Category Archives: nature

Birds fly under the weather.

birds, friends, nature

A young friend named Lilly came to visit from Idaho one evening, and a rude head cold fell on me the following morning. I managed to take her to Vespers, but on Sunday I was glad that she could go to Liturgy with Kit, because I was too sick to attend. In the evening Kit and Lilly cooked a wonderful breakfast for our dinner, trying out a new recipe from the 75th Anniversary Joy of Cooking for Lemon Pancakes, to go with bacon and eggs. Perhaps that sped my healing?

This morning I felt a little better,  and as I sat down with my tea by the sliding glass door I was surprised to see a new addition to the garden – a tall pole with a bird feeder hooked on at the top. Kit had set it up the day before, close enough that we could easily see the birds that come to it. And soon they did! Lilly and I saw a goldfinch, a jay, a towhee and a dozen juncos in the garden, many of them gathering under the feeder to peck at the seeds on the ground.

As I sat there weakly but joyfully watching, I noticed my mind fretting in the background, muttering something vague about chores to be done or books to be read. It was downright ridiculous murmuring, and I almost laughed at the idea that there could be a more sublime and worthwhile activity than watching birds outside my window, especially when I wasn’t at the time fit for anything more strenuous.

Lilly said that birds like bark such as I have in my planting bed mulch, because they like to peck around in it and find things to eat The jay was doing this, and then he hung on sideways to the feeder pole and studied the hanging ball of seeds, but didn’t manage to access it. My new garden is full of plants that are known to provide a good habitat for birds and bees, but I didn’t expect them to flock here so soon. Today they didn’t pay any attention to the fountain, but that is probably because the rain has made plenty of drinking pools all over the neighborhood.

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Later on Lilly and I drove to the coast so she could visit the beach she hasn’t seen sinIMG_1607ce she moved from here seven years ago. It was an overcast day and the ocean was roiling like dirty dishwater, but there was no wind, and the air was as fresh as could be. Rivulets were running from the cliffs to the shore, and the beach was covered with twigs and seaweed and all kinds of storm “trash.” Gulls and sandpipers and another kind of water bird — or were they merely junior gulls? — and a crow were enjoying all the new moisture in the air and on the sand.

Some of the dull brown-gray rocks had bright orange quartz-y rocks embedded here and there, harder layers that hadn’t eroded as fast and ended up looking as though they were pasted on. At least, that’s my assessment.

I was so glad not to be slouched IMG_1606over my tea indoors all day; strolling on the beach was not too taxing, nor was driving to the coast, though it took longer than expected because of flooding and detours. I took Lilly to the Birds Café and we ate clam chowder while looking over the grayness of the wet landscape and bay.

Now I’m fading again, but so happy to have accomplished and enjoyed these simple pleasures even when under the weather, and in the weather. And with the dear birds! They certainly brighten up our world.

 

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Ironing and baking through the calendar.

calendar, church, feasts, nature, , ,

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After the Feast of the Nativity of our Lord, we change from red to gold altar cloths. Earlier in the week I helped to iron the gold ones that had gotten creases being in storage bins, a task that is done right there in the temple.

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Three of us ironed, and draped the smoothed gold cloths over chairs. The fourth walked around the church making the exchange on icon stands and tables.

The cloths that belong in the altar itself were laid over the choir stands temporarily, where our rector could later switch them out for the red ones in the altar at his convenience, sometime before the next service.

The red ones were put away in bins, where they will stay at least until next September, if I read the rubrics correctly.

 

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Leavetaking of Nativity was yesterday, so this icon of the Christmas feast has been removed; today was another great feast, The Circumcision of Christ. Born a Jew, our Lord was circumcised eight days after birth according to the law.

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icon & basil breadIn addition to being one of the twelve great feasts of the church year, today is the day we remember St. Basil the Great, and after Liturgy this morning we gathered in the fellowship hall to eat some St. Basil bread, of which we had four loaves, including one gluten-free. The Greek word for this is Vasilopita, and many traditions have grown up around it over the centuries. I like this telling of the story linking it to St. Basil: Vasilopita.

We sang and ate the blessed bread after it had been cut in several symbolic ways, first into quarters by the sign of the cross made with the knife. Various chunks were swiftly and ceremonially removed for Christ, for the poor, and I can’t remember who all, because I was too focused on taking pictures!IMG_1452 chunk

A coin was baked into each loaf, as is the custom, so we were warned to bite our cake gently.  Our parishioner who bears the name of Basil was blessed to find the first coin in his slice.

I stood around drinking coffee, eating the sweet bread, and chatting for a good while before I came home and changed into walking clothes so that I could get out in the sunshine with friend Elsie for the better part of an hour. We timed our walk to be in the warmest part of the day, and it was almost 50° by then.

I’ve been burning a lot of wood, and the stack that was “temporarily” in my driveway for five months has been whittled down to almost nothing. Now my new utility yard is ready to receive the firewood again, but I’m not going to bother moving this little bit of old wood back there. I’ll stack the new supply of wood I’ve ordered there next week.

Tomorrow is the first day of winter that we have been forbidden to burn wood, because of the deteriorating air quality. It often happens like this: when you most want a good fire is when the inversion layer keeps the cold and the pollutants close to the earth. I’m glad I have a good furnace but it’s disturbing to hear it coming on all day and night when we don’t have a fire in the stove. Next week we are expecting the El Niño system to bring us rain, so that will clear up and warm up the air.

This week between Christmas and New Year’s has been a struggle for me, trying to accept my new life that is evolving, or that I am creating; I’ll be glad to be slightly less cold next week and to lay in some fresh fuel-wood. Since I can’t have a fire tomorrow I am thinking of baking bread, which would help to warm up the house and make it homey. Theophany is just around the corner, and for about ten days now the days have been getting longer — have you noticed? Here comes the sun!

Happy New Year to all my dear blogging friends and readers!

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The season changes its tense.

family, nature, poetry,

Jack the Dog and I took a very long walk this morning. I was in unfamiliar territory geographically, and not used to walking a dog, either. It may have been my first time! When I was young we had dogs but they walked and ran themselves, all over the countryside where there was no leash law.

This week I am in Davis, in California’s Central Valley, staying with grandchildren while Pearl and Nate are on a celebratory trip. It’s Fall — wind blows, rain falls, the colors are spectacular. If I hadn’t had a dog straining at the leash on my arm, I’d have wanted to take dozens of pictures of the trees with their strong and curvy trunks and varied foliage, standing against the washed sky. Especially two olives in one front yard, old and thick. So many species of pines and and other conifers, freshly cleaned after yesterday’s gale, of every loose needle and speck of dust…. Oh, I so appreciate the trees!

The breeze was sharp when we set out this morning, after dropping the children off at school. I decided to walk longer than 20 minutes, and it ended up an hour. The perfect day for it, even if we both were dragging before we got home.

This poem (which happens to mention a dog like Jack!) expresses the familiarity of these fallish changes, and the way they come at us. The “bruised clouds” remind me of how when we came home from church Sunday the storm had passed but clouds remained, morphing from deep to pale gray and lavender; the light was changing every minute, and I kept taking an ever new picture through the window, of the lemon tree (not falling) against the dark sky, with sunlight breaking through from another place. “The changing light of fall falling on us.”

FALL

Fall, falling, fallen. That’s the way the season
Changes its tense in the long-haired maples
That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves
Redden on their branches (in a fiery competition
With the final remaining cardinals) and then
Begin to sidle and float through the air, at last
Settling into colorful layers carpeting the ground.
At twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees
In a season of odd, dusky congruences—a scarlet tanager
And the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever
Loping down the center of a wide street and the sun
Setting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance,
A gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud
Blamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything
Changes and moves in the split second between summer’s
Sprawling past and winter’s hard revision, one moment
Pulling out of the station according to schedule,
Another moment arriving on the next platform. It
Happens almost like clockwork: the leaves drift away
From their branches and gather slowly at our feet,
Sliding over our ankles, and the season begins moving
Around us even as its colorful weather moves us,
Even as it pulls us into its dusty, twilit pockets.
And every year there is a brief, startling moment
When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and
Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless
Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:
It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies;
It is the changing light of fall falling on us.

Edward Hirsch

pressed into the earth

books, nature, quotes, ,

When in 1930 Jill Ker Conway’s father began homesteading a “block” of 18,000 acres in New South Wales, Australia, the change in lifestyle was jarring for his wife.

When my father left in the morning to work on the fences, or on one of the three bores [wells] that watered the sheep and cattle, my mother heard no human voice save the two children. There was no contact with another human being and the silence was so profound it pressed upon the eardrums. My father, being a westerner, born into that profound peace and silence, felt the need for it like an addiction to a powerful drug. Here, pressed into the earth by the weight of that enormous sky, there is real peace. To those who know it, the annihilation of the self, subsumed into the vast emptiness of nature, is akin to a religious experience. We children grew up to know it and seek it as our father before us. What was social and sensory deprivation for the stranger was the earth and sky that made us what we were. For my mother, the emptiness was disorienting, and the loneliness and silence a daily torment of existential dread.

from The Road to Coorain

western new south wales