Encountering Earth

 I can't believe it's been over a month since I posted! In the meantime, summer has slipped into Autumn, the moon has been full, birds are migrating and leaves are changing. Nature is always in flux, always working, always resting, always Being.  This Fall seems to have such vibrant colors! It seems that the cold snap we had set the sugars and is helping to really make the colors pop! I went for a hike in the Albany Pine Bush on Sunday and I was amazed that the understory was a blaze of reds, orange, copper and yellow. The sumacs are such a deep burgundy! Virginia creeper is a lovely red. The Asian bittersweet (a really terrible invasive) is awash in yellow and soon its berries will be a vibrant orange. The maples are beginning to turn- there are some striking ones that are tri-colored now! I will have to wait a while for my favorite - the copper oaks that hold their leaves til the very end of winter. Sumac is another favorite of mine. The leaves are so incredibly scarlet and ...

  Hiking in the Albany Pine Bush has been fascinating! There are so many species of plants. Yes, some are invasives and they need to be cut and weeded out. This is a terrible job considering that things like Asian bittersweet are choking out native plants and smothering bushes and even trees! But the battle to stop the invasives so that native plants can thrive continues and it is well worth it!  For example, we found Dotted Horsemint. Just a couple of plants by the side of the trial. I emailed the Albany Pine Bush Commission to find out what it was because I couldn't find it in my wildflower book. The woman who responded described it so well, she said,  "I really do love the pale purple color of the modified leaves around the flower whorls."   Yes, it was amazing! On another hike, we saw whole patches of the horsemint. The open fields were covered with so many varieties of plants and the horsemint stood out as it turned from purple to white in its "aging" proce...

Summer flowers are bursting out everywhere! The roadsides are lined with colors and textures of the many wildflowers: the periwinkle blue of chickory, the soft white of Queen Anne's Lace, the pearly pink of swamp milkweed, the sunshine yellow of bird's foot trefoil, the bouncy orange of tiger lilies. Summer flowers are boisterous! They shout their presence, unlike the fragile and quiet Spring wildflowers that must be pursued, like a hide and seek game, in the understory of the woods.  Many of the flowers of Summer are like flags waving me down: Joe-Pye weed that can be taller than I am, huge purple thistle and goldenrod. I need to pay more attention to these Summer flowers. In the Spring I often take out a magnifying lens and look deeply into the heart of fringed polygala or spring beauties. But now I give a cursory glance as I caught myself doing yesterday on a walk. Pause I say to myself, look deeply, see the color and texture, notice the bees rolling blissfully in the heart ...

Today I took a hike with a friend to the Landis Arboretum in Esperance. The Arboretum is a celebration of trees and plants, but the trees really had this special magnetism. There were so many species! The diversity of trees is one of the wonders of the world. There were many species of oaks, conifers, crabapples, beeches, maples, aspens - the list goes on. Old-growth trees have an incredible attraction to me. We didn't take the Old Growth Forest Trail today, but we did meet some amazing oaks along the Woodland Trail. The most stunning of all was Big Red, a towering red oak that is over 300 years old. I grasped the tree in both hands and held my head to its sinewy bark. There is a wisdom in an old tree, a wisdom that speaks of hardships and great times, of harsh, icy winters and glorious Spring rains. This wisdom knows how to hold on, to stand tall, to be patient. This tree could tell many stories; this tree has seen many things. The roots of this oak are as deep and wide as the can...

There are many "rites" of summer! One of these is picking strawberries and enjoying all the tasty ways to enjoy them - shortcake, over ice cream, just cut and sugared, and right out of the field! I must say that this excitement about picking anything doesn't catch me right away. As an ol' farmer, any kind of picking is never about a few quarts for home use, but picking and packing for the market. So I need to reframe and get in the upbeat, I only need to fill this four-quart container mood! Off we went to a local orchard. I won't mention the name because we had to pay a $5 cover charge and $6.73 a quart, which seemed a bit much since we couldn't use our own quarts but had to pick in theirs. No way was the container 4 quarts! We gave the benefit of the doubt to the farmer, because it's hard making a go of it!  So then there's berry picking in times of Covid-19: don your mask and gloves and no eating in the field. I was hot and bothered, especially by ...

Wow, time flies! I can't believe I haven't written since the end of May! But here I am in summer, not my favorite season for sure. The Spring wildflowers are bloomed and setting seeds. The summer flowers - hawkweed, phlox, honest, joe-pye weed, asters, and milkweed are not out yet. The birds are a challenge to find in trees that are full-leafed. So where to pay attention? The other day I was lying in the hammock on our back porch. The sky was deep blue. I was watching the wind rustle the leaves. I felt like I was in a treehouse! The crows and starlings were making a racket!  Squirrels ran up and down our neighbor's maple and across the garage roof. I reflected on my favorite summer past time - sitting (or lying) in the shade and enjoying the being of summer. No need to do anything unless it's reading a good book and nibbling on snacks. I love to take in the sights and sounds, enjoy a breeze, feel the sunshine on my skin. Be. Yes, summer does have some lovely moments! ...

I have been visiting my family this week and I am enjoying all the sights and sounds of the Jersey Pine Barrens. Lady Slippers, Pine Barrens False Heather (although I am loath to call any flower false!), sheep laurel, mountain laurel, huckleberries, lance leaf violet just to name a few of the amazing diversity of the Pine not- barrens! What has really thrilled me is the nightly call of the Eastern whip-poor-will. You can set your watch by them - every night at about nine pm. I have never seen one. They are nocturnal and so well camouflaged that they are extremely hard to spot. But they make themselves heard! The nightly concert reminds me of my childhood - lying in bed and being lulled to sleep by their song. Now the chorus is a lot smaller. I wonder where they have gone. Habitat has shrunk; there are more feral cats; there are a lot more chemicals to poison the bugs they eat. Because of these threats, the bird is listed as near threatened on the IUCN Red List. This saddens me, but I ...