Monthly Archives: February 2017

Snowdrop Blessing

my garden, nature, ,

gl-snowdrops-p1060680

It seems to be a modern rite of spring for those of us lucky enough to have snowdrops in our gardens, to take pictures of the lovely things to share online. My snowdrops are not as showy as some, but they are sweet. [Update: I learned from a commenter that these are not true snowdrops!]

gl-snowdrops-p1060666

I don’t enjoy them enough. They start blooming in January — I see them from afar out the kitchen window, just little white spots on the landscape, inconveniently located under the manzanita. Sometimes I delay venturing out into the weather to stoop down close, until the first blooms are starting to fade.

I read that it has been a tradition in Ireland not to bring them into the house until St. Brigid’s Day, and maybe I thought that I could also wait that long.

But most of mine are fading by the first of February. This morning when I saw pictures of two different snowdrop variations on blogs, I wondered if I could find just a couple of newish flowers on mine, and I did find more than that. Now they are on my windowsill in a place of honor, blessing the kitchen.

Update: It has come to my attention that these dear flowers are not called snowdrops, but snowflakes. They are in the same tribe as the snowdrops – or maybe not! It depends on which Wikipedia page I look at. Anyway, they are called Leucojum and snowdrops are Galanthus. And now I’m even more determined to get some Galanthus to plant next fall!

Love of things dented and dropped.

poetry, , ,

Another poem about things. This poet exults in the intimacy of humans with their things, walking on them, dropping them, nearly wearing them out — but to him, all that improves their appearance and even makes the things happy.

Since first publishing this poem, I have been prompted by Jody’s comment to add the photograph below, from Elizabeth Goudge’s beloved Wells Cathedral, completed before 1500, the steps to its chapter house since that time well “trodden by many feet and ground down.”

OF ALL WORKS

Of all works I prefer
Those used and worn.
Copper vessels with dents and with flattened rims
Knives and forks whose wooden handles
Many hands have grooved: such shapes
Seemed the noblest to me. So too the flagstones around
Old houses, trodden by many feet and ground down,
With clumps of grass in the cracks, these too
Are happy works.

Absorbed into the use of many
Frequently changed, they improve their appearance, growing enjoyable
Because often enjoyed.
Even the remnants of broken sculptures
With lopped-off hands I love. They also
Lived with me. If they were dropped at least they must have been carried.
If men knocked them over they cannot have stood too high up.
Buildings half dilapidated
Revert to the look of buildings not yet completed
Generously designed: their fine proportions
Can already be guessed; yet they still make demands
On our understanding. At the same time
They have served already, indeed have been left behind. All this
Makes me glad.

-Bertolt Brecht

wells-cathedral-steps
Wells Cathedral, Chapter House stairs – photo by Pippin

Blind and so mysteriously secret.

poetry,

I ran across two poems about things and our relationship to them. In this first one the poet might be merely looking around the room to notice a few common items. I used to do that when I wanted to write a letter to a friend or parent, to help me get started. I would mentally extract one thing at a time from the clutter spread all around the kitchen and family room, and ramble on paper about the everyday doings of our tribe. What books was everyone reading? Was there bread rising in a big bowl? Maybe some tools had been left out after a repair job. There was always so much stuff that my method produced a broad glimpse into our family life.

But I never waxed philosophical about the things themselves, the way Borges does. He gives us an elegant and thoughtful view of some of his belongings, with a kind of reverence:

THINGS

My walking-stick, small change, key-ring,
The docile lock and the belated
Notes my few days left will grant
No time to read, the cards, the table,
A book, in its pages, that pressed
Violet, the leavings of an afternoon
Doubtless unforgettable, forgotten,
The reddened mirror facing to the west
Where burns illusory dawn. Many things,
Files, sills, atlases, wine-glasses, nails,
Which serve us, like unspeaking slaves,
So blind and so mysteriously secret!
They’ll long outlast our oblivion;
And never know that we are gone.

-Jorge Luis Borges

Suddener than we fancy it.

poetry, ,

SNOW

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes —
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one’s hands —
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

-Louis MacNeice