Tag: nature

Another Winter Day

I hesitate to write about the grueling winter, but it may be the only way forward for me, out of the paralysis I feel waking to leaden skies and polar temperatures. Every day of relentless cold, ice, snow – is depressing to the point of being debilitating, and I am curling farther into myself, physically, mentally and spiritually.  I feel pinched – as if I am collapsing into my chest.  I force myself to breathe deeply, shoulders back, stretch. Nothing to be done but carry on, feed the birds, cook, read and mark the days inching towards spring. February, at least, is a short month and the seed catalogues arrive almost daily.

The plows have piled more than 5 feet of snow on top of my strawberry plants – it’s hard to imagine they will survive – but they will and so will the purple sage and all the spring bulbs that bravely push through the last of the frosts. I try and always have a hyacinth or bunch of daffodils on the table as a fragrant reminder for what’s just around the corner. Really. And just for fun, I will inevitably over-order seeds to sow directly in only a few more months and maybe pre-order some heirloom tomato plant collections. The best seed deals and choices I’ve found are Pinetree Seeds of Vermont and Select Seeds from Connecticut.  While sometimes I am enticed by catalogues from Wisconsin or Oregon, it just seems to make sense to get seeds for my Connecticut garden from New England.

I cook.  A recent favorite is a recipe on one of my favorite food blogs, The Wednesday Chef: Zuni Cafe’s Chard and Onion Panade. It’s comfort food extraordinaire. I erred on the side of lots of stock but would use less next time in the hopes that the consistency wouldn’t be quite so soupy. And maybe add a little wine?  Definitely more greens rather than less.  Yum.

Also whipping through books.  David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, while exquisite reading was at first a little slow for me but is now a page turner and I’ll certainly finish this weekend. After reading last Sunday’s sobering review of memoirs in the New York Times Book Review, (“The Center of Attention: Taking stock of four new memoirs – and of the motives for adding to an already crowded genre.”) I read the title reviewer Neil Genzlinger did not pan: An Exclusive Love by Johanna Adorjan and agree with him. It’s beautiful. The author’s poignant exploration of her grandparents joint suicide is like watching a riveting Bergman film — vividly drawn scenes and characters. No surprise the author has written for theater. I was drawn to this, of course, because of the suicide – but while the suicide is certainly a theme driving the story and the damage-done apparent in the author being haunted enough to pursue her questions (it is the questions we survivors are left with), ultimately it is a beautiful love story. And we know the author/survivor, has found her peace.

Genzlinger writes at the end of his memoir reviews: “…what makes a good memoir – it’s not a regurgitation of ordinariness or ordeal, not a dart thrown desperately at a trendy topic, but a shared discovery. Maybe that’s a good rule of thumb: If you didn’t feel you were discovering something as you wrote your memoir, don’t publish it. Instead hit the delete key, and then go congratulate yourself for having lived a perfectly good, undistinguished life. There’s no shame in that.”  I’ve re-read this a few times over the past week – a challenge to myself.  I did not hit delete. It’s just a long, cold, winter – but spring is on the way.

Birds

The front yard flutters with birds.  A dozen sparrows rise from the hedge, swarming the suet cages.  A solitary chickadee is driven away. A male cardinal swoops in, lending a pizzaz of color to an otherwise sepia scene of snow, branches, sparrows. As if on cue, they all take off and the chickadee returns, followed by a tiny woodpecker and then, more chickadees – they must have sent the bravest one out first to recce the situation for them.  Yesterday a larger woodpecker showed up – magnificent pattern of black and white  on his body and a perfect stroke of red from the crown of his head down to his shoulders – as if an artist had brushed it on. Then, a dozen grackles surrounded the pecker and one of them faced off with the formidable beak of the woodpecker, bobbing his head threateningly. Out-numbered, the beautiful one took off.

We know, (we think) some birds from past seasons. Two summers ago, a cardinal nested in the rose bush growing against a window in our sunroom, hatching 4 eggs – undisturbed by the constant human and canine activity a pane of glass away. She seemed to be a single mother – nurturing, feeding  – alone.  When she left the nest, we peered through the window for a close-up of the bizarre looking hatchlings. One day, we were alarmed to see one, now feathered but still tiny, standing out on a thorny rose branch, unable to get back to the nest. Rob went out and gently put it back with its siblings. Later that afternoon, it was teetering again, now on an even farther branch and this time, he fell into the flowerbed below. Again, being sure to keep Tetley in, Rob retrieved the downy creature and returned it to its nest. Soon, with the mother rarely in sight, they all were taking the leap to what we were sure would be their death to predators or starvation. Really, the mother was never far away – we heard her chirps and caught glimpses of her in a distant tree – and soon, tiny cardinals flitted about the garden. A poignant speed lesson in child rearing.

We imagine them out there now, this little family, plucking seed from the feeders along with Woody, the downy woodpecker that on another summer day, (it helps to think of them during this brutally cold and snowy winter) took a wrong turn and became trapped in the sunroom. Again, Rob gently cupped his hand around the petrified creature and released ‘Woody’ (as he christened him) back to the sky. And yesterday Wren – who we always welcome back to one of the houses attached to trees and posts in the back, landed on the sill. She seemed to be sussing out whether or not to build a winter home behind some wood we’d left against the window.

Sometimes, a shadow falls across the snow (oh, so much snow!) and the birds clear-out as the neighborhood raptor swoops dramatically across the yard. We love seeing this majestic bird, although I hope he finds his meals elsewhere.

This quiet Saturday morning, I make another cup of tea and put my feet up on the steamy radiator. I have been here for more than an hour and will linger longer — look!  A nuthatch and two junkos arrive — and with a weird flash of green, one of the neighborhood parrots also joins the fray. At this moment, winter seems lovely.

Snowed-In

December was a grueling month.  Six-day weeks and long hours at the bookstore – ringing at the cash register, looking for obscure or in-demand titles. Mark Twain was this year’s sleeper success and difficult to get hold of, Cleopatra and Keith Richards were more predictably popular and easy to find. (Imagining the three of them – together for a fascinating and funny chat, delighted me.) Customers sure the book they absolutely must have because it is the perfect gift, follow me about the store, desperately. Cynically, I can already see this same book, sometimes with wrapping paper still attached, coming back to us. ‘Reason for return: Unwanted’, the cash register will ring again and again through the next few weeks.

But the holidays are almost done (only New Years – less an event for books) and today, I do not have to do anything. There is a daunting pile of laundry and in the refrigerator, only enough left-overs for another day or so – but no presents to buy, no major meals to prepare for. I feel free! After writing this, I may even get back under the flannel sheets to read or sleep some more. Oh, joy!  This feeling began yesterday afternoon as soon as I returned home from work (the dread day of returns) and pulled into the slippery driveway. I drove home so slowly through the treacherous, slushy streets, cheering on my little Subaru each time we made it up or down another hill without spinning out. Settling into the couch in front of the fireplace as Rob vigilantly stoked the flames all evening, I read three days worth of newspapers and a bit of my book between dozing and listening to the howling winds, grateful for our good walls and Rob’s amazing winterizing techniques.

Today, I get to stay home. As if to underline the point, the snow is still swirling, the roads from my window look totally white: I am snowed-in.  Oh, bliss! Not even the dog is asking for a walk yet.

Winter Solstice and Lunar Eclipse

At 2:00 am, I woke to my alarm, pulled myself to my elbows and peered out the window to look at the eclipse edging over the smudgy looking moon in the hazy sky. The earth’s shadow slowly crept across the silver glow and here on earth, a fierce wind howled. Branches of the maple tree swayed and bent back-and-forth – an ecstatic wave of fractals. Glad to be between the warmth of my blankets, I burrowed deeper, forcing myself to lift my head off the pillow a few more times to check on the dramatic welcome to winter before succumbing to sleep and dreaming of a lunar eclipse. This morning, I cannot distinguish dream from memory.

Dark Days of December

In my neighborhood, Christmas lights and decorations appear within days of Thanksgiving. Next door, the light-bulb deer remain lit on the lawn all day. The house on the corner of our street looks like a Hallmark advertisement, wrapped in ribbon, evergreen swag and wreaths on every lit window. Next door to that house is my other favorite: the little red cape with the 1960s vintage decor – huge colored balls. The rest of us hang glittering lights purchased off the drugstore shelves – different garish rainbows of blinking colors. These flashes of brightness help to get us through the peak of winter solstice – the darkest days of December, refusing to succumb to the dark. I think we should leave them up through February.

While I always dread snow (the clean up and difficult driving) as I write there is a magical dusting going on – a meditative dance performance of flakes.  Earlier, walking Tetley in the dark morning, the flakes seemed illuminated – nature’s beacons of light. Perhaps I can learn to embrace this aspect of winter – to twist a little yoga saying – and honor the light of winter.

A Time for Birds

Branches almost completely bare of leaves are now busy with bird life.  Mourning doves sit silently shifting their proportionately huge (their heads are so weirdly small!) bodies around the maple tree.  Cardinals line-up at the bird feeders and chickadees creep upside-down around the crab-apple tree at the end of our driveway, now heavy with fruit.

My neck cricks, watching all of the fluttering action on this bright Sunday morning walk with Tetley.  We turned the clocks back an hour, another milepost for the season and technically, it’s still early and quiet (no leaf blowers) enough so I heard a distant line of geese, flying as only half a vector.  Why did they fly in a straight line although there were enough of them to form a V?

Yesterday, half-a-dozen parrots decorated our oak tree. I rarely see them still – usually they flash by as noisy-green squawking mobs. But there they were – sitting, tropical green and magnificent throughout the oak’s dull branches, unusually quiet, they let out only the odd screech.  I love to see these accidental-immigrants (the story goes that years ago there was a crate-escape from a shipment landing at La Guardia airport.) but don’t want them moving onto our property — which makes me sound like some kind of bird-bigot. It’s just that they make way too much noise and their nests can overwhelm and kill a tree. So Molly and I stood beneath them, doing our best screeching imitations of parrot-speak, to say: ‘move-on!’ before collapsing in hysterics.

I hope to see our neighborhood raptor soon.  The branch in the neighboring wood where he sits in-watch or to digest some unfortunate, small creature, is visible again. In the summer we sometimes heard his distinctive high-pitch, plaintive scream, but rarely saw him for more than a few minutes, majestically floating by.  While I am sad to be edging closer to winter, I love our new view of the birds.

In-between

Waking on weekend mornings when I don’t have to go to the bookstore, it takes a few minutes for me to realize that the day is mine. I must veer my thoughts away from work-life: the calls I didn’t make, the tasks still waiting on my cluttered desk. Where I write from is so far away from that world and weekdays, while I try and rise early enough to have time to write, to exist in that internal place, there is never enough time. I need to be in almost a reverie when I work – best right out of sleep – my subconscious still primed from a night of dreams.  On work and school days, I have the finely tuned but harried, going-to-school and work rituals of making sandwiches, calling M to wake up, (again and again) before we bustle out of the door and roll into the dark morning towards our day-lives. But Saturdays and Sundays (two days in a row!) are precious – time to really look at things – within and without.

The dog still requires I venture outside and if I heed him early enough, the moon’s glow is still brighter than the sun’s. I revel in the magic between night and day, sleep and waking and these days, between the seasons. Over this past month, it is has gone from twilight to dark when I answer Tetley’s call for a quick morning walk down the street. This week, there were days when the weather was crazy-warm and as I made my way past the hedges, I heard the murmur of a summer insect, delightful and comforting.  An extension of the spirit of summer along with the weather.

There is a fleeting quality to these days. Autumn and spring pass quickly – the sweetness and drama between heat and cold and the melancholy of the brevity of this beauty is potent. So I pull myself out of the warmth of my bed, and for the time I have here in the now-cool mornings (we are reluctant to turn on the heat – as if waiting will keep the cold at bay) I do my best to pay attention.

October

Gusting winds whipped through the garden, with the same rhythmic power of the sea. Leaves swept inside-out and then back again, still clinging to branches, the violence of the movement sounding like waves crashing onto shore.  Laying still in the dark of early morning, I am reluctant to move, wishing I could remain in retreat and follow the wild-weather from the comfort of my bed. But up I get to join the fray.

The wind brought the rain — falling in lashing grey sheets throughout the day. Rivers of water filled the roads and traversing even the shortest distance from car-to-building was enough to get drenched. Still, it felt tropical – more summer than autumn. But that was yesterday. This morning, my street is filled with storm-flotsam: twigs, leaves, branches pooled by flood waters into a topographical map over the cracked tarmac.  The sky is vivid blue and the leaves seem to have changed into their autumn colors overnight.  A flock of birds settle noisily into the trees. I cannot make them out between the foliage, nor do I recognize their song – more like chatter – as if they are discussing what route to take. They are on their way somewhere – at least 30 of them. It feels cold and pulling my jacket close, I yawn and my breath forms a cloud.

The seasons were wrestling these past few days – but this morning we have a winner: autumn is here.

Living with Books

When I ride the train, the subway, walk on a beach – and see someone reading, I always want to know – what?  When people are photographed or interviewed on television in front of a bookcase, I try to make out what titles are on their shelves. Because I work in a bookstore? Maybe, but also because I am nosy – it is as if I’m sneaking a peek at who this person really is by checking out their books.

My own bookshelves are packed to capacity – including too many books I have yet to read. Will I ever? There are titles that I feel like I should read — a great example being a huge tome: Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia by Karl E. Meyer and Shari Blair Brysac.  Autographed by these local authors and scholars – I do want to read it for a better understanding of this volatile region we have been so mired in – and so it stays and I think: one day. The same ‘should’ keeps From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman on my shelf for years.  I cannot let go of these books nor my good intention to read them but other books always jump the reading queue.

Then there are the books I may want for reference – that get yanked from the shelf about once a year or so – Alternative Medicine: The Definitive Guide by Goldberg and The Art Book – a book published by Phaidon door-stop sized book I picked up once at a tag sale. It’s a fast-food kind of look at the history of art.  I have more cherished art and photography books I also found on sale and could not resist – the most recent find being Andy Goldsworthy’s Passage – this remarkable sculptor’s poetic works are created out of nature – powerful works of time and space – some of stone but many others of ice, leaves, the tides and now, only a photograph remains.  It sits on a table in my living room and I have looked at it maybe once but I am so glad it is there.

I have the powerful photography books by my friend Ron Haviv – his important documentation of wars including Blood and Honey: A Balkan War Journal – the war I knew. My Balkan titles can take up their own shelf and I have read them all, hungering to understand the madness that was my life for four years.  My collection began back in 1992 with Rebecca West’s classic Black Lamb, Grey Falcon and Misha Glenny’s The Fall of Yugoslavia. Later on, I added David Rieff’s Slaughterhouse, Peter Maass’s Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War. And perhaps the one most poignant for me, My War Gone By, I Miss it So by Anthony Lloyd – a powerful memoir of addiction to war and to drugs.  

The addiction self-help books have mostly been purged – in the hopes that the problem is also gone out of my life, I have passed them on to others who might find them useful.  But I have kept the memoirs – Beautiful Boy by David Sheff, Mary Karr’s Lit.

Over the years I have amassed a collection of signed titles that are impossible to part with – I see them as a legacy for my daughter. J. K. Rowling – the second Harry Potter title signed at an event at the store early on in her success.  Still, it was like hosting a rock star but she was lovely, signing well over a thousand books and looking every child in the eye and sharing a chat while signing with her arm in a brace.  My inscribed copies of Angela’s Ashes and Teacher Man will always have a revered place on my shelf with warm memories of my encounters with Frank McCourt.

There are books I can and should cull: novels I have read and never will again. Outdated travel guides – to Bali, Martha’s Vineyard (I have not been since high school), the Florida Keys (I have never been) parenting guides, cookbooks I never open – but as my eye scans the dusty spines, I think of a reason why I want each one to stay – a memory, the possibility I might one day need to check on the correct Serbo-Croatian word or refer to that book The Brain. I won’t though — the internet is too easy.  At least, I will dust them.

Next Year May Be Better (The Garden)

A rare Saturday with nothing planned. Much to do, but nothing required. The ‘to-do’ is catch-up cleaning, inside and out.  The garden looks abandoned – petunias dried up in the window boxes, basil plants going to seed, morning glories strangling scraggly rose bushes and in the vegetable garden, pokeberry and crabgrass reign. A few perfect, little heirloom tomatoes are rallying on an almost-leaf-less plant, and I hurry to rescue them before the birds and squirrels attack. And jalapenos – I can’t make salsa fast enough and they wrinkle on the kitchen counter. But the garden is at the end for the year.

As the days finally cool down, I plan on how to prepare it for winter.  Rather than yank up all the crabgrass, I’ll probably cover it with newspapers, then layer leaves, compost, dirt in ‘lasagna’ garden fashion. By spring, it should be rich earth, ready for planting. Although it was a bad year, I am planning for next. An optimist – next year may be better and, in any case, I will try.

Follow

Get every new post on this blog delivered to your Inbox.

Join other followers:

%d bloggers like this: