Appreciating the Beauty and Wisdom of Nature
Dear Nature Lovers,
Just wanted to share this glorious day in Minnesota with you! Spring is now bursting out all over the place in our yard and woods!
Love, Denise
Hostas, Ferns, and Lily of the Valley
Brunnera
Hosta leaves
Virginia Bluebells
Maple leaves
Purple-Leaf Plum
Iris
Apple blossom
Pagoda Dogwood
Crabapple
Foam Flower
Jonquil
Ajuga
Larch tree
Dandelion
Epimedium
Ostrich Fern
Candles on White Pine
Bergenia
Oak flowers and leaves
One of the most poignant and difficult transitions in my life was moving from a household of five to gradually becoming a household of two again. It was much more difficult than transitioning from two to five. But it certainly followed the flow of Life, the reason for parenthood—to raise up offspring in loving care so they would become independent adults living their own lives.
Here in Central Minnesota, we are still in the Spring transition. Signs of the old—winter dormancy and fall foliage—still are apparent even as the new green grows up around the old. Most of the deciduous trees now have small, unfolding leaves, though still looking more bare than there. The Wild Plum tree is white with blossoms, small pink flowers buds are scattered on the Apple trees, and the Daffodils are blooming in their fragrant, cheery yellow beauty. Within a mile of our place are a number of small ponds and wetlands—some only hold water in the spring and dry up during the heat of summer. Others are large enough or fed by springs and creeks that they are the habitat for many different animals all year round. The first small pond had many cattails—old and new—and not much water. But it was home to a solo-singing frog who was later joined by two other voices as I stood nearby taking pictures.
The next body of water I walked by was a small lake populated by waterfowl, turtles, and muskrats. A pair of Canadian Geese swam together at the far side of the lake, dipping their heads into the shallow water, sometimes going bottoms-up in their search for food.
Like the bottoms-up goose, the Lily Pads uncurl by sticking up in the air before laying flat on the water’s surface.
A line-up of turtles were sunning themselves on a mud barge, happy for warmth after a winter of hibernating.
On the other side of the road from the lake was a small pond and wetlands where the new green grass was becoming dominant.
An old nest rested among the new leaves.
Pine-cone Willow galls, made last year, house pink, grubby larvae that pupate in the spring and hatch as adult gnats. The old cone ‘houses’ and the new lime green flowers and leaves are the epitome of this Spring transition.
Transitions are always a little tough, whether going from Winter to Spring or Autumn to Winter, from health to sickness or injury to healing, from a busy, vibrant household to a quieter, calmer environment or from a carefree, me-and-you life to baby makes three or four or more. With each transition of our lives, it’s good to take some time to appreciate the old way, to have gratitude for the things that served us well, and to learn from the difficulties that wrenched our hearts in sorrow or pain. Perhaps that is why Spring is slow in its unfurling. As the old way slips away, we make room for the new. We are happy for the warmth. We shed another layer of our childish ways to become more adult-like. We build a new nest. We join with other voices who know the song we’re singing. With peace and renewed energy, we merge once again with the flow of Life.
Courtship consists in a number of quiet attentions, not so pointed as to alarm, nor so vague as not to be understood. –Laurence Sterne
Downstairs there are two cardboard boxes full of hundreds of letters from our courtship—one marked Letters to Denise, the other, Letters to Chris. In this era of smartphones and other technology, who can even imagine such a thing!? We met one May night, one one-in-a-million chance meeting, one would-you-like-to-dance swirl around the dance floor. He was headed back home to Missouri from a northern fishing trip with his Dad, and I was out with my friend Patty talking about her upcoming wedding. He gave me his temporary fishing license with his name and address on it and said if I’d write to him, he would write back to me. So I did. That began our two-year, 400-miles-apart courtship.
Letters are slow—slow to be written with pencil or pen and slow to be delivered by the US Postal Service. But I still recall the excitement of opening the mailbox to find a letter from Chris, unsealing the envelope, reading his words and turning over the pieces of paper in discovery of this man. Many things we wrote about were mundane—the weather, what we ate for supper, what tv shows we watched. But letter by letter, slowly and surely, his character and values emerged. Most of the time when we did see one another in person, we stayed at our parents’ houses. I spent time washing dishes with his Mom, held the ladder for his Dad as he put up Christmas lights and told stories, met his four older brothers, their wives and children, and spent precious time with his sister. Chris went duck hunting with my Dad, brought gifts of plants for my Mom, and made my siblings laugh. Our courtship was slow and lovely and difficult and richly exciting as we anticipated each new discovery and the life we would have together.
The courtship of Spring is also the slow emerging of a wondrous season. Weeks after the calendar Spring, tiny, golden leaves unfold from a Ninebark shrub.
Rhubarb, the delicious, tart fruit of the North, is pushing its way up out of the ground…
…while seeds of abundant greens wait for warmer weather and germination.
Setbacks happen in even the best of courtships—we were smiling from the warmth until a wave of cold air moved in this week, icing over the birdbath and constricting the leaves and flowers that were intent on opening.
Even the bluebird, all poufed up from the cold, was wondering what had happened to Spring.
Setbacks are temporary, and early bloomers like Epimedium and Lilacs can tolerate the cold better than others.
Day by day, Spring reveals new surprises—blooming Vinca vine and fairyland Mayapples.
Ferns unfurl tête à tête…
…and Mourning Doves and other birds pair up in courtship.
Spring delivers a plethora of quiet, slow unfoldings as each tree and plant comes ‘back to life’ after a dormant winter, as each pair of birds and animals prepare for mating and raising young ones. The courtship cannot be one-sided—it takes the attention and appreciation of a beloved for the other to be seen and understood. Each Spring we are privy to thousands of tiny miracles right before our eyes. Do we see them? As we swirl around the dance floor of Earth, tête à tête with Spring and with the beloveds of our choosing, it behooves us to remember that courtships include more than just the pair. We are part of a family, a friend group, a community of like and unlike, and finally, a small part of the entire Whole. While in our mundanity, during our chilly setbacks and mistaken attentions that alarm, let us notice the quiet miracles, the revealing values and character, and the discoveries that let us know we’re on the right track, that’s there’s no turning back, that we’re all in this together.
Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher.
–William Wordsworth
Last weekend I was off the internet for three and a half days, and I feel ridiculous for even saying that like it’s some big deal, since I have lived two-thirds of my life on Earth without that technology. (And having lived two-thirds of my life without it, I can honestly proclaim that the internet is a-mazing!) I didn’t miss it; though along with not having tv, I did have a slight feeling of missing out on what was going on in the world. But since most of what’s on the news right now gives me a sinking feeling in my stomach, I was better off not knowing. So what did I do? I visited with my Mom who came for the weekend. I cooked food for our Easter celebration. I laughed with my family around the dinner table. I read a little bit of the Sunday paper. And we all went outside to hike, to take pictures, to walk the dog, to bask in the warm sunshine on a wind-cooled day, and to revel in the emerging signs of Spring.
We hiked at our nearby Eagle Park and were disappointed when we saw no movement of gray fluff or adult guardian in the huge eagle’s nest—the second of three years now with no viable eaglets. We wondered whether it was the age of the parent eagles or if the nearby Sauk River food source was contaminated with something that interfered with the egg development. (Happily, the other nearby eagle’s nest did have a couple of gray fluffy babies and a watchful parent.) The bright-light sunshine cast shadows on the tomb-size boulders scattered throughout the park.
A clump of Pasque flowers, also called Easter flower and prairie crocus, bloomed along the trail.
Golden stands of last year’s prairie grasses waved in the wind with hints of green growing up between them.
Nodding heads of Prairie Smoke flower buds hung from early Spring foliage.
We saw the first Bluebird of Spring at Eagle Park, then later delighted that our pair had returned to the yard to check out the houses Chris hastily put up.
Our Spring crocuses were an absolute sight for sore eyes, a shocking display of regal purple, pure white, and purple striped color after a winter of gray, white, and brown. I couldn’t help but smile and marvel at the sight of them!
Every year, as we come forth into the light of Spring, we are inundated with marvelous, amazing examples of creation, renewal, and transformation. The old, golden grasses give way to the growing green. The birds return to their northern breeding grounds and prepare for raising their young. The miraculous perennials push through the chilly soil for another year of growth and flowering and bearing fruit. We are just another part of Nature’s transforming miracle. We are Easter people. We come together with family and friends. We prepare nourishing food to share with one another. We commune around the table with prayer, talk, and laughter. And then we are drawn outside to commune with Nature, with that from which we come and whom sustains us. In September of 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a bill establishing the Assateague Island Seashore National Park with these words, “If future generations are to remember us more with gratitude than sorrow, we must achieve more than just the miracles of technology. We must also leave them a glimpse of the world as God really made it, not just as it looked when we got through with it.” Through the miracle of the internet, I commission all of us to become guardians of our little parts of this huge nest called Earth. Happy Earth Day to us all!
While we’re waiting for Spring to show up (the grass is getting a little greener, and there are tiny leaves on the honeysuckle), let me tell the true tale of peacock feathers and a divorce. In our first year of marriage, we were house-sitting for friends of friends. It was a wondrous mansion of a house on acres of land in the middle of the city—I had never stayed in a house so grand! There was a barn, a carriage house, and beautiful gardens with intricate iron lawn furniture, fountains, and interesting stone statues. We cared for their three dogs and tended the gardens—duties we were familiar with and comfortable doing. In the large expanse of lawn and garden lived a number of peacocks who needed nothing from us. They grazed their way through the yard during the day with their graceful, flowing tail feathers following them like a bridal train. At night they would perch in the trees and sound the alarm if anything untoward entered their domain. One evening we drove back home to check on things at our old farmhouse. While there, we got a phone call from my Mom and Dad with the news that they were divorcing. I literally fell to the floor when I heard those words. In shock, I rode back to the mansion—my world had changed. I can’t remember if I slept that night, but I do remember getting up the next morning to do the only thing I knew how to do when things around you are collapsing—chores. I got on my hands and knees and washed the tile floor in the large kitchen, dining area, and laundry room, scrubbing the stained grout with a scrub brush until it looked white again, tears falling into and mixing with the dirty water. After hours of scrubbing, I baked a pound cake, heavy with eggs, sugar, and butter. Heavy cake for a heavy heart. While the cake was cooling on the counter and I was outside, the young Husky dog jumped up and ate a large chunk out of it. I threw the cake in the trash—tears upon tears. Chris got back from work, and we walked in the gardens, trying to process the news. I picked up peacock feathers—the female ones with subtle color and the male ones with the exquisite, jewel-toned eyes. I took them home and put them in a vase. I’ve been picking up feathers and making feather bouquets ever since.
Hope is the thing with feathers
that perches in the soul
and sings the tunes without the words
and never stops at all. –Emily Dickinson
This last sapphire blue-tipped feather is one I picked up at the bridal luncheon when our oldest daughter Emily got married in the fall of 2015. It was from one of the peacocks that roamed the acreage surrounding the mansion where the luncheon celebrating love and marriage was held. Hope never stops at all.
A microbrewery makes small batches of specialty beers that showcase particular ingredients, a certain season, or theme. The craft brewery in our little town, for example, makes a seasonal beer called Sugar Shack Maple Stout, made with maple syrup that is harvested by the monks and others at Saint John’s Abbey Arboretum and Forest just a skip and a hop from here. (We helped tap trees a couple years ago—Welcome to the Sugar Shack—for the making of that syrup—Sap to Syrup.) Whereas traditional breweries make millions of barrels of beer each year, US regulations permit microbreweries to make no more than 15,000 barrels per year. Microbreweries concentrate on quality, flavor, and techniques. According to www.hopandwine.com, “Every day is a delicious science experiment at a microbrewery.” I love that!
On this 2nd day of April, Central Minnesota is a Micro-Springery. Small batches of Spring can be found if one looks closely. Later Spring will be lush with greenness everywhere, overwhelming the senses with millions of Spring things. But for now, Spring is slowly unfolding in a delicious awakening. Join me for a tour of the neighborhood Micro-Springery.
Aspen tree catkins have emerged, like fuzzy caterpillars hanging from the branches.
Common Yarrow, with its fern-like, aromatic foliage is one of the first perennials to grow in a sunny location. The leaves can be used for a hop substitute and preservative for beer-making! (ediblewildfood.com)
Beautiful, iconic Spring Pussy Willow! If we don’t protect this shrub with fencing, the deer will eat it right down to the ground. Luckily it is resilient and grows back quickly.
The buds are just breaking out of the beautifully-barked Serviceberry.
Wild geraniums with hairy, red-tinged foliage from last year and pristine new green leaves are a shade-loving perennial that blooms early in the growing season.
Blue Flag Iris, another early bloomer, pushes out its triangular leaves through last year’s debris.
Hazelnut catkins hang like dangling earrings, adorning the shrub in Spring splendor.
Pungent Allium, with their frost-tipped leaves, will bloom in the middle of summer with their distinctive purple-ball flowers.
Red clusters of Maple tree flower buds will open before the leaves develop and appear.
Henry David Thoreau wrote, “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” Microbreweries don’t brew beer just to have beer, they want it to taste amazing. Mother Nature doesn’t give us Spring just for aesthetics, but to teach us how to fly in the wind like the catkin pollen and seeds, how to be a common human being and do extraordinary things, how to be beautiful and resilient, how to have a splendid protective covering and let your gifts emerge, how to bloom early, in the middle, and late in your life, how to push your way through last year’s debris, and how to adorn yourself with loving splendor. Mother Nature shows us, with all her seasons, that life is one delicious science experiment after another. I love that!
What is a Big Deal in your life right now? I remember when the kids were much younger, birthdays were a Big Deal—even half-birthdays were big! My brother- and sister-in-laws will be celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary this summer—that’s a really Big Deal! Grandchildren are a Big Deal to our friends who have welcomed another generation into their families. A health crisis is an all-consuming, scary Big Deal in one’s life. Graduating from college, starting a new job, getting married, having a baby—all are Big Deals in the lives of the people involved and to concentric circles of loved ones and friends who care for them.
I know that nearly everyone loves Spring, but here in Minnesota, Spring is a pretty Big Deal! We’ve had another fairly ‘easy’ winter in terms of snow and cold, but there is a collective ‘Hallelujah’ being raised up nonetheless, even if it is in a Minnesota nice and stoically quiet way!
The Past
This is the third year in a row that we have been snow free on the Spring Equinox—the two years before that we still had snow up to our knees. So in those terms, we are way ahead of the game. But besides a few green blades of grass (and wild strawberries) and some swollen tree buds, it doesn’t look very much like spring out there yet.
The Present
It doesn’t really matter though—we know it’s coming—the calendar told us so! The thing that makes Spring so sweet is going through the ‘hardship’ or work of winter. Snow shoveling, walking and driving on snow and ice, the daily chore of bundling up in boots, heavy coats, hats, and mittens, keeping the house at a cozy temperature, and daily walks with the frigid north wind are the realities of Winter—neither good nor bad. But Spring, as it unfolds, is a relief from all those things. On Friday, even though I was still bundled against the cold and wind, I saw and heard a choir of Robins flitting joyfully about in the neighbor’s yard! That’s a Big Deal!
The Future
Big Deals is people’s lives are often milestones of time and effort put into an event that is dear to someone’s heart. Other Big Deals—like birthdays and babies—are celebrations of absolute gifts we are blessed to experience. Yet others are heart-breaking moments that threaten our lives, livelihoods, and purpose. The common denominator seems to be the heart—what we hold dear, what we work hard to preserve, what means the most to us, what gives us joy.
My Big Deal today is celebrating three years of taking photographs and writing messages for my NorthStarNature blog. I have published 206 posts with thousands of photographs in those three years! It has been an experience of the heart : to showcase the incredible beauty of Nature, to share parts of my life story in an attempt to connect us with our world and with one another, to examine how Nature can teach us about Life, and a way for me to contribute in some way to the greater Good. Every time I go out into Nature with the camera, looking for the Beauties and the Gifts, I become just another one of Her creations in that whole Circle of Life. My body is calmed, and my spirit is lifted. Writing this blog has unmuted my voice. It has gotten this shy wallflower out into the dance of the world a bit—the cyber-world, no less! I want to thank you for joining me on this journey—I appreciate you reading and sharing my words and photographs. Blessings and Goodness to you all!
Perhaps I shouldn’t be so disgusted with Trump’s billions-dollar wall—it is an act of self (country) preservation, albeit in a grandiose, extremely expensive way. And we all do it. We all build walls of one sort or another—literally and figuratively—in order to keep something out or in and to protect ourselves. It’s not that boundaries aren’t important—they are imperative to the working order and preservation of a person, family, company, or country.
We live across the road from an inactive quarry whose perimeter is lined with a six-foot chain-link fence with three strands of barbed wire above that—a daunting barrier to anyone who is looking to lift a piece of granite. (Actually ‘lifting’ a piece of granite is the hard part.) As daunting a barrier as it is, there are many breeches of that secure fencing in just the short area I walk by each day. Last Sunday’s snow made under-the-fence trails evident. This trail is used by a fox, as I have seen her cross the road from quarry to woods on the other side. It must be a daily route, because the snow and grass have a path worn into them. Rabbits also use this path which is probably just fine with the fox!
Other frequent visitors to our yard and to the places along our road are deer. I have seen deer jump over three strands of barbed wire that surround cow pastures, but the tall chain-link and barbed wire fence is another story—especially when the doe has fawns. So they made another way.
They go under the fence, too!
I have never actually seen them do it—it must be a limbo sort of maneuver since the fence is pushed up only mid-thigh high on a short woman, but the tracks tell the story. Wild turkeys also use this trail when making their feeding rounds.
The inactive quarry is like a refuge for the deer and other creatures. Occasionally trucks and humans rumble through, but for the most part, it is quiet and unoccupied.
It is a safe nursery for fawns—I saw a young spotted one curled in a ball under the brush one spring.
A fence surrounds our garden, mainly to keep out the rabbits. It helps to keep the deer out, but they have been known to jump the fence and taste the maturing vegetables.
Pallet wood compost bins keep most of the leaves, food scraps, and lawn clippings in while letting rain, air, and chipmunks in, too, but it keeps the dog out.
Even decorative fencing makes a person walk around, if legs aren’t long enough to go over.
Burlap and landscape fencing protects young evergreens from munching deer and drying winter winds.
Sometimes walls just mark a border and are low enough to slow us down, lift our feet, or cause us to stumble if we aren’t paying attention.
Walls, fences, borders, boundaries, and barriers are necessary for the smooth operation of gardens, lives, quarries, companies and countries. But can we go too far? And what is the price we may have to pay for that fortified fortress?
The black and white heart
Closing down–it’s easy.
It comes from years of practice.
I won’t let myself get hurt.
Walls are built–stone is best:
Cold and hard–impenetrable.
But just as hurt cannot invade,
No warmth penetrates the fortress.
Love is deflected; it lay
useless on the cold earth at my feet.
If only it would follow the rules
then maybe I would let it in.
But it doesn’t–I can’t predict the road ahead.
But the road and years teach–have I learned….
to see where sight loses its power,
to hear the heart instead of words,
to smell the freshness of old life,
to touch the touch of God and love?
I wrote this poem years ago when I realized that I had lost love and joy and laughter and goodness and power in my life in order to protect myself and try to keep myself safe. The problem was compounded in that I built that wall when I was a child, and it was a reaction and not a well-thought-out plan with pros, cons, strategies, ramifications, and budget considerations—love and/or money. The ‘mortar’ that kept the wall tight and upright was the lies I told myself about why I needed the wall—and when you repeat a lie over and over again, it becomes your truth….until I realized that the wall didn’t really protect me at all. I still got hurt, rejected, ignored, and abandoned. My benefit to cost ratio was abysmal. The fear and hurt that built my wall didn’t go away—in fact, it reverberated back to me a thousand fold. It didn’t protect me from the wounds of life—it probably made me more vulnerable. And the costs in love, joy, peace, fun, and happiness were more than I care to compute. Looking back, there were times when the wall was ascended, the fence was pushed up, the burlap ripped down—by the animals in my life. There are reasons why a horse is a girl’s best friend, why a dog is man’s best friend. Which gets us back to Love. Fear builds walls, and Love finds a way to scale them and tear them down. Wounded hearts and childish ways do whatever they can for self-preservation, but as we put our childish ways behind us, what are we if we have not Love? *
*1 Corinthians 13
A great wind is blowing, and that gives you either imagination or a headache. –Catherine the Great
March weather, already, has been erratic with record high and below zero temperatures, with balmy sunshine and rain, hail, and snow, and with calm quietness and fierce, unrelenting winds. The crash of warm and cold fronts caused tornadoes that touched down just miles from where we lived in Missouri during the first half of our wedded life. The winds tore the shingles off the roof of First United Methodist Church in Odessa where we used to attend. It seemed like the whole Midwest felt the fury of Mother Nature before it blew off to the East in a devil-may-care huff.
The up and down temperatures had the sap running in the maple trees with sapsicles forming on the frigid days.
On the warm days, sap dripped from the branches, and a little red squirrel lapped up the sweet goodness as he grasped onto the underside.
Then he would run over to the bird feeder and chow down on black oil sunflower seeds. I thought he must be the best-fed squirrel in the land.
South winds blew in balmy warm weather last Sunday and Monday with highs near 60 degrees. A storm approached from the west on Monday afternoon bringing rain, hail, and then a quiet calmness.
Late that evening we suddenly heard the wind crashing through the trees, this time from the WNW. By morning we had snow.
The great wind blew like a madman for two nights and two days. The barometer was close to the lowest I had ever recorded. Tree branches thudded on the roof and tumbled to the ground. It was unnerving in its demeanor and relentlessness—‘an ill wind that blows no good.’ It gave me a headache and frazzled my nerves.
The relentless wind made me feel like other times in my life when I had felt beat up just for existing. Lyme disease made me feel that way. The end years of my graduate school career made me feel that way. I was just trying to do the best that I could, taking punches that had no sense of fair play, and ending up just barely keeping my head above water. Imagination is defined as the ability to face and resolve difficulties. We form mental images, most often without conscious knowing, of our life without the difficulty. We problem-solve, we question, we wrestle with whatever madman is trying to take over our life, and we move in a different direction. We are more resourceful than we know. I think the headache has to come first. Those thudding branches and frazzled nerves prime our imaginations in order for us to see our way to a different, better way. The way to sweet Goodness.
Look up at the sky and contemplate how amazing life is.*
When I was a kid, I remember lying down in the wide expanse of an alfalfa field looking up at an even wider, wilder expanse of blue sky. There were so many things to contemplate at that time in my life—many of them amazing and life-affirming. But I also remember having lots of questions about life that didn’t come with tidy answers and good feelings.
February’s cache of photos included a vast array of sky pictures—moons, sunrises, clouds, and spectacular sunsets. I’m always amazed at the colors that can appear in the evening sky, how the orange sunlight can produce purple clouds…
and how orange clouds with tinges of pink look against the blue sky.
February’s full moon rose in a mottling of clouds, casting an almost-rainbow halo around itself.
Later in the evening, the clouds cleared, and I was finally able to see The Lady in the Moon as described to me by Muriel in the comments of my post Gleanings from September–One Way then Another.
Another amazing thing about sunsets is how they can change in just a matter of minutes. The clouds move, the colors morph as the sun sets and the sky darkens. This is how the sky changed in just eight minutes, all the while maintaining that white streak….
We didn’t have much snow in February, but on the last day, gray skies and tumbling snowflakes shrouded the bare trees.
This is one of my favorite sunset pictures. The white zigzag seems like a portal to another world, an enticing glimpse of something beyond ourselves, even while the present, visible world is magnificent!
A blue sunset sky and quarter moon soothes the senses like a bedtime story.
One likes to think that after decades of living that answers come easy and it is no longer necessary to gaze up at the sky and contemplate life, but I know that is not true. My childhood contemplation, my sky gazing, were rudimentary endeavors at living a conscientious life, of being in prayer with the great Creator. I know that continues throughout our lives. As we live, we experience heightened life-affirming events but also crushing despair, beyond which we could ever imagine as a child. There are still questions, albeit different ones, without tidy answers and good feelings. But as our lives are changing, all the while, a white streak of Goodness maintains us, soothes our senses, shrouds us with Love, and lets us catch a glimpse through a portal to What Is.
*Some had this quote from Rhonda Byrne, others had Unknown.