Tag: nature

Beyond Noise

From where I sit at the table by the window, lit by a slant of morning sun, the hum of the highway sounds louder than usual. Most of the time, the traffic is white noise, a whooshing punctuated by the louder roars of trucks, motorcycles. There are few places in Norwalk to escape the sound of automobiles. On the other side of town, the Meritt Parkway is another artery of noise. And in-between these two major roadways is the Post Road – a constant shifting gears as cars and buses crawl along between stop lights.

The best chance to escape is on the Long Island Sound, early in the morning or in the evening, and better on a weekday.  But even out on the water, there is rarely silence. Motor boats speed by, sending heaving waves into our boat. But worst is the hysterical motor-grinding of jet-skis around and around.  And of course, there are always airplanes, although the drone is so distant and quickly gone, they are easy to ignore.

Usually, I try not focus on man-made noises, instead tuning-in to sounds like summer insects. The volume of the Cicadas seems to change as the temperature does and at night, there is a different chorus of blaring bugs.  I notice the birds: the soft-drumming of a Downy Woodpecker on the stump of elm, the chirps of the Cardinal family, the weird, squawking Parrots (yes, Parrots!) swooping through to eye our trees. I let the dog out to bark at them, hoping to discourage nest-building intentions. Out by the butterfly bush, bees vibrate by and dragon-flys so close, I hear the extraordinary flutter of their wings.

Of course, I prefer these sounds of nature to the cacophony of man so try to cultivate a selective awareness.  There’s the key: of course my state-of- being affects my perceptions, and this week, I have been tightly wired and not particularly ‘conscious’. Triggered perhaps, by anticipating my daughter’s return from England and the always stressful trip to the airport to retrieve her.  She is home now, safe and sleeping upstairs, but the discombobulated feeling remains. Even the usually unobtrusive soundtrack of my daily life unsettles me.  After days of being irritated by everything around me, I admit to being the source of my own discomfort. I suspect it is because I have not been writing nor doing yoga – my anchors to peace.

Less than an hour ago, my focus was on what seemed the maddening noise of the highway. As my attention shifted, it was the birds I heard, the neighbor calling to her children, my fingers tapping on this keyboard, and finally, as I reel myself in closer to my elusive center, I find silence.

The Discipline of Neat

We finally trimmed the privet hedge surrounding our property – a task that has literally hovered over me  for most of the summer. Now, returning home in the car or from walking the dog, the place no longer looks  abandoned.  The  hedge had grown so high it took two of us to finish the job – I held the ladder steady while R swept the grinding teeth of the trimmer steadily across the top of the 8 foot growth. There is still a patch left because we need a higher ladder to reach the scraggly sprays, but this one bit of chaos is tolerable for now. Drooping oak branches also need trimming and the privet detritus needs to be raked out of the day lilies and hostas, but at a glance, the hedge looks neat and elegant. The psychological impact this has on me, is amazing.

I am reminded again that clearing bramble, maintenance of home and body, (my hair is often like the overgrown hedge) is as important for the spirit, as it is for aesthetics.

Inspired, I moved on to my car pulling stray bags, outdated coupons and receipts out of the back and from under the seats.  In the house I cleared surfaces – and now try to keep them so: immediately washing and putting away dishes, throwing out the mail I don’t need, keeping the newspapers, the magazines and books in a neat pile. I even tackled my closet, ruthlessly tossing clothes and shoes for Goodwill or garbage.

Of course, I have done this before – purged and cleaned and vowed to reform from messy to neat, high on the benefit of clarity that comes from clear space. The longest period that I managed to sustain this was when I lived in Kyoto. There, my tatami-mat bedroom was always pristine. Every morning I folded up my futon and quilts and shut them away in the closets.  I never left piles of clothes or papers about.  Of course, I lived alone then – it is enough of a challenge to reform myself, impossible to impose this on others.  But I will do my best to embrace this as my discipline – starting small: I will keep the tables clear, ready for plates of good food to eat together as the messy family we are.

August

The changing light of these early mornings reminds me that my favorite season is on the wane although there is a full month before school starts (thanks to my daughter, school still marks time for me) and many more days of sweltering heat and humidity yet ahead of us. But I mourn the passing of long daylight hours although I recognize that melancholy lends a sense of sweetness to every moment.  I savor the light, the heat – time. I take deeper breaths and almost taste the summer-scents of earth and grass and when the wind is right, the rich sea smell of the nearby Long Island Sound.  I reassure myself that there are a good two months or more of paddling to be had and still a promise of harvest from the garden.

My tomatoes are disappointing – some creature – (I suspect the squirrels) has found every fruit before me, gnawing some, devouring others.  The guilty rodent prefers the heirloom variety and we have yet to taste one. On the other hand, although I know it his favorite, the groundhog has ignored the patch of edamame and I see teeny little pods clustered in amongst the purple flowers. I have no complaint about the lettuce: just when I think we have had our final salad, I find more leaves hiding beneath the cucumber vines. I must remember to always, just keep looking.

Embracing the chaos

I am not an organized person and while I envy this quality in others, it will never be mine.  That’s not to say I am not efficient and responsible: my desk may be a mess at work and at home – but I never miss a deadline and my bills get paid on time.  This is just my style.  And it translates to everything – including the garden.

This morning, dressed in sweatpants and tee-shirt retrieved from the floor, hair flattened on one side and eyes still bleary with sleep, I took the dog out for his quick, morning walk.  I live on a quiet street and rarely meet anyone at this hour. Bordering our not-quite quarter acre,  Hosta, Iris, Day Lilies are growing in abundance.  Looking at this mass of green through my sleepy haze, I recall my autumn vow to separate these plants in the spring: divide the Day Lilies and Hosta plants, give away the Bearded Irises (strange, almost vulgar looking, I think) before they reached full bloom and I could still see space between them.  Too late: they swallow each other up in a green mass and they in turn, are overwhelmed by the hedge that stands now like a wall between our house and the street.  I used to be able to trim this hedge standing in the street – now it is at least 8 feet high and dense.

In another corner of the garden are the once scrawny twigs sent to me by the Arbor Society for a $10 donation.  I did this at least two years in a row – dutifully planting painted twigs only inches long into a corner of the garden where they would not get trampled.  Now we have about 7 trees in the works. They are growing within feet or even inches each other.  I meant to move a few of them this spring while it was still early – before their leaves began to sprout.  We moved two last year – digging around the roots and then wider, deeper yet to get some kind of root ball.  Finally, cursing and bothered, we chopped at the dangling roots and yanked them out – moving them, (not very hopefully) to a spot where they have more room to grow.  Amazingly, they survived the trauma and are still alive and  have grown quite a few feet.  We vowed to get to the others before they got bigger. Too late again.  None of those little trees I stuck in the flower garden for safe keeping and then, forgot about, will leave without a fight. For another year at least, there they will stay.

To add to the garden chaos, I planted two cherry trees in the hope of one day eating fruit from them.  Slightly bigger sticks that probably won’t bear fruit for a decade because I’m too frugal to spring for the $60 it costs to buy a large one from the garden center.  All of these saplings live beneath the massive oak that’s not far from the mulberry tree, so tall the branches lean over the garage. Another oak stands at the end of the drive and a quartet of trunks make up the maple tree shading most of the front lawn.

At this point, we feel overwhelmed by the growth, the weeds reclaiming a patch we cleared two weeks ago, the neighbors annoying forsythia that hangs like a curtain about to come down over our blueberry bushes.  But it’s nature doing its thing and it’s gorgeous and lush and the birds love us.

Balance

The sky is cloudless, the temperature is perfect and  I am torn between being in the dirt  planting vegetable seeds, tomato and jalapeno pepper plants – or writing.  Since I seem to only be able to write in solitude, when R leaves to run an errand, I drop my spade and dash inside to write, and when his car pulls in the driveway, I head back to pull weeds and water plants. And in this way, I find a kind of rhythm.

Here I am inside now – garden gloves abandoned in the dirt.  I have less than an hour before M is home from school.  A room of my own?  I imagine such a place for myself  and maybe, one day we can transform the crawl space – not quite an attic.   But if I could really disappear for hours on end to a cubby of my own, away from them and our shared life, would I? Certainly, if this was my ‘work’ but not now.  All moments beyond the hours spent at my job are carefully mined and  ultimately, it is the time I spend with these ones I love, that is most precious to me. But were I to win the lottery…

April Showers

Today’s rain is welcome.  Yesterday I spent hours potting herbs (parsley, oregano, lemon verbena, basil and more basil) and filling window boxes. As I make my morning tea, a movement outside my kitchen window makes me jump – newly planted red geraniums out of the corner of my eye appear as if someone is looking in at me. It will take some time to get accustomed to their presence.

Although recent sunny days have been lovely, I am glad  to stay inside, read papers and do indoor spring cleaning tasks. Every room in the house is filled with the scent of lilacs – the result of trimming almost 3 feet off the top of an overgrown bush. This was one of those jobs I have meant to do each year and never gotten to – until now.  The blossoms were out of reach of my nose so it was time. According to a Google of ‘Pruning lilacs’ one should wait until the flowers have finished blooming. But wanting their evocative fragrance in these rooms, we took the lobbers to the branches and now the shrub looks sad – all chopped up. Fingers crossed it hasn’t been traumatized too much and next year’s blooms will be glorious.

We’ve done a lot of that around here this year – hacking away at old growth, chopping butterfly bushes practically to the ground. What were awful looking stubs only a few weeks ago are sprouting green. It works. Of course, all summer we will have to look at the bald limbs of the lilac and trust we have done the right thing for the future. There are so many ways this applies to my life: in a mundane way, cleaning out closets, throwing out, giving away, making SPACE!  But in psychic ways too. I will try and examine thoughts and habits so long ingrained in my life they might just be stunting growth and try and be brave enough to make uncomfortable changes for a healthier future. A good exercise for the seasons.

Slow Down Spring!

Forsythia is fading fast and daffodils are already shriveling. Last week’s days of summer temperatures seems to have fast forwarded us. I wanted to get into the weather car speeding us towards summer and put on the brakes.  Too fast!  The heat itself doesn’t bother me although I haven’t yet managed to do the seasonal clothes change thing (and I prefer this direction!) and so, spend such days, a little overheated. Much happier to be hot than cold, I never complain.  I feel like it slows me down to a more leisurely pace.

Still feeling behind in terms of the garden although I managed to plant some rainbow chard, kale, lettuce and peas last week.  The next morning, looked out the window to see a squirrel digging up the chard seeds – munching away as he looked around.  No wonder entire plantings from last year never even surfaced from the soil to be eaten by the groundhog.  Crazily, year after year, I plant again although I know this lumbering creature will climb the wall or dig a tunnel right into our little plot and devour what I plant.  Eyeing some seedlings at a garden store last week of red leaf lettuce and other beautiful leaves, I thought – a ready meal for the groundhog, and left them there.  I try and plant things he doesn’t want. Or just a lot of what he does so we get some too. We have onions and leeks and a big bag of lettuce seeds this year.  We will do battle again. And he’ll probably get the soybeans (love edamame!) before me, but I remain an optimist.

Day of Light

I  do not have the clarity that religion offers, but in my own way, discover spiritual moments, although – never in a church. Easter Sunday, we work out in the garden. R is tying up branches both fallen in recent storms and trimmed by us. Wearing gloves against the thorns, I prune the rambling rose bush and pull the dead wood out of the hydrangea plants. There is a woody vine that since last summer has laid claim to a stone wall.  I push my sheers beneath the dirt, snip out the roots, yank and cut. I know I did not go deep enough and suspect it will be back again within a few months when I get lazy and turn my attention to other parts of the garden.  But for now, it is enough.  Cleaning out the dead or undesirable branches and plants, clearing the way for new life.  Filling my lungs with scented spring air I am grateful for the day. That feels like a prayer to me.

Over the Mountain

Relying on a GPS is not always a good idea as I found this week on my way back from a meeting in upstate New York. I had opted for the ‘avoid major highway’ option and found myself turning down dubious streets in Peekskill.  Next I was driving up, up, up for miles (3) in what I knew was the wrong direction. I crept along on hairpin turns against walls of rock, rushes of water pouring down onto the road that twisted ahead into the clouds ahead of me.  Mist rose Shining-like from the all-too-close edge of the road.  How do people do this through the icy days of winter? Cars sped towards me and I knew whoever was behind me was cursing my little Subaru as I crawled along, terrified.

Finally, down, down, down on the other side, tapping my brake, the road opened up and I saw a river and a narrow bridge. Across the river felt like the only option to get me going south in the right direction.  The GPS was more than willing to accommodate, directing me across the bridge, down the road and to the right smack into Bear Mountain State Park on 5:45 PM on a dreary, Tuesday night.  Frightening still, but I was relieved to be on level ground again, the risk of hurtling off a cliff, gone.

The road led me into the woodsy park where I was happy to see a State Trooper’s car. I wanted to be going in the right direction home but, heart still beating, I hoped that would not entail going back over the mountain.  No such luck. I was on the wrong side of the Hudson and the way back to where I needed to be was over the bridge and up, up, up – down, down, down.  “Drive safely” he said. It wasn’t so bad the second time round – I loosened my grip on the steering wheel and sang Beatles songs at the top of my lungs.  It felt  familiar as if I knew this road. Still a challenge, but I could handle it.

An hour later, after a few more unintended visits to towns I could have missed (Ossining – home of Sing Sing prison), I got onto the major roads going in  the right direction. I never felt so happy to crawl along I-95 in rush hour traffic.

Saving Daylight

Still trying to catch up from saving (losing?) that daylight hour and am slow to pull myself out of bed. The dark morning is hard but the extra evening light is worth it. Yesterday (Saturday), I worked for a few hours hosting the lovely author and chef Leticia Moreinos Schwartz with her new book The Brazilian Kitchen: 100 Classic and Contemporary Recipes for the Home Cook – a beautiful cookbook I had to buy myself after salivating over the photos and recipes like Red Pepper and Brazil Nut Pesto or Avocado Creme Brulee. Yum.  And the little sweet treats she brought for customers to taste – Brigadeiros – were scrumptious.  Food and good people – I was able to forget that it was a beautiful, first day of spring and I was inside.  And there was plenty of time in the remaining afternoon and evening to work in the garden.

When I got home, we leveled a Rose O Sharon shrub hovering over the corner of my vegetable garden for too many years.  I am loathe to cut down trees and shrubs where the birds might hang out. Not yesterday.  Without sentiment, we brought it down, opening up that corner  that has always become overgrown, blocking the sun from my tomato plants.  What bugged me most about this shrub was the shoots that spring up all around it – a flower garden next to the garage, the corner behind that we have been trying with little success to claim from the weeds and determined raspberry shoots.  Hundreds of little twigs that are Rose O Sharon offspring – they are poking out already, some tenaciously stuck in there, resisting my yanks. We worked for hours into the evening, the sky turning a deeper blue to dark with a sliver smile of moon up above. Ah, spring.

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