Category: Reflections

A cool, foggy morning belies what is about to come. In the 16 years we have lived here, it has never been 90ºF, 32ºC. But Sunday and Monday, the forecast is for temperatures high above that. It is just for two days, but a harbinger of hotter summers that will transform the cool, gentle climate we love.

The ducks are blissfully unaware of the upcoming heat wave. They do have plenty of water to paddle about on a hot day.

I discovered Snow’s nest this morning. It’s positioned precariously at the drop off into the pond. It wouldn’t take much for an egg or two to roll out of the nest and into the pond. I stole a few eggs for breakfast. Until she decides it is time to roost, I’ll sneak a few off from time to time. I don’t mind her hatching a few ducklings, but not twenty or so.

We don’t have just a handful of flower types. We have an endless variety of flower types. The grass flower above is other worldly. Researches estimate the origin of grasses to roughly 77 million years ago. So how many million years ago did this marvelous flower take shape? No doubt this splendid flower has been blooming long before we humans appeared.

It is the height of garlic scape season. Maybe the best time of the year. Though, really, what time of the year isn’t great?

A surprise in the garden was finding a glob of regurgitated salmon berry. The nearest salmon berry is so far away, the only way this little blob of salmon berry could have landed in this spot in the garden is if a micro meteorite hit a salmon berry at just the right angle to send a bit of berry flying over the fence and into the garden. Could happen. 37,000-78,000 tons of meteorite mass fall onto the earth every year. It’s not impossible for a tiny grain of this 78,000 tons of matter to strike a salmon berry nearby and send it airborne.

Though most likely a bird regurgitated it. Perhaps a robin hopped into the garden after nibbling a salmon berry and spit out the blob to make room for a fat worm it saw.

This season of endless flowers is a gentle reminder that there are a million ways to bloom.

Twilight’s soft light embues a peony with grace. The pond is quiet save for the last songs the birds sing. It is the season of birdsong and bee buzz. Early mornings there are so many birds singing I wonder how they find each other. The warm afternoons buzz with so many bees, I’m surprised I don’t see them colliding midair.

Fading light highlights the truth that the distinctions we make between this and that are just illusions, tricks our minds play on us. There is no this and that, us and them. Matter flows continuously. There are no boundaries. Everything is one.

The soft hues of thimbleberry flowers are even softer at twilight. And the fragrance of wisteria blossoms effuses the soft evening air. How many millions of light years would a soul need to travel through the universe to find another planet where the evening air is as fragrant as the evening air I get to enjoy just a few steps from my front door?

“The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.” G. K. Chesterton

May’s warmth has brought out the bees. The garden is buzzing with them. I discovered a colony of digger bees while weeding a bed of Iris. Their colonies are underground. One of them reminded me, not so gently, that this was their territory.

Ruby streaks are my kind of vegetable. Let them go to seed and next year they will form a thick bed of salad greens. The way they grow makes me wonder if sowing seeds thickly in the fall might be the better way to plant a vegetable garden.

Damselflies are darting about again. The only continent without damselflies is Antarctica. They have been around for 250 million years. May they carry on for another 250 million years.

Some of the potatoes are already sending out flower buds. This looks like it will be a good year for potatoes. I may have planted more than we can possibly eat, but why not?

A surprise this morning when I went out to the cabin to make tofu was seeing the fruiting plum trees in full bloom. Last year the plums produced a bounty of sweet plums. Hopefully they will this year too.

An old nest from last year remains in a young alder by the pond. Soon it will be hidden by new leaves. I’ve walked by this tree all winter and never noticed the nest. Or have I seen it before and forgot about it. Perhaps that is the joy of going senile. You can be surprised by the same thing over and over again. Will some bird use the nest again? It will be interesting to see.

A series of trivial events put me on Bow Hill Road at the spot at 4:12 p.m. this afternoon where a large flock of Snow Geese crossed overhead on their way north. First, I forgot to take some mail with me when I made deliveries this morning. So I had to bicycle down to the post office in the afternoon.

I would have passed by the spot earlier and missed the Snow Geese, but the tires on my bicycle were low, so I had to pump air into them.

A few other forgettable events delayed me a minute here, a minute there. But not so much that I didn’t have the time to stop when I heard the Snow Geese approaching. The Bow Post Office closes at 4:30 p.m. However, I was within minutes of the post office, so I had the time to stop and enjoy the sight of the Snow Geese leaving. Was this their final flight out of the Skagit Valley? I don’t know. But in the direction they were flying, there’s no flat land to land until the other side of the Chuckanuts.

The peculiar thing about Snow Geese is the meandering threads they form in the sky when they fly. They don’t make the perfect V formations of Canada Geese. They fly in such numbers that their meandering lines can stretch for miles.

And I would have missed the spectacle if I had remembered to take the mail with me this morning.

Sunday’s blustery winds knocked cherry blossoms off the tree. Yesterday morning, frost dusted the blossoms. Frost is not the first thing that comes to mind when I picture cherry blossoms.

A few more sunny days and the cherry blossoms will be in full bloom.

I saw a bee flying about the cherry blossoms. Where is it spending these frigid nights?

The first of the salmon berries are in bloom. So are plenty of skunk cabbage. They’d look lovely in a vase, in your house, though the stench would soon drive you out of your house.

This is what it looks like on the other side. On the other side of what? On the other side of the year where nights are longer than days. This far north, we are now on the side of the year where days are longer than nights.

There are other ways to divide the year into two. You have the time of the year when the days are getting longer and the time of the year when the nights are getting longer. These methods divide the year into equal halves.

Here in the Skagit Valley you could also divide the year into the time when there are swans, and the time when there are no swans. There are just a few swans here and there. Soon we will be in the time of year when there are no swans. But all is not hopeless, weeping and gnashing of teeth, sackcloth and ashes. We may be slipping into the time of year when there are no swans flying around, but as it is the time of year when the days are longer than the nights, joy and happiness abounds.

A more extreme division of the year is the time of year when there are cherry buds and blossoms, and the time of year when there are not. If I could pick the time of year, no the day I die, it would be a day of blue skies, puffy clouds, and cherry trees in full bloom. Wheel me out underneath a blooming cherry tree on a sunny day and let that be the last thing I see, the fragrance of cherry blossoms the last thing I breathe, the buzzing of bees in the cherry blossoms the last thing I hear.

I wouldn’t fault someone for doing nothing but watching the clouds all day long. On my way to the post office, the clouds dangled intriguingly in the southern sky. And twenty minutes later, they same clouds, in the same spot, had transformed into an enormous ring around the sun.

If clouds can pull a feat like that in twenty minutes, imagine all the wonderful things you’d see if you watched them all day long. You’d never get bored.

Spending an afternoon gardening with ducks releases more stress than a season’s worth of therapist sessions. There are too many therapists, not enough ducks in people’s lives.

Duck’s feet are captivating with their intricate patterns. I could see a duck saying, “She had a pretty bill, wonderful colors on her feathers, but it was the patterns on her feet that did it for me.”