Raindrops on Roses…

…and on clematis and jewelweed as well. How I love walking after a morning rain. Even with that song stuck in my mind.

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Color of the Key of F

It is still (just barely) National Poetry Month, and I am thinking of Edna St. Vincent Millay, particularly since the subject of one of my favorite Millay poems, “The Strawberry Shrub,” is in bloom now. It’s an odd poem, a very close examination of this plant that she calls “old-fashioned, quaint as quinces,/Hard to find in a world where neon and noise/Have flattened the ends of the three more subtle senses,/And blare and magenta are all that a child enjoys.”

She describes its color as the “color of dried blood, color of the key of F.” I love that last metaphor. Although I do not have synesthesia in the medical sense, Millay’s “color of the key of F” makes sense to me. When I sing my own songs, my natural key is generally A or G. The key of F is lower, deeper, fuller, a bit darker. If fire red is middle C, the key of F is this color.

This past week I have been having a good time finding other blooming plants in the color of the key of F. Here are a few.

The interior of a jack-in-the-pulpit.

Pawpaw blossoms.

A kind of red trillium.

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Dew Tell

Rain on a tulip and dew drops strung along a spider’s web, dripping from a bluebell, and dancing on the leaf of a celandine poppy. Surface tension is a wonderful phenomenon.

 

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Sticky Business

This is the blossom of the wineberry, also called the Japanese wineberry or the wine raspberry. A native of China, Japan, and Korea, it was introduced to the U.S. in the 1890s, escaped cultivation, and is actually considered invasive in some parts of the country.

I am happy to be invaded by such a plant. The berries will ripen around the 4th of July, and, if I’m around to pick them, they will decorate my bowl of oatmeal every morning for a week or two. They are delicious. The word “wineberry” describes them accurately.

Collecting them, however, is a sticky business. See those little red hairs? Every one of them holds a tiny glob of an amazingly gluey substance. I have learned that it is a good idea to bring a couple of baby wipes along on a wineberry-picking expedition.

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Sacred Spirals

So. The computer on which I do most of my work has crashed, and I haven’t had it for two whole weeks. That means I am doing a lot of walking, partly to pass the time and partly to keep from panicking about the computer and the backlog of work and bookkeeping that’s currently out of my reach. Luckily, it’s a great time of year for walking. Many wildflowers are blooming, and all sorts of growing things are pushing their way into the world.

When I saw these emerging fronds today, they seemed to be speaking to me about my life: telling me something about inevitability and time. Things will work themselves out. The computer will get fixed, or it won’t. I will retrieve my files, or I won’t. Tomorrow will come. Next week will come. These fronds will unfurl into ferns and flowers, whether I am sitting at a keyboard or walking up a hill, whether I am laughing or crying.

I think I’ll laugh. I think I’ll walk.

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Marvelous Magnolias

It’s that wonderful time of year when magnolias start to bloom. These are two of my favorites. I don’t know what varieties they are. The one above is in front of an apartment building next-door to Arlington Court, and the blooms are very short-lived. I always think of it as “Susan’s Magnolia” because Susan Skeen loved this kind when she was alive, and planted one in her yard.

The tree below is on Virginia Street, and is always one of the most glorious sights of spring, especially on a day like today, when the skies were cloudless and blue.

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Ahead of Its Time

What’s wrong with this picture? I took it more than a week ago. Snowdrops, of course, are among the earliest of spring flowers—but I have never seen them before February. But here’s yet another quiet little reminder that climate change is here, and now: this little baby bloomed on January 8.

It wasn’t the only plant who got the get-up-and-grow signal: the blades of daffodils are also pushing up, well ahead of schedule, along the carriage trail. I don’t know if they’ll make it through the likely cold snaps we will experience between now and March, when they usually bloom.

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Half-and-half Day

As I was returning home from a mostly cloudy walk this morning, with a pint container half full of blackberries I had just picked for breakfast, I was taken by the river’s reflection of a clearing sky. It wasn’t all that dramatic, looking up, but somehow the sky’s reflection within a ribbon of river really looked wonderful to me.

And, just to complete the “theme for the day,” note that the bridge in the distance is about half-wrapped, like some incomplete Christo project. It’s being repaired and painted, section by section, hence the covering.

After I left the bridge, I toddled on home to have my coffee with, you guessed it, half and half.

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Lavender Day

Yesterday was the annual, and perhaps the last, Lavender Fair at La Paix Herb Farm, a beautiful place not far from Weston, WV. For some years, La Paix owner Myra Bonhage-Hale has hosted the gathering. I’d always wanted to attend, and I am very glad I was able to spend the day with this lovely woman and her plants. The photo above is from her Feng Shui Garden. Below, the lavender lady demonstrates distilling. (Her essential oils are intense: I just flavored a huge pasta salad with two drops of rosemary essential oil.)

In addition to the workshop on distilling, there were several other workshops, including a wild edibles walk on which I discovered that the leaves of ox-eyed daisy are delicious and peppery. Chef Dale Hawkins of Fish Hawk Farms prepared a wonderful lunch. Vendors sold jewelry, baked goods, fresh produce, and (guess who) shibori-dyed clothing. Jane Birdsong strolled among the fair-goers singing songs on request, and Ellie (whose last name I failed to ask) had set up her massage chair to give back and neck rubs.

It was even worth getting all gummy from insect repellent and sunscreen, although I will admit that the drive home seemed especially long because I could hardly wait to get into the shower. Here are couple more images from the day:

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Anatomy of a wing

My morning walk nearly always yields something wonderful. For the past few days, the rewards have been more than visual, actually, as I have harvested a daily pint of blackberries from vines along the carriage trail. I bring them home in a cottage cheese container and dump them over my morning oatmeal. Yum. But today this lovely butterfly sat patiently while I fiddled with my camera controls and crouched down to take a picture. Below, a closeup shows more of this animal’s intricate anatomy.

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