Friday poetry challenge: Color my world

I was mesmerized yesterday by the iridescent pink-and-purple blades of the scissors wielded by the woman cutting my hair, a stylist I'd never seen before, adorned in pink blouse, pink sweater, pink-and-gold hair, and gold lip studs, who moved those satiny pink blades so slowly and smoothly that the motion nearly put me to sleep.

They reminded me of the highway I'd driven on that morning, a pink-and-purple swath of road that looked as satiny as a bridesmaid's dress, the wet road reflecting a sky painted in soft hues of yellow blending into pink and then mauve and then deep purply gray. It was so lovely I wanted to stop and take a photo, but before I could pull over the gray clouds shrouded all the colors and the whole world turned to drizzle.

I'd like to thank whoever was responsible for injecting such beautiful colors into a gray and cloudy day, but instead I'll squeeze my gratitude into a little haiku:

Pink blades snip, pink road 
slips past; light pours color on sky,
blessings on the day.

What colors light up your world this week? 

Breathing, not quite easily

I was all set to teach my Nature Writing class right on time Saturday but nature got in the way--thunder and lightning and rain so heavy that I had to sit in my car in the parking lot waiting for a break in the deluge. I used an umbrella, but nevertheless I spent the next three hours walking around on wet feet. The class was great, though, and the rain stopped just in time for us to go outside for an observation activity, stepping out the door into what felt like a sauna turned to Broil. But the good news is the wildfire smoke had dissipated.

Friday morning I had walked out the door of my hotel room in Columbus and immediately abandoned my plans for a nice walk in a lovely garden. The sun was a dim hazy disc, like a fuzzy felt circle glued on gray; the heavy air tasted acrid and made my eyes gritty and my head dull. From the window of my son's room on the sixteenth floor of The James, I saw buildings a block away fading into invisibility. My son was released from the hospital under strict orders to stay indoors. What do we do when the very air feels hostile?

But I got him home and we stayed indoors and awaited the rain, which arrived on Saturday as expected, with winds whipping trees around and pushing my car across a road rippling with rain falling too fast to drain away. And then I stopped by my office on campus to pick up some things and found another indication of nature's resilience: blotches of mold growing on the carpet. I've been working in the library all summer because my office in the classroom building gets damp in the summer, but never before has that dampness transformed my carpet into a living ecosystem. 

Maybe it's appropriate to be reminded of the power of nature when I'm teaching people about nature writing. It's not all butterflies and rainbows, people! The group was lively and attentive, a dozen people, mostly women of a certain age, all eager to amp up their nature writing skills. I kept reminding them I'm not grading any of this, and by the end of the three hours they had stopped apologizing for their attempts. They sat around big tables covered with notepads, pens, drawing paper, markers, colored pencils, handbags, abandoned attempts at prose, and crumbled snack wrappers, but all I could see were the hands scribbling and drawing and writing accompanied by a low, gentle chatter that sounded like joy. 

Today the sun is shining and the smoke is gone and I'm still reveling in the pleasures of yesterday's class. Tomorrow I'll have to motivate someone on campus to remediate the mold infestation in my office, but today I think I'll sit here and enjoy the privilege of breathing freely. 

Oh, and I'd probably go back to the nature center and retrieve the umbrella I left behind. This time of year, we never know what nature might throw at us next.

Waiting for a break in the storm

The view from the 16th floor

Just a small section of my carpet ecosystem

Friday poetry challenge: It's not about the Vikings

We stumbled upon the Indian pipes just past the Viking encampment and immediately tried to protect them--the plants, not the Vikings. 

You wouldn't expect to encounter Vikings deep in the Hocking Hills, but the absence of longboats suggests that these weren't real Vikings. If you want to encounter grown people dressed the way they imagine Vikings might have dressed and living in tents in the woods for a weekend in July, then stroll through the Viking encampment, buy some sourdough bread, look at some taxidermied foxes, and try your hand at tossing a hatchet at a target--at no charge.

We hadn't driven 90 minutes through intermittent rain just to see a Viking encampment, but the parking area for Lilyfest was Viking-adjacent, so we dutifully walked past the Vikings' tents and through thick woods to enter the annual art and nature festival at Bishop Educational Gardens. When we saw Indian pipes growing smack-dab in the middle of the trail, my husband stuck a stick in the dirt to mark the spot so they wouldn't get trampled. A futile gesture: a few hours later when we left there was no sign of the stick or the Indian pipes. We saw some clumps growing in the woods nearby, but you can't expect hordes of beauty-starved visitors to notice tiny delicate plants in the middle of a trail through dark woods.

It's been a few years since my last visit to Lilyfest but it was just as wonderful as I'd remembered. The rain kept the crowd thin and made photography difficult but also provided a welcome respite from oppressive heat and humidity. We wandered the gardens, bought some lilies to plant at home, and sat beneath the trees eating lunch while a young girl nearby played bluegrass tunes on a fiddle. 

You never know what you might find among the gardens: gorgeous orange lilies on one side of the path, sinuous glass sculpture on the other, a butterfly flitting between them, and always music wafting through the air. Despite the presence of vendors, visitors, and Vikings, it feels like a place of peace and poetry. To celebrate small but intense pleasures, let's try some haiku:

Lilies, lotuses, 
sinuous glass: nature, art,
and music bring peace.

Indian pipes, before the crowds trampled them

At the lotus pond. I love the subtle colors.

They seem startled to see us. 

I love this cat hanging from a tree.

A front-row seat for the summer show

It happens like clockwork every year: the minute the bottlebrush buckeye starts blooming,  hummingbird moths show up. Where do they hide the rest of the year? No idea, but suddenly, there they are.

I remember the first time I ever saw those chunky critters that looked like flying shrimp hovering among tall wildflowers near the parking area at Marie Desonier State Nature Preserve, where my daughter and I went on a hike during the weeks before she started her freshman year of college. I remember wondering what they were and how I might go about seeing them more often. Turns out all I needed to do was to plant a bottlebrush buckeye, which I did ten years ago, using money some people had given in memory of my mother.

They showed up this week after only a few of the buckeye's flowers had started blooming, but each day brings more blooms and so many pollinators that you can hear the buzzing before you see a single bee or butterfly or hummingbird. Today I ventured out in soul-crushing heat and humidity to find three zebra swallowtails fluttering around various areas of the bush, which seems too big to qualify as a bush anymore, towering high overhead and filling in a hefty chunk of yard. Two of the swallowtails got into some sort of skirmish until one flew off into the distance. I reminded them that it's a big bush with plenty of blooms to go around, but they weren't listening.

I'd like to go out and look again to see what else might show up, but it's stinking hot outside, with the sort of humidity that makes you want to plunge into a glacial pool. Instead, I'll wait until the sun goes down so I can watch the next big event: the firefly show, just outside our front window. There's no chance of getting any decent photos, so all I can do is sit here and watch.

Mystery of the dying maple

It's a little disconcerting to park my car next to a maple tree in rapid decline. Last year about half of the limbs looked dead, but this year very few limbs have any leaves at all. 

Why? Your guess is as good as mine. Dig down in that part of the yard and you'll find a thick layer of gravel a few inches beneath the surface, and many things we've planted out there have failed to thrive. The maple was here before we moved in and looked okay for many years. A dogwood we planted seems to be thriving, but the Japanese maple nearby has a few leafless limbs. We've taken some dead limbs off the big maple but at some point the whole tree needs to come down.

Which is a shame because it's an ideal staging space for birds visiting our feeders. This morning I watched an adult red-bellied woodpecker grab a seed from the feeder and then fly back to feed a juvenile waiting in the tree. The dearth of foliage makes it easy to observe birds' social behavior: cardinals fighting for territory, male cowbirds putting on a courtship display for a female, and, this morning, two house finches having an encounter I couldn't quite interpret.

Taking out the sickly maple will provide more sunshine for the dogwood, but I'll miss that tree when it's gone. Is it a mistake to get so attached to particular trees? That maple seems like a permanent fixture of the landscape, but a tree that stands tall today may well start dropping limbs in the next windstorm.  

Just not on my car, okay? 

Cowbirds vying for the attention of a female.

Wish I knew what they were thinking.

Same tree, different branches.

Dead limb between two still living.

A model of sharing.

A little urban nature hike

This morning I saw a skunk, which wouldn't be surprising if I were in my own yard, where skunks often dig for grubs. But I don't expect to see a skunk waddling across the front yard of a house on a crowded street in the middle of Columbus, Ohio. A quick bit of Googling reveals the presence of several companies advertising skunk removal services in the city, so I guess they get around more than I'd expected.

I haven't spent much time outdoors in the time I've been in Columbus (Two weeks? Three? I've lost track) but I've nevertheless spotted a cormorant, a bunch of ducks and geese, a great blue heron, and, today, an adorable little snail, plus the usual robins, sparrows, and squirrels.

The snail was crawling across a bike path that runs for many miles along the Olentangy River, a lovely trail beside a beautiful river that, for much of its length, has a major highway running along its opposite bank. On the east bank, gorgeous park; on the west, busy highway. That's urban nature for you: kneeling to peer at a tiny snail to the constant accompaniment of traffic sounds.

There's not much growing in the yard at the duplex we're renting in Columbus aside from dandelions and dead-nettle. Everywhere the pear trees are blooming and blanketing my car with pollen, and at the park we saw some sort of buttercup blooming en masse. I miss my trilliums and hope I'll get back home before they're gone, but meanwhile I'm keeping a lookout for growing things wherever I go. When I'm spending my days lingering within the labyrinthine walls of a hospital and watching my son suffer through one procedure after another, it's good to be reminded that somewhere out there the world is still turning and beautiful things are still growing.

  

The white line on the other side is the highway.

Guineas in the mist

I totally understand why no one goes trick-or-treating on my road: it's narrow and twisty, with lots of blind curves and no streetlights or sidewalks, and you never know when a critter might skitter across the road in front of you. Houses are far apart, and a child in a mask that limits peripheral vision would be taking his life in his hands walking up my driveway. And of course the guineas' alarm call makes it sound like someone is getting murdered in my meadow. Scary place! But beautiful too, especially in the early-morning autumn fog.

 

Guineas in the mist, and chickens too

The resident woodsman has been working hard.