visit from a mourning dove

4.19.20 ~ mourning dove on my balcony

Mourning doves have been visiting me off and on since my mother died twenty-eight years ago. They seem to arrive when I could use a little encouragement. When I used to garden one would often sit near me and watch me as I worked. Once one walked with me all the way from my garden to the swimming pool in our complex. Lately one comes to sit on the balcony almost daily and coos for as long as an hour at a time. I find her company very comforting.

Sunday morning I decided to try to photograph her through the sliding glass doors and was thrilled with the results. She didn’t seem to mind posing. I know they are plain birds, but that’s exactly why I find them so beautiful! I love them the same way I love my gulls.

In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it.
~ Abraham Lincoln
(Letter to Fanny McCullough, December 23, 1862)

When I first read the Lincoln quote six years ago, after my father died, I remember thinking how true it was. When my mother died I was so young it came as a terrible blow and I needed therapy to work through the grief. By the time my father died it was no longer such a shocking experience. I deeply felt the pain of loss, but it wasn’t unexpected.

We now have 36 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in our town. There are moments I feel terribly anxious about this. It’s starting to sink in that it may be be many months or even more than a year before it will be safe to visit our grandchildren again. As it stands now, I don’t think I will feel free from danger before there is a vaccine. But we are trying to make the best of it and even find a sense of humor at times.

I find myself wondering how my parents would respond to the coronavirus pandemic. I imagine they would probably be just as blindsided as the rest of humanity. But since Mother Nature sees fit to send me such a sweet comforter as this lovely mourning dove I will stay grateful.

It’s not true that life is one damn thing after another — it’s one damn thing over and over.
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
(Letter to Arthur Davison Ficke, October 24, 1930)

4.19.20 ~ this might be my favorite pose

The Millay quote has been one of my favorites for a long time. It amuses me and helps me to laugh at the ironic situations I think I find myself in. The coronavirus pandemic feels unprecedented, and perhaps it is in my lifetime, but not at all in the history of the world.

In the trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset, the protagonist, Kristin, dies from the Black Death at the end. It’s one thing to read about plague statistics in history books, quite another to experience what it must have been like while reading the words of an excellent storyteller. It comforts me to know others have felt the same fear.

Being a highly sensitive child, whenever I would lament about the sad things happening in the world my father would sigh and advise me, “‘Twas ever thus.” When my mother was dying of cancer and my heart ached for her suffering he would gently remind me that “every creature struggles for life.” He was a naturalist and scientist who taught us compassion for animals and people, but also prepared us for loss. Whenever one of our pets died he would tell us to “remember the good times.” I am so grateful for the lessons he taught me.

4.19.20 ~ showing off her feathers

‘Twas ever thus — from childhood’s hour I’ve seen my fondest hopes decay, I never loved a tree or flower but ’twas the first to fade away.
~ Charles Dickens
(The Old Curiosity Shop)

spring blossoms

4.8.18 ~ Sandhills Horticultural Gardens, Pinehurst, North Carolina

Science has never drummed up quite as effective a tranquilizing agent as a sunny spring day.
~ W. Earl Hall
(Always Look on the Bright Side: Celebrating Each Day to the Fullest)

April
Comes like an idiot, babbling, and strewing flowers.
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
(Selected Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay)

Blossoms will run away —
Cakes reign but a Day,
But Memory like Melody,
Is pink eternally —
~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #1614)

Spring comes on the World —
I sight the Aprils —
Hueless to me, until thou come
As, till the Bee
Blossoms stand negative,
Touched to Conditions
By a Hum —
~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #999)

A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown —
Who ponders this tremendous scene —
This whole Experiment of Green —
As if it were his own!
~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #1356)

Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed
Their snow-white blossoms on my head,
With brightest sunshine round me spread
Of spring’s unclouded weather,
In this sequestered nook how sweet
To sit upon my orchard-seat!
And birds and flowers once more to greet,
My last year’s friends together.
~ William Wordsworth
(The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth)

Every spring is the only spring — a perpetual astonishment.
~ Ellis Peters
(Spring Meditations)

wanting the sea

"Connecticut Shore, Winter" by John Henry Twachtman
“Connecticut Shore, Winter” by John Henry Twachtman

Searching my heart for its true sorrow,
 This is the thing I find to be:
That I am weary of words and people,
Sick of the city, wanting the sea;

Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness
Of the strong wind and shattered spray;
Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound
Of the big surf that breaks all day.

Always before about my dooryard,
Marking the reach of the winter sea,
Rooted in sand and dragging drift-wood,
Straggled the purple wild sweet-pea.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
(Exiled)

 Where Mermaids Arrange their Hair

green is king factory

10.12.12 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
The Green Is King Factory created by Tammi & Sean Flynn ~ 10.12.12 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut

The Moss family loves everything green. Kelly and Hunter and their children Willow and Sage own the Green Is King Factory. They turn their precious blue and yellow finds into, you guessed it, green. It’s hard to keep up with the demand. Artists use a lot of green! From the gentle yellow-green buds of spring to the deep shades of the forest, the Moss family can have an artist’s favorite green within 24 hours (and yes, express delivery is available).
~ Wee Faerie Village: Land of Picture Making

10.12.12 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
10.12.12 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut

So, the wondrous fairies have a factory in their village, too! Did you notice the cog railway for bringing the yellow down to the factory?

10.12.12 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
10.12.12 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut

What a blessing our in-home caregiver, Chelsea, has turned out to be! She spent Monday in the hospital keeping Auntie company. Thank you so much, Chelsea! You are truly a godsend!

On a somber note, I received some sad news yesterday, my cousin Matt called to let me know that his mother, my Aunt Betty, died unexpectedly Friday evening. She had enjoyed her last day of life, taking a wonderful long walk with her husband, my Uncle Dave, and seemed fine. But after dinner she collapsed and the paramedics were summoned – she was 80 years old. Matt and I talked for over an hour on the phone, shedding a few tears and sending hugs back and forth, sharing what happy memories came into our minds. Tim & I had sent her some organic roses in May for her 80th birthday and she told us their fragrance reminded her of romantic rose gardens from the past on Cape Cod. Aunt Betty was a woman of strong faith, a lovely, gracious, lady.

If I were to walk this way
Hand in hand with Grief,
I should mark that maple-spray
Coming into leaf.
I should note how the old burrs
Rot upon the ground.
Yes, though Grief should know me hers
While the world goes round,
It could not in truth be said
This was lost on me:
A rock-maple showing red,
Burrs beneath a tree.
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
(The Wood Road)

by moonlight harder still

12.12.08 ~ Groton, Connecticut
biggest, brightest full moon of 2008
12.12.08 ~ Groton, Connecticut

Should at that moment the full moon
Step forth upon the hill,
And memories hard to bear at noon,
By moonlight harder still,
Form in the shadows of the trees, –
Things that you could not spare
And live, or so you thought, yet these
All gone, and you still there,
A man no longer what he was,
Not yet the thing he planned…
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
(Wine from These Grapes)

as a brazen wing

eastern pondhawk dragonfly by R. A. Nonenmacher
eastern pondhawk dragonfly by R. A. Nonenmacher

I wound myself in a white cocoon of singing,
   All day long in the brook’s uneven bed,
   Measuring out my soul in a mucous thread;
Dimly now the brook’s green bottom clinging,
   Men behold me, a worm spun-out and dead,
Walled in an iron house of silky singing.

Nevertheless at length, O reedy shallows,
   Not as a plodding nose to the slimy stem,
   But as a brazen wing with a spangled hem,
Over the jewel-weed and the pink marshmallows,
   Free of these and making a song of them,
I shall arise, and a song of the reedy shallows!

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
(The Dragonfly, The Harp Weaver & Other Poems)

Dragonflies & Damselflies

Dragonflies of the Arch

train of thought

4.27.11 ~ New London
4.27.11 ~ New London, Connecticut

There isn’t a train I wouldn’t take.
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
(Travel)

The past few days have been a whirlwind of planning, juggling and preparation – and we finally boarded a train yesterday to come visit Tim’s brother Dan and his family here in Woodbridge, Virginia. By car the trip should take about seven hours, but in recent years it usually winds up taking us eleven hours because of traffic jams, pauses to pay tolls (even with EZ-Pass), rest stops and driver fatigue. Enough already! Tim calculated the cost of gas, wear and tear on the car (last time we came we lost a hubcap!), tolls, food, etc. and decided that the train would only cost slightly more and would save us tons of aggravation!

We hopped on the train in mist and fog at Union Station in New London at 12:46 p.m and arrived at Union Station in Washington at 6:30 p.m. About six hours! This is surely the best way for us to go! Whenever the train ran along I-95 we were going faster than the cars on the road and found this knowledge so thoroughly satisfying.

Had plenty of time to relax and let our thoughts wander or disappear…

Between Old Saybrook (1:08 p.m.) and New Haven (1:35 p.m.) I enjoyed the Connecticut shoreline scenery. Skunk cabbage was everywhere swampy, and in the marshes I saw an egret with two babies! I also saw an osprey pair sitting on their nest on a platform constructed for their nesting convenience.

Around Bridgeport (2:00 p.m.) the marinas and seascapes disappeared and the warehouses and truck lots started appearing, and lots of graffiti, some ugly, some artistic. At Stamford (2:25) my thoughts turned to daughter Larisa and her boyfriend Dima, because his parents live there. They emigrated from Russia to Connecticut when Dima was seven years old. Then the sun started to come out!

New Rochelle, New York (2:45 p.m.), we started seeing jets coming into the various airports in and around New York City. My cousin got married in New Rochelle in 1974 but I don’t remember the details much – the past is gone. Pennsylvania Station, New York City (3:15 pm.) – perhaps Tim & I will be getting off at this station in the near future, Larisa is planning to move to the Big Apple in July to join Dima, who is already living there and working there, doing research at Mount Sinai Medical Center. This was the longest stop as the train took on a new crew for the rest of the trip. I pulled out my Kindle and started reading Falling into Grace by Adyashanti.

I was thoroughly engrossed in the book and didn’t pay much attention to the scenery in New Jersey. We made one stop there in Newark (3:50 p.m.). Two good things – I was not getting motion sickness reading in the train – maybe I grew out of that problem! – and it was a good thing I had my Kindle because if I had Falling into Grace with paper pages I would be underlining almost every sentence! Wished I could talk with Kathy about believing and not believing our thoughts!

As we approached Philadelphia (4:50 p.m.) a hot flash power surge, as Laurie would call it, decided to come over me. Tim was sleeping soundly beside me and it was all I could do to struggle within the confines of my window seat, getting my hoodie off and my indigo blue Japanese fan out of my bag, without elbowing and poking him awake! But I did succeed! Tim has a stepsister and I have a cousin in Philadelphia – I hope we can visit them in July when Jeff has his photography show there, too! Perhaps we’ll take the train…

Wilmington, Delaware (5:15 p.m.) and then Baltimore (6:00 p.m.). My thoughts turned to Dad and Aunt Lil and how they used to take the train to this station to visit their sister, my Aunt Em. We used to drop them off at Union Station in New London in much the same way as Nate dropped us off there earlier. It’s funny when you think about it, how we often repeat patterns from the lives of older relatives. Dad used to drive to Maryland, as we used to drive to Virginia.

And I have a feeling we won’t be driving to Virginia any more. The train was full, even though it wasn’t a holiday weekend. Many middle-aged and elderly ones with suitcases, not just businessmen. If you live on the east coast you probably know what a nightmare traveling on I-95 has become. I heartily recommend the train to anyone!

Washington, D.C. (6:30 p.m.). Dan and his daughter Erica were there to greet us! They work in D.C. and fetched us after work. Fran and her son David had a yummy taco dinner ready for us! We are now safely arrived here with Dan & Fran, even if we were under a tornado watch this morning. But the sun is out now and the weather looks to be improving so we should have a wonderful time catching up with each other!

4.28.11 ~ Woodbridge, Virginia
our home away from home

mementoes

“Idun & The Apples” by James Doyle Penrose

Still enjoying our apples, sometimes two a day. Maybe I’ll make some more apple crisp today. I found an apple poem and still another picture of Iduna. I love the little deer next to Iduna. I was looking for deer paintings when this one turned up in the search, reminding me that apple season is not yet over.

Saturday was Leif Erikson Day and Tuesday will be Columbus Day, but Monday will be the official holiday. Traditionally we used to go leaf peeping in Vermont or New Hampshire for the three-day weekend. But Tim has to work tomorrow so we’re not going anywhere and will have to content ourselves with a little leaf peeping next weekend here in Connecticut, when the color show will hopefully be peaking! Peeking and peeping at the peaking fall colors…

Looked up the definition of the title of the following Edna St. Vincent Millay poem, Recuerdo. It means memory, souvenir, or memento. Tim’s out getting coffee, breakfast, and the Sunday morning paper. My head is spinning with plans and ideas. Very tired after our trip to a museum yesterday, yet very merry. Domestic autumn bliss…

Recuerdo

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable —
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry —
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

This American stamp commemorates the 100th anniversary of the first organized emigration from Norway to the United States. Fifty-two Norwegians crowded onto the ship Restauration which sailed from Stavanger, Norway on July 5, 1825, and arrived in New York on October 9, 1825, where the captain was arrested and fined for having too many passengers on board for the size of his ship. What a welcome! My ancestor, Ingebrigt Martinus Hansen, who became Martin Thompson, arrived in Philadelphia almost twelve years later, on June 10, 1837.

Although no one knows the exact day Leif Erikson (Leivur Eiriksson) set foot on North American soil, it was about 500 years before Christopher Columbus did. The Faroe Islands, part of Denmark, lie between the Norwegian Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, and between Norway and Iceland. They also issued a stamp recognizing Leif Erikson’s explorations.

in a flower bell curled

New London, Connecticut
lilium medeoloides, taller than Janet
7.2.10 ~ Connecticut College Arboretum
New London, Connecticut

Now the meadow was full of flowers and dragonflies and we really enjoyed our few minutes there, but the sun was hot and we longed for the cool shade again. So we left the meadow on the other side, and wandered through the woods for a while until we stumbled across the woodland garden we found in May. No Cheshire cat to host us this time, and no other visitors. There wasn’t as much blooming as there was on our earlier visit, except for tall meadow rue, wild leek and lilium medeoloides. But the rue and lily were so lovely they more than made up for the lack of other blooms!!! In the picture above, Janet is examining an insect who was busy devouring the lily’s leaves.

lilium medeoloides ~ 7.2.10 ~ New London, Connecticut
lilium medeoloides
lilium medeoloides ~ 7.2.10 ~ New London, Connecticut
lilium medeoloides

The woods were made for the hunters of dreams,
The brooks for the fishers of song;
To the hunters who hunt for the gunless game
The streams and the woods belong.
There are thoughts that moan from the soul of pine
And thoughts in a flower bell curled;
And the thoughts that are blown with the scent of the fern
Are as new and as old as the world.

~ Sam Walter Foss
(A Trail for All Seasons: Wisconsin’s Ice Age Trail in Words & Pictures)

7.2.10 ~ New London, Connecticut
tall meadow rue
7.2.10 ~ New London, Connecticut
wild leek

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
(Afternoon on a Hill)

On our way back to the exit we spotted a cactus with a few yellow blooms left on it! And, yes, we then headed for Ruby Tuesday again for those luscious strawberry lemonades! Looking forward to Shakespeare-in-the-Arboretum next week…

7.2.10 ~ New London, Connecticut
prickly pear cactus