nature – Page 2 – whereIwonder&why

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!

Delight! Earlier this morning it rained some

I woke to clouds, grey, without shape, just overhead mass, those harbingers of rain, which have been not present much in two or three months. I thought, “I only wish.” And, lo an hour later, it rained!! Not a lot, not loudly, not at any windblown angle, not, in fact so that I’d notice even though I was sitting, having breakfast in front of the kitchen window, looking out at bird feeders, back porch, azalea bushes, dogwood tree, plum tree. I did not see the rain falling. I saw, when I opened the back door to bring the cats’ food can to the recycle barrel, that the ground was wet, the porch steps hosting drops in pleasant array. Ahh, good, I thought.

And it is. And then the clouds, emptied of their gift, slowly slid away, staging shifted for the next act, and the sun in full gold lit the drops of rain, dried surface after surface. I took my bicycle out of the shed and away I rode. (Ahead, I hoped, of the predicted “winds with gusts up to 17 mph”. I don’t fare well pedaling against neither gusts nor steady winds.)

It was a perfect morning to early afternoon ride. Sunlight not only bright, but sparkled off leaves, pebbles, slender branches, and the small, disparate but hope-inducing puddles and ponds gracing the asphalt, and bejeweling the forest floor. (Well, forest is a bit of an overstatement, but poetically it works, don’t you think?).

I am taking delight in all that I can.

White oak leaf bejeweled. Off the rail trail, I walked a short, .4mile path through a wood almost all oak and pine, with a couple of big tooth aspens inserting themselves.

and this, I believe a flaw, but it is a textural wonder, fallen with its host, a small tree, into a new receiving host–a ground covered by more textures than my eyes can understand

And closer. The depth, the girth, the tautness, the layer-after-layer-after-layer of this red pine bark! And who knows what or who I have photographed here in the recesses of the, essentially, the surface of this tree. (Oh what a camera that is not of an iphone12mini could have seen!)

And, another gift, two miles from home, I ran into (not literally) a friend I haven’t seen in a couple of months, also on his bicycle, which was good for so many reasons!

And you know, I almost accomplished my home-ahead-of-the-headwinds goal. Only the last five minutes, that last 1/2 mile push UP to my “Highlands” (the name of my neighborhood) home, did I need (and boy did I need to!) to stand on my pedals and PUSHPUSHPUSHPUSH.

Got in and treated myself to a peanut butter sandwich on my friend E’s homebaked bread. So many pleasures.

Here’s an I-was-there proof shot.

I do wish you could see the brilliance of the colors that covered this rolling path. I can only attest, they were scintillating. And can you see the rolling terrain of the path? And, if you look closely on the ground, you will notice that at least one maple is in this woods, there is leaf just left of the shadow of my hand in front of my face

Whose woods these are, I think I know, his house is in the village though…. Thank you Robert Frost.

Actually these woods are a gift to the town in which they are, by a couple, last name Valentine, who gifted it for wildness into perpetuity. I thank them.

Peace to you and yours.