Conclusion of the Case of the Horizontal Amaryllis

[See the post on 1-21-2012]

Our errant amaryllis has continued to push forward with its destiny. I thought you might enjoy some pictures of its development. As its attachment to its bulb became more tenuous due to the weight of the blossom, we finally cut it lose and put it in water. We are now enjoying its beauty as a cut flower.

And in case you want to grow your own horizontal amaryllis, our variety is named Red Lion.

On the 24th of January, its buds began to develop (the differences in color were due to using natural light (golden color) and flash (greenish color):

 

By January 27th, one of its buds began opening to reveal its beautiful inner complexity:

 By the 1st of February you can see how the weight of its blossoms

was making it more difficult to maintain

its horizontal position as more blossoms unfolded:

  



In its final stage as a cut flower, the blossoms have life-giving water able to flow up its stem.

We will continue to water its bulb so that leaves develop, which will replenish the bulb from its strenuous production of four gorgeous blooms. And who know new year what this determined bulb will produce!

It just goes to show what determination can produce. Now if we all set our mind to the solution of some of the problems facing the world, think of what we could accomplish.



On this Ground Hog's Day of 2012, our amaryllis reminds us to open wide to the possibilities of life - and don't let your shadow run your life and tell you what might happen. 

Honoring Norway's Month of Mourning

May Norway continue to embrace contemporary changes

to its country, the multiculturalism 

that one terrorist tried to obliterate

with the deaths of Norway's future leaders. 

May Norway remember its roots,

its hardworking people

and farms wrested from the land

wherever the soil would yield crops.

May Norway remember its resistance

to the Nazi invasion of its country,

its refusal to surrender to a right-wing political movement

that would rid Norway of everyone who did

not fit Hitler's vision's of purity.

May Norway gain strength from the beauty of its land.

High rugged mountains, fjords, and high waterfalls.

And its dedication

to not sacrifice their country's pristine places

in exchange for greed.

From the northern most reaches of small fishing villages

to its graceful cities,

may Norway always remember

those who died so tragically,

May Norway teach us all about the importance of tolerance

and that it is possible to grieve with dignity.

Ready to Go!

The Friends Plant Sale is approaching. It is the biggest and best gardening event in the Twin Cities. And an event not to be missed. It is time to plan your strategy to take on this plant extravaganza, happening the week end of May6-8. With the catalog online now as well as available in printed form,  it will make your heart sing as you yearn for spring.

Some advice from "old-timers." Unless there is a particular rarity you want to be sure you will carry out of the State Fair Grandstand with that huge smile on your face that is the trademark of a happy gardener, it is best not to show up when the doors are scheduled to open - as hordes of people will descend at that time. Of course, there are some compensations for coming early - you could meet new people this way, while you stand in line. And have some interesting gardening conversations, as well as complain about our slow-to-emerge spring and the tedious, long winter.

Ourselves, we go a bit later on Friday and still manage to find almost everything our little hearts desire.

Or you can wait until Saturday morning. The Friend's huge cadre of volunteers are fast learners and every year have devised new ways to ease your shopping experience. One of those is re-stocking for Saturday, rather your being faced with a slowly dwindling supply of interesting plants.

And course there is your return visit on Sunday, when things are marked down. After, two days the plants are a little weary and are puppies at the Humane society. They will be clamoring for your adoption attention.

And remember shopping at this gig-normous sale is a two for one deal - The sale is Friends School's primary fund raiser. Profit from the sale means more financial aid for prospective students, who otherwise would not have the option of going to Friends - a wonderful educational opportunity and a first class education.

Missing Greenland

Do you sometimes miss places where you have been? The past week I have missing Greenland, where we made our way up Prinz Christian Sund by ship. Here are some phots of this mysterious land that is so rapidly changing due to climate change.



Mountain Love Affair

I would be at a loss if I had to name which mountains I loved the most! Probably whatever range I last was immersed.

Last June we crossed over the San Juan mountains in southwestern Colorado. We encountered snow, fog, rain, sleet, and glorious sunshine - and followed snowplows sometimes. How I envy the soaring birds able to fly over such majesty. Do they have any idea of the beauty below them?

The Color Blue

It's funny how those odd bits and pieces lodge themselves in some crevass in your brain, only to show up later in some entirely different form. When I was a child, my favorite color was blue. Not the sort of startling thing I would expect to turn into anything that matters later in my life.

But it has. Spread out like jigsaw pieces waiting to be noticed as having a pattern. The color blue is embedded in my present life.

There is the blue of New Mexico's sky, one of the few places in my traveling life where I return. Once when I was there, I struck up a conversation with a woman painting at an easel. I asked where she was from. Florida she said. I then asked her why she came all the way to New Mexico to paint. Her reply was that it was the particular blue of the sky, so different from Florida's blue sky.

Hmmm. I hadn't noticed. But she was right. Most of New Mexico is over a mile high, some parts a mile and a half above sea level. The air is thinner - and the sky is dramatically more blue. Just like the blue sky on the images on my earlier blog of Snows and Blues. (No photoshopping and the kind of film here - it is what my digital camera "saw.")

Salinas National Monument

And there is the blue ice of the glaciers that so intrigue me. Alaska's tidewater glaciers slowly traveling into the sea. 



Alaska

And there were those icebergs in Greenland, pieces of glaciers that have broken loose to flow toward open water.

It's bigger than it looks!
Iceberg in Greenland

And at the other end of South America, there is the remoteness of Chile's Avenue Glaciers.   

Glacier melt in Chile

Or perhaps blue continues to capture my attention because it is the color of my dear love's eyes.

Taking a snooze in the sun while waiting for the next glacier 

Now that I have begun thinking about those pieces of blue scattered throughout my life, I imagine I shall find many more!

Snows and Blues to Give Me Perspective

When Clem and I were growing up, we lived in the Mississippi flyway, one of the great migration routes for waterfowl. Every spring swans, Canada geese, and snow and blue geese would fly overhead in great clouds. It is a precious memory that sustains me when I begin to slip over the edge and become too caught up in political and world drama.

I did not have a camera then, which was capable of capturing these images on film - only my boxy Brownie camera. Now thanks to the digital cameras of today, it is possible for me to capture some of the essence of these wild creatures, who seem all but oblivious to humans, awed by their flight northward into Canada.



Wintering Snows and Blues

 

Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge
New Mexico

 One of their wintering places is in central New Mexico. Smart snowbirds!

Today, Minnesota waits to see who their next governor will be. A county by county map of the state reflects the disparity of election results across the county. The margin in each county is 10-20% for either candidate, even though less than 1% separates them statewide. Either folks in each county clearly liked one candidate or the other.

Another "throw the bums out" election, the third such election in four years, awaits the pundits' attempts to understand what the results mean. While Senator John Boehner tries to discover a strategy to herd cats in a coalition labled Republican, but consisting of Tea Party-ers and the ever present Sarah Palin. While bombs worldwide explode and children die of treatable diseases and malnutrition.

My perspective? I have grandchildren in public schools and the university. My neighbor across the street was laid off and my heart aches for their frantic fears. Arts and music disappear from school curriculums, affecting children I know personally and those who would teach them. My middle-class peers grow poorer. Stores where I sometimes shop are filled with goods for which my friends and I have little need, prolonging a stalled economy while people examine their consumer lifestyles.

An older friend once related what she experienced when her 90-some year old mother died. She looked out the door four days after the funeral. The mailman was making his rounds as if nothing monumental had happened. She had to resist the urge to holler at him, "don't you know my beloved mother just died."

Then I remind myself of the great flocks of birds who are flying southward to wait until the snow season passes. Some will not survive the journey. But the great flocks will fly north again in the spring and hatch new chicks. Huge flocks will swirl across the skies and I will listen for the deafening sound of them calling to one another. Wheeling and turning as if the whole flock is one giant organism.



The Cranes are Congregating

Sandhill cranes are fiercely territorial. Every year when they reach their nesting site, they drive out every other creature from a broad area around their nest. But in the fall, something triggers their migratory instincts and they gather together in large flocks in spent cornfields. There they fatten up for the long flight southward. Just as in the spring, they congregate along a sixty mile stretch of Nebraska's Platte River on their way north. True snowbirds!

Several days ago we went to Crex Meadows Wildlife Area in Wisconsin, near the St Croix River. In farmers' fields south of the refuge, the cranes were gathering. We watched them - and they watched us. Small groups would rise up in the air, a picture of grace par excellence. I think there is nothing more beautiful than the sight and sound of them, churrrring to each other as though they live year-long in large flocks.

Wheeling overhead, they practice for the journey. The first-year chicks have become adolescents, still "living at home" with their parents. They are trying out their wings to go somewhere they have never seen, trusting their two protective parents will guide them across the miles.

Their migration remains a mystery although research has given some tentative explanations. A combination of cues passed on from generation to generation guides them south in the autumn - and north into the Canadian and Siberian tundra in the spring. This year, the lingering warmth of one of the warmest Octobers ever has meant the cranes are late to migrate. As are the geese - "late to come down," as one local man put it.

How like us are the migrating birds. We live by regular patterns in our lives, scarcely aware of cues that guide us through the days and the months. Sometimes abrupt changes remind us of those cues, such as shift-work or jet lag that disrupt our body rhythms. Or people in our lives behave unpredictably.

And we like our weather patterns to be regular. How many times this past month, have I heard people remark about the glorious autumn we have had - and then follow it with either the we-will-pay-for-it-later comment or say something about their fears of climate change.

I'm not a migratory being. My travel is more erratic and the cues come from schedules of conferences or available experiences. At the same time, as the last leaves swirl down from the trees and the light softens, I respond to old rituals. Washing windows. Cleaning out closets. Making sure evergreens and shrubs get thoroughly watered in preparation for below-freezing temperatures.

Perhaps that is why when the sandhill cranes fly overheard, constantly calling to each other, I am stirred in the deepest part of my soul.

Today's Blossom

These waning days have a certain comfort as our garden settles into dormancy. The few fall roses linger in their beauty. Throughout the summer I had dutifully tended the roses Clipped their spent blossoms, trimming the shoots back to leaflets of five or more to encourage more flowers. But now the autumn blooms are left alone to fade and be transformed into colorful rose hips that will adorn the soon-to-be winter landscape.

        Today’s Blossom

If you must—
touch today’s flower bud
and imagine
tomorrow’s blossom.

Imagine the promise,
uncertainty, and
impermanence that have
taken haven within.

Tomorrow—
if you will,
hold today’s bud.
Should it be opening,
be grateful.

Now—return to today,
come live in
each moment’s
unfolding.

The Lure of Wild Places

There is something about the extremes of the Earth that draw me. These are not places where I would choose to live. But they are places I carry around in my memories and my heart. 

Iceland

Trips to Alaska with snowcapped mountains too numerous to name. The North Cape of Norway high above the Arctic Circle, where a third of the world's Atlantic Puffins live. Our journey around South America's Cape Horn. And this latest voyage across the North Atlantic.

I grew up in a closed container geograpically. Landlocked, though not in the way the term is usually used. My family never traveled and I had no expectations that my life could be any different. At the same time, seeds to explore were planted in my soul, somewhere below my conscious mind.

When Clem and I made our first dash for freedom, my closed container expanded - and has continued to expand. Wild places danced before me and I answered.

Faroe Islands



Greenland

Of course, inevitable questions rise up within me. Why these places? What is their meaning for me? How do I carry them now within me? I close my eyes and remember.

Being Not Afraid

Elizabeth and I were walking through a springtime woods along Lake Superior, on one of our many trips to the sea without leaving Minnesota. High above the lake, the path took us across a ravine. As we reached the other side, we saw Bunchberries in full bloom. Elizabeth  captured the moment with her ever-present camera .

My very first thought that came to  mind . . . these are white doves of peace — everywhere. The poem “Being Not Afraid” was birthed that day. It remains a favorite of mine. It was not long after that visit to Lake Superior that we came up with the idea to pair Elizabeth’s photographic images with my poetry, each to have thoughtful conversation with each other. And hopefully a third conversation with the viewer.

BEING NOT AFRAID

It will be as if,
in the dry autumn of earth’s life,
the world’s people
walk a woodland path ―
expecting only
crumbling rustling leaves,
a shriveled mushroom or two. 

Around a bend 
tiny, white doves
appear everywhere
and they are not afraid.

And now ―
littered with peace,
the glade is watered and turns
to spring. Not just here, or
there; but everywhere.
And peace is not afraid.

It will be like that ―
the springtime for earth’s people.

Imagine, being not afraid ―
peace everywhere.

It will be like that.

          Clem
                                                                                       Published in the National Catholic Reporter, in June 2008

                                and used with permission.

The North Shore

There are those days when I yearn for Minnesota's North Shore. Days when the fog drifts in and the waves crash on its rock strewn shore. When gulls fly low over its grey surface. And when the fog drifts over the trees, my world becomes a cocoon as though nothing more exists than this small silent space. It gives me needed respite from the news of the day with its violence, wars of words, and starving people.

Perspective that allows me to return home from my beloved inland sea. Carrying the silence with me into a chaotic world driven by greed, power, and suffering. So that I might do my part with other compassionate people to find solutions in a time marked by rapidly increasing change.
                                                                                                 
 Elizabeth

Late May