sending to you.

Mid-May–Merry Month of May, Midway

Good morning, mid-May, and midway through this night into the morning.

Well, that’s stretching it. Perhaps it was when I woke up at 3:15am. However, I resisted for an hour and a half. Now it’s 4:44 and I have succumbed to awakeness. Windows are still closed overnight, because, as I have, what, emoted, ensured, announced, in blog posts past, I like warmth, and, while a few days this merry month of May I have opened windows during the day, and Maria has instantly checked out the noise enhanced scenery, only one night have I left the two judiciously chosen windows to be open — kitchen and bedroom, both overlooking the backyard and the nascent vegetable garden, the bract-beautiful dogwood, the backporch, the arborvitae, and the birdfeeders. And last night was not one to keep them open. It being, even as I type, only 52 degrees Farenheit. I need at least 60 degrees, maybe 62 degrees overnight before the fresh air is allowed to blow in overnight.

Nevertheless, as I sat at my desk to begin this, 10 minutes ago, I heard through the closed windows of my office a robin, and now another. Perhaps the sparrows are rustling as well. It’s still dark out at ground level, so little motion, little rustling. I do see the sky paling a bit, and now, now, even as I type, I hear the 18-wheelers 1 1/2 miles away on the highway. And just now, a blue jay several house lots away. Boisterous enough to be audible over my clicking keys, the rolling 18-wheelers, and any lower decibel birds awakening and stretching closer at hand.

Well, so that’s me. Are you up? What do you hear? What do you see? If you were in New England, did you enjoy the incredibly beautiful, sunny day yesterday was? Nevertheless, have you been as glad I have been over the amount of rain we’ve gotten these past weeks? I was at the Concord River yesterday morning fairly early to count herrings climbing the fish ladder. That river, those falls, that fish ladder were so very high, and whooshing! Continuing contained within its banks, albeit barely, it was a good sight to behold. I read yesterday that we have finally emerged out of drought state here in mid-northern, and in northern New England, and are merely in “very dry” state now. So I, for one, hope for a few more days here of good rain. My arugula would be happy of it too. It is about an inch high as I planted a bit late in April. But it’s looking good, and I am ready for it! A rogue arugula plant popped up in another part of my designated vegetable and wildflower garden area, and nice and early, so I have been peppering my salads with it for a couple of weeks already. But as of yesterday I consumed all its leaves. So now I wait, wait for that which I planted later rather than earlier in April. But oh! I also harvested rhubarb last week. So good. I enjoy it like a bowl of applesauce. I have one friend who loves rhubarb as much as I do. Maybe I’ll save her a portion for when I see her later this week. Maybe…..

Apropos of nothing, I think I’ll show you a few photographs of recent vintage.

This, I read, is called an Interrupted Fern. It is so named to describe the gap in the middle of the blade left by the fertile portions after they wither and eventually fall off. (Well after this photograph was taken, which was April 29th)

I’m showing you these tulips, which bloomed later than all my others. Nice of them. Just when I thought, oh well, no more spots of color, these popped out. A friend of mine gave me these last year in a pot, I planted them last fall, and voila!!

Threeleaf Goldthread. According to wikipedia, its rhizome was chewed by indigenous peoples to relieve canker sores, and is also used to make a tea that is used as an eyewash. There’s more, you can look it up.

A work of art, otherwise known as an aged section of a red pine that has served quite a few purposes. Ah, to be useful, and found valuable right through to old age.

So, and I am also peppering my salads with violet leaves and flowers, and dandelion greens. My, my they are tasty.

Look!! It’s light out now!! I looked up from the screen, and I can see the street; I can see the weeping birch that curtains my front yard (and the sidewalk) from now until October. I can see the shrubs in front of my porch that cardinals vetted about a month ago for a nest, but rejected. They’re around, so their nest isn’t far. Just not here in front this year. I keep an eye on last year’s robin nest in the crook of one of my downspouts and the eave of the porch. No one has taken it over, but I think some of its structure has been taken for use by others elsewhere, as it looks a bit disarrayed.

It is spring today, this April day

Here’s something to consider. Perhaps we no longer assign months/quarters/extended spells of time to a season. Perhaps we identify a season day by day. Today, Monday, 4/14/2025, it is spring. Yesterday, Sunday, 4/13/2025, it is (was) winter. The day before, Saturday, 4/12/2025, it is (was)–I believe, I don’t really hold onto weather (perhaps why I have come up with this scheme), winter. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera [does anyone remember Yul Brynner enunciating this phrase? It was a long time ago. I must admit, nevertheless, I do remember.

But, yes, today it is spring! Orange Fuji and I took to the roads and trails.

moss and seasonal ponding. Leaves, predominantly oak remain, most others having returned to dirt or other elements. I think of it as oak protects. Maple, ash, birch, aspen, beech…. provide.

more moss and seasonal ponding (hmm, seasonal? after I just redefined/shortened the duration of its meaning? Perhaps, day to day ponding)

and amid the leaves in this site, skunk cabbage is emerging; it promises and it delivers

and delivers, and delivers! No stink yet, only one bract of not green in this photograph, but stink it will come!! It’s the smell of life, and then they wither and shrink back to dirt.

this very pretty, tiny green patch is cord moss; it is known also as water moss; a wet dirt dweller.

Then there were these ducks. Not a particularly helpful photograph. But perhaps one of you can see and know just what it is? Not mallards.

Things, life is so much clearer at hand. But I cannot carry everyone on my bicycle, so these photographs bring you with me on this day defined as spring.

It persists. Life persists. Good and bad persist. And we pass between leaning this way and that; rarely knowing which will be the next step, anymore than the next day.

Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still

The above two lines are from the last stanza of T.S. Eliot’s poem, Ash Wednesday.

It is an incredible poem, but read it at your emotional risk.

Here two stanzas that, in rereading it just now, I find speaking to the start of this blog post. I had not held them in my head all the years since I last read the poem. I had not reached back in my memory for them. And yet, here they are, speaking:

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is
nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

It is Quiet. Somewhere

In fact, it is quiet in my house. And I am glad of it.

Noise is very crowded, and sometimes I am not ready for it, indeed not even, at times, up to it. You?

**Solitude**–of me behind the camera, of the seat in the place, of the place. This is not today here in Massachusetts, however, based on predictions this past Friday for northern New Hampshire, it could be a place there, now. Except that, while in New Hampshire on Friday, I heard from a lot of people that they were headed north to ski for the weekend. And I won’t even guess the odds of how many more like the people I heard, had the same plan–manymanymany. Probably no silence nor solitude in much of north of Latitude: 42^o 56′ 47.29″

It is almost the last of March. I have raked the oak leaves off most of the bulbs and rhisomatic (?) shoots, so to enable them to emerge undistorted — oak leaves sometimes grip an emerging shoot within one or two of the oak leaf’s sinuses, and if I don’t come to the rescue first, the shoot’s leaves grow into full size with a crimp or two or three in their height, so they look more like a drill shaft than a screwdriver shaft, this is assuming they escape the grip of the oak leaf! I have not raked the oak leaves out of the vegetable beds yet, and it’s just as well, because we here remain in the 30s, despite a day in the 50s a week or two ago. Yesterday, Saturday, March 29th we here were at 35^oF while in NYC it was 65^oF. I report this because it is unusual For those of you not residing in the Northeast of this country, I report this because it is unusual. Usually we are in relative tandem, maybe 5 or 10 degrees colder up here compared to NYC, and usually with bitterer winds. So while New Yorkers were traipsing about in shorts and brunching at sidewalk cafes, we in mid and northern New England had redonned our winter jackets and leggings.

Clouds and, on most days for the next 10 days, cold-coldish air is predicted for this region. So you may find a second blogpost from me within the next 7-10 days. My bicycle is shivering in the shed; my gloves are still lying on the kitchen radiator warming up; the urge for hot chocolate still prevails. And what better accompaniment to hot chocolate than blogposting (other than reading, my truly favorite indoor timespent)?

All this being said, I also report that the robins, chickadees, cardinals, titmice and carolina wrens, especially are singing their spring love songs. The downy woodpeckers, who have been about all winter, now are enduring competition from a red-bellied woodpecker couple. The tenacious nuthatches care not the season, they “ank ank ank” frequently, day after day. The audacious blue jays seem to have given up in this neighborhood, and the mockingbirds are nosing their inimical (read the almost word in the middle of that word, i.e., mimic, my goodness, a particularly talented mimicking mockingbird around here has fooled the neighboring imitatees, as well as my phone’s Merlin birdsong/birdcall identifier app), way in–to the absolute disgust of the robins!

Each morning, the earliest robin song gets a little earlier. Well, I think so, I can’t really hear through the closed windows, but a couple of the mornings in the past several weeks I was up early, early and peeking out the back door caught a robin at an hour that a month ago would have been a silent one. Aha, I am back to the topic of silence. Just like that the circle has closed.

There are times when silence pervades so thoroughly, you cast about, no, thrash about, just to make sound. Noise, sounds–like robins at 5:00 then 4:00 then 3:00 AM– can delight, as readily as they can not.

It is the dilemma of too much.

U.S. Navy F/A-18 approaching the speed of sound. The white halo is formed by condensed water droplets thought to result from a drop in air pressure around the aircraft

So, a drop in air pressure around the aircraft because it escaped the speed of sound, to quiet just before the sound can be. Here is something to think about, getting ahead of sound–sound/air pressure. Bigger air pressure, pushes down, or back, and the space it permits is now smaller, and anything in that smaller space is — what? — is LOUDER. Too much in too small a space. (Bill Y, please check my conceptualization, and let me know how widely I err).

Too much in too small a space…..

I look around me and wonder. I wonder, why?

I wo wo wo wo wonderrrr, why? my little runaway. {some of the lyrics from a Del Shannon song from, oh I don’t know, 1961?} A run run run run runaway. {“””}

It Brings Spring

Calendrically, March brings spring. And, in fact, I have been noticing the shifting-to-higher angle of the sun. This became particularly noticeable to me in February this year, with the several snowstorms we had here–the snow white was a new hue. It was not as gray. I am thinking this is not the snow changing color as the sky it’s reflecting that is gold-bluing. I would take a picture of my vestigial snow today to make the point, but, in fact, the sky is full cloud, and positioning to send down some rain, so the snow is flat-white. Not particularly photogenic.

How are you faring today? I’m kind of in minor mode. The second half of yesterday does not bear repeating. Happily, I slept deeply last night, without dreams of note, and woke to Maria, the tuxedo cat, patiently kneading the blankets that covered my shoulder, which, based on the time (6:00 AM), she had probably been doing for at least an hour. I am eternally grateful for deep sleep.

I want to be more loving in my heart, from Howard Thurman

A couple of days ago I planned my vegetable and herb garden. I have made all sorts of promises to myself that I will be diligent in establishing it carefully, not my usual willy-nilly some seeds here, a semi-mound for the cucumber seeds there, oh look, a space over near that corner, I believe I’ll sow some found ground cherry seeds there. No! I will set out the rows. I will keep to the rows. I will follow the calendar for best-day-to-seed. I will appropriately mark the name of what is in that row and not count on remembering to put it on the chart three days later. I will thin the seedlings when they are two leaves high. I will know which green seedling is a viable vegetable and which is an interloper. I will nourish the seeds, seedlings, plants so that they, in turn, will return the favor. A day later I went and bought two seed packets for vegetables that are not on my garden plan. Argh.

In May? June? I always end up finding starter plants for something I haven’t planned. Then I always try to cram them in. Keep me honest, ask me in June what is planted, what is growing, how much arugula have I had already. Are lima beans showing some promise? Did I carefully mound the pickling cucumbers? Are they flourishing? Did the biennial sage come back? How about the rosemary–has it become warm enough in this growing zone for it to overwinter like it has done for a long time just south of here in NYC? In July will I be weeding in my bathing suit? With icepacks on my neck to keep cool?

Sorry, I digress toward the climate. I want not to bring you down. (As soon as I wrote that last sentence, the song by ELO popped into my head–“Don’t bring me down….Groos! Don’t bring me dooowwwnnn… Anyone remember that song? Jeff Lynne of the excellent band, ELO, and later of the wonderful Traveling Wilburys )

Here is an explanation for “Groos”: the word is a mondegreen in the song that Jeff Lynne is shouting “Bruce”. But Jeff Lynne has explained that he is singing a made-up word, “Groos”, which some have suggested sounds like the German expression “GruB” [that B in German language fonts is a bit more stylized, and pronounced as a hard “s”.], which means “greeting.” Lynne explained that originally he did not realize the meaning of the syllable, and he just used it as a temporary placekeeper to fill a gap in the lyrics, but upon learning the German meaning, he decided to leave it in. This is not the only explanation, but it’s one the Jeff Lynne, the song’s writer is credited with, so I use it. If you want some alternative tales, just look up that line from the song, or ELO, or Jeff Lynne.

Also, if you don’t know who the remarkable Traveling Wilburys are, I really recommend looking them up and listening to some of their songs. Here’s a hint from Wikipedia (also my source for the preceding paragraph):

The Traveling Wilburys were a British-American supergroup formed in Los Angeles in 1988, consisting of Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty. They were a roots rock band and described as “perhaps the biggest supergroup of all time”

Oh, and, also from Wikipedia, here is the definition of a mondegreen: a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase in a way that gives it a new meaning. Mondegreens are most often created by a person listening to a poem or a song; the listener, being unable to hear a lyric clearly, substitutes words that sound similar and make some kind of sense.

Will you be planting a garden? Even a windowsill garden? Regardless if properly planned, prepared, planted, and picked (or not!), I find it such peace. Even if it while I watch the rabbit chews off the heads of the flowers before they can fruit, or the chipmunks grub whatever they can, or the robins, finches, and, yes, cardinals nip at whatever flower, fruit, leaf appeals, or the groundhog lumbers around the edges taking a bite here and there. Happily, the rabbit is finding more and more clover in my grasses, which distracts him from the tulips, nasturtiums, radishes…..

Here’s some advice I saw at a county fair in some part of interior Maine a couple of years ago, take it or not!

Good day!

February 2025 Seems to Have me Silenced

Nevertheless, I will try to break it as it sit before my desk, before my window, watching rain, previously cold rain, previously freezing rain, previously snow perpetually since some hour this early morning while I slept. It is now mid, late afternoon. I am noticing that the 10 new inches of overnight have been reduced to probably 6 inches, sitting atop the 4 inches of two days ago, that began their morning as 8 inches, but, like today, seeped down and out to the roads, the walkways, the gutters, the exposed areas of soft surface anywhere as the temperature rose. Yesterday, walking was a mindful experience, having to look always at the next spot my foot would step or slip thus slide. Today, post shoveling, I didn’t even bother to walk, thighs, especially quads, too achy, and weather/surface conditions, too wet. Then there’s tonight coming up–temperature drops, and ah ha, tomorrow sliding/skating/slipping on sidewalks time. No matter the treatments we apply, and when walking, I pass over, alongside, around many manner of efforts to make the pedestrian’s way stable.

All this about weather, all this weather!!

We are so less than certain about so much in life. Damocles sword ever swinging.

What do you do when you are particularly uncertain? Do you pause? Do you ponder? Do you weigh options? Do you forge ahead? Do you put a toe in? Do you circle and pounce? Do you sidle into? –a decision, an answer, a conclusion, an action, a response, a choice. Do you have one way, always the same way, same tone, same expectation, of approaching uncertainty? Or are you situational? Circumstantial? Communal?

I believe I will ponder that question myself. I doubt I’ll let you know what my answer is. I doubt I’ll be certain it is the only possible answer. So I would buffer it, and is that helpful?

Would you lie to help someone? To maybe even save someone? Is a lie of omission a lie?

It must be the rain, raining down on me.

Perhaps it’s because it’s February and the groundhog prediction is for six more weeks of winter. Of the ground hog’s accuracy, there are arguers for both sides. Always. But it has been snowing here in New England an awful lot this month of February. Have I told you recently how grateful I am that I had a french drain installed last year? My wet-dry vacuum is wondering why I have ignored it since spring 2024. My cats, on the other hand, are grateful not to have to tiptoe to their litter boxes down in the basement. I will not subject you to pictures of them this time. I could!! But I won’t. You have been very patient.

This weekend is also the “Great Backyard Bird Count” weekend. I will like to believe my counts are so low because the weather is most uncooperative. There is one persistent member of several families: a titmouse, a chickadee (or two), a nuthatch, a downy woodpecker, two cardinals, and, of course, a dozen house sparrows flitting, fidgeting, flying. Oh and the juncos. Out front a mockingbird sits in the ornamental (read mock) cherry for long spells and scrunches up and scowls.

At the river a couple of days ago, a pair of swans swam downcurrent with me as I walked the length of the riverwalk.

However, look at these locusts!! The keep away message from the one on the left is clear. Although the squirrels, backing their constructed home on under-spiked locust, dare to stay close.

This is my February visit to you. Thanks for letting me in.

Now We Are Here

This is the end of the first quarter century (or is it the beginning of the 2nd quarter of this century?–Did 2000 begin us, or did 2001 begin us? Was the beginning a time and calendar turmoil, or was it a space odyssey (anyone who gets the references is, I am guessing, at least a quarter of a century old)

As I begin this post, it is Friday, January 10th. Yesterday, January 9th, 2025 this nation’s population honored former U.S. President, lifelong person of faith in God and in the tenet to love your neighbor as yourself, Jimmy Carter. I remember when he ran for office. Not knowing anything about him, I stood in Boston’s Quincy Marketplace and watched his young, enthusiastic smile and listened to his young, enthusiastic words and wondered. I believe he showed us how to become, how to be and become, good, again and again. This is what I would like to be, always in place, and always in motion for the good. And to see that and encourage that in “my neighbor”–who is anyone, who is everyone.

How often I fall short. I bet he did too. It is an element of the very good creation called human. We can fall short. We can also step in place, reground, and step longer forward. I am grateful that this is.

I’m thinking about how I opened this post–talking about a quarter of a century. That seems to me an enumeration of so much more time than 25 years. You? What do you think?

To open this quarter, winds have beset this country–literal–on one side chilling, on the other burning; and–figurative–on one side chilling, on the other burning. Many losses for many and very diverse people.

It’s hard to envision hope as viable for some. And yet, imagine the absence of that fragile emotion. From it comes strength, love, kindness, courage, faith, even, I believe, wisdom.

It’s late afternoon. Low sun sky, sunset in 20 minutes from this moment that I am typing. Will I complete this before the sun is now below this day’s horizon? It is a clear day, first in a few, gold glow is already dominating the western horizon, visible among the bare maples, willow, birches, nearly bare oaks and beeches, the box edges of houses, their angled roofs, the breeze rustling shrubs. The neighborhood dogs have all emerged in the last two minutes, announcing themselves. My nearest neighbor dogs beside and behind my place are Luca and Jack, and Guinness straight across from me. Three beauties. Three sweet companions to their families.

The edges of all structures, as I type–the houses, sidewalks, stairs, fences, chimneys, porches–are coming into detailed relief. No shadow to disguise them, no precipitation to distort them.

Here’s a poem I just found by Galway Kinnell, it’s called: Daybreak (hmm, I add)

On the tidal mud, just before sunset,
dozens of starfishes
were creeping. It was
as though the mud were a sky.

Note: the photographs were added, because I couldn’t leave you pictureless. Of course, one’s mind is always overwhelmed with pictures.

Thanks for reading. It is now 4:34pm here, the sun has set.