my madrona friend glows in late light, click to enlarge

An old friend died yesterday, someone whose company I had enjoyed every single day for more than five years.

A soon-to-be new neighbor hired a crew of eight men to scalp the property below me in order to build a house with a better view. Now I’m no eco-snob—I already enjoy a lovely water and mountain view, and trees were surely axed before this house was built.

And I have mixed feelings about the result. I now have an even better view of the bay, and now I can see Mt. Baker from the other end of my house, too.

Mt. Baker shows off her fresh snow, click to enlarge

The full truth, though, is also more complex. Most of the distinctly beautiful madronas, whose red bark glows in the early morning light, are sick and dying. Something similar to Dutch elm disease is eating away at these wonderful beings. I took a walk down the hill this morning to visit with the tree as she lay scattered where she was felled, her trunk in a hundred pieces like the vertebrae of a dinosaur.

She lay on the ground in a curve of grace, click to enlarge

Deer wandered around in the rubble looking a bit dazed, yet delighted to have a buffet of green madrona leaves laid on the ground. I couldn’t shake the image of vultures picking over a fresh kill. I suppose the good news is that the leaves won’t go to waste.

I tried to count her rings at the stump, which is easily four feet in diameter, but I soon realized that accurate ring counting is beyond my abilities. This tree was surely 80-100 years old; of that much I’m sure. As I touched her dismembered limbs, I said goodbye and thanked her for the countless moments of beauty she gave to my life. I picked up one leaf to press and save and one small branch that caught my eye. It’s a classic Y-shaped branch, but one of the upper stems is long dead, with coarse peeled bark, while the other stem is smooth and strong and was clearly thriving yesterday. I will keep this branch as a reminder that when one avenue in your life comes to an end, another route can head off in another direction.

madrona against a foggy dawn, click to enlarge

As I stood on the bare land where soon a new house will rise, I had to agree that they will have a magnificent, sweeping view. I hope they really, really appreciate it. Someday I may invite them over see photos of my old friend, Madrona.

CONTEMPLATIONS

• Have you ever had to say goodbye to a special tree?
• Are you ever conflicted about conservation and progress?
• Does a dying tree still deserve to live?
• Is a view more valuable than a tree?

See my madrona friend in winter, here.

I nearly gasped with delight when I pulled into the parking lot of my local country store this morning and saw a magnificent display of pumpkins, corn stalks, hay bales and chrysanthemums. This store is the real deal—wooden floors, a woodstove in winter, a huge array of produce from their own farm and fresh-pressed, unpasteurized true apple cider. Today I bought some small pumpkins and my all-time favorite fruit: concord grapes. Why does something so good have such a short season?

Anyway, though it’s my favorite season, autumn is a season of contrasts. The light is waning, the ferns are folding into themselves, the bones of trees are emerging—and yet the colors that remain are vibrant, vivid and energizing. It’s funny (to me anyway) that the rest of the year I hate orange. Can’t stand it in any form—okay maybe inside a nice piece of carrot cake—but not in anything else. I never have orange flowers in my garden or anything orange in my house. Yet come autumn, I can’t get enough of all the many oranges nature so delightfully serves up. Perhaps it’s a case of orange only feeling like it fits in this season. Some people plant crocuses and other “spring” bulbs so that they’ll bloom in the autumn—that, too, feels wrong to me. I like my crocuses to be harbingers of the returning light, thank you very much.

Even though I’m well into middle age, I like to think I’m much younger in spirit. After all, I certainly embrace all things digital, but walking into that farm store today made me feel like time had stopped there about fifty years ago, and it made me wish I could freeze that experience forever. Over the past decade I’ve learned to eat much better foods, and this place is my shrine to all things fresh and fabulous. What is time, anyway? It only means what we decide it means. And I’ve decided that today I’m going to linger in the russet, sepia tones of the rural America of my childhood. Want to join me? Go buy a plump pumpkin—I guarantee it will light up your life, even if you don’t carve it.

CONTEMPLATIONS

• How do you react to autumn?
• Do you find the natural decay of the plant world depressing or simply a sign of the season?
• What cheers you up as the light diminishes?
• Do you need more pumpkins in your life?

Take other fall trips here.

Autumn is my favorite season and I’ll celebrate that tomorrow, but today the sun is still warm and glorious and dahlias are at their peak. I took these photos in a nearby garden, and in particular, I love the ones that seem like miniature suns—you almost expect them to emit heat. So it wasn’t a surprise to learn some of their history.

Dahlias were once an important root crop and medicinal plant among the pre-Columbian Indians of central Mexico, Yucatan and Guatemala. Its roots were valued both for the nutritious inulin stored inside them and for the antibiotic compounds concentrated in the skin of the tubers. The dahlia flower was a solar symbol worn by Moctezuma and his nobles. The Aztecs gathered and cultivated dahlias for food, ceremony, as well as decorative purposes, and the long woody stem of one variety was used for small pipes.

That was news to me, but despite what Gertrude Stein said on the subject, I’ve learned never to assume that a flower is just a flower. Our plant allies have so much more to share with us and teach us. The infinite variety just among dahlias is mind boggling. The dahlia below looks like it captured a tiny sunflower and merged with it. If you can bear to pick them, dahlias do make excellent cut flowers.

A cloudy day dawns:
a vase full of dahlias
floods my room with sun.

Sniff some other flowers here.

Just moments from releasing their petals to flutter to the ground, the roses will curl, yellow, dry and dissolve into mulch for next season’s blooms. As I bury my nose in the soft center of a scarlet cabbage rose, I cup my hands beneath it to catch the fragrant pieces as they fall away from their center. I fill my pockets with them and when I get home I will spread them out to dry in a glass bowl on my windowsill. Then I’ll add their captured essence to dried lavender for a perfect memento of summer. Their scarlet skins will darken and shrivel a bit, but the spirit of the rose will be preserved.

I pull the prickly vine up to my mouth and suck the sweet berry directly onto my tongue, leaving the stained pith behind. Then greedy, I search for more—Nature’s version of an Easter egg hunt.

It kindles hardwired memories of foraging, of knowing exactly when and where each vine, each root, each bush would share its bounty. Of a faith in the earth so secure it has no name, no otherness from me. I close my eyes and recall wild huckleberry, its tiny treasures a fit reward for my patient harvesting. I remember precious wild strawberries trailing magically across sand dunes in June and gathering green sea rocket right from the beach. It was a time of abundance, living in harmony with each inching of the wheel of the year.

Scratch and sniff other plant allies here.

Then get down on the ground and really take a good look. An apology might be in order. Which got me to musing about moss.

• What must it be like to belong to a colony of plants who carpet the forest floor?

• What would it be like to have no control over which leaves falls onto you and which ones scuttle along on a breeze?

• How would it be to have your sun, your light, your source suddenly disappear beneath a green alder tent?

• What does it feel like to weave yourself so densely with your moss-mates that you form a velvety cushion?

• What would it be like to feel footprints of ravens and beavers and deer—and humans crushing your tiny leaves and stems?

• How does it feel when rain drenches you, seeps through your minute branchlets to the soil below?

• What’s it like to freeze, to see yourself encased in ice?

CONTEMPLATIONS

• When’s the last time you took a close-up look at your world—natural or otherwise?
• Do you have a tight group of allies who you congregate with?
• How do you support and protect one another?
• Do you allow people to walk all over you?
• Where do you feel powerless?

Meet other plant allies here.

She often perches there looking out over the bay where I can watch her from my desk. In the early morning when the dew moistens the woods, wild roses release their scent to the rising sun. So pink, such an intense fragrance—these small, delicate roses are a treat for eyes and nose. As I walk down to the beach, the heavy moist air is scented with their heady sweetness.

I can’t resist picking a small bouquet, even though I know the blooms rarely last beyond a day.

Have you ever noticed how once the bloom drops, a five-pointed star remains? In fact, it’s a reverse pentacle…very magical.

I do save the petals though and dry them for my potpourri, so in a sense, I preserve their fragrance for many months. Later in the summer, I’ll add fresh lavender from my garden to the mix. Then in December I’ll blend balsam needles and cedar tips into my concoction. The dark red rose petals are especially festive dotting the bright evergreens. So even though I love how wild roses perfume my house in summer, I’ll appreciate them even more in the dank depth of winter.

CONTEMPLATIONS

• How do you capture pieces of summer to savor later on?
• Which wildflowers sing to your soul?
• Do you seek out evocative fragrances and bring them into your life?
• Have you told a flower lately how happy it makes you? (Hey, everyone likes to be appreciated.)

Sniff other wildflowers here.

I’ve always adored orchids.

Growing up as I did the daughter of florists, I saw hundreds of orchids every year. Mostly nestled into sparkly corsage boxes ready for some clumsy guy to pin onto his date. They were also big at Mother’s Day, back when dutiful children took Mom out for Sunday dinner all gussied up with a huge cattleya attached to her chest. Then of course there were the various white orchids wired into showy bridal bouquets.

They were expensive and fragile and I was NOT allowed to touch them. Period.

I remember going down to the wholesale flower market with my father very early in the mornings and seeing the giant boxes of orchids fresh off the plane from Hawaii. I wanted them all. I was well used to carnations and daisies, roses and mums; I needed more exotic visual thrills. Best of all, many orchids came in shades of purple—always my favorite color.

As an adult, I read a bit about orchids, met a few orchid fanciers and concluded that I’d need a greenhouse and a bankroll to play with these beloved plants. Having neither, I never invested in a single orchid. They were so expensive, and I figured I’d never be able to keep one alive, so I never tried.

Then last fall as I neared a milestone birthday, I decided to splurge and bought myself my first ever orchid. Then someone who didn’t even know of my passion gave me another one for my birthday. Those two thrived, and so I dared to buy another, then another. And guess what—either they are now far easier to grow than they used to be—or else I have a knack for them. Because my phalaenopsis quartet (below) is doing fabulously well. Okay, one of them is idling at the moment, but since my others are all into their second blooming cycles, I’m optimistic about that one, too.

Now I’ll be quick to say that a true orchid devotee would laugh at my little collection, for they have no rare pedigrees—they came from my local grocery store. But that doesn’t diminish my joy in them. I’ve already learned several good lessons from my orchids. You need patience to watch one bloom. It can take weeks or months for a bud to actually open, and while you’re waiting all you’ve got are some bumpy twigs. I’m someone who thinks delayed gratification is an oxymoron, so this has been good for me. Now I can inspect the buds and appreciate each subtle shift in color, how they become almost transparent so I can see the veins and spots starting to form.

Then I realized that it’s never to late to revive a dormant passion. I rarely drink alcohol, never did recreational drugs, have only been addicted to sugar and bad carbs, but I can see how I could become addicted to collecting orchids. A quick spin around the Internet was enough to get me hooked. Perhaps one day I’ll have a greenhouse and can really indulge my love of these spectacular beings. In the meantime, I’ll fill up my windowsills with orchids—and I’ll touch them every day, caressing the buds and whispering sweet words of encouragement.

Even if they come from Safeway, there are no ordinary orchids.

CONTEMPLATIONS

• Have you waited to pursue a passion?
• What’s stopping you from going after it?
• What tests—and teaches—you patience?
• What joy have you denied yourself?

Admire other plant allies here.

So flagrantly does it bloom, that its stems and leaves nearly disappear, enhancing the impression of wind-tossed spray. Because it is just blooming now at the new moon, I’ve decided to call this lunation the Oceanspray Moon–may it breathe a fresh tanginess into your life.

At first it blushes along pale pink stems. Then as each floret opens, the stems fade to a mellow white. To discover its fragrance, I must tickle my nose in its gentle midst. It has a delicate scent, like forgotten handkerchiefs found in my grandmother’s dresser drawers, still tinted with her perfume.

Fuzzy in full bloom, it is a soft summer illusion of sea spray tossed far into the woods and high above the beach.

I want to sleep on a bed of this whimsical plant, enveloped by a million tiny blooms. I would dream of elemental spirits and dance with fairies beneath the new moon, our heads encircled with wreaths of oceanspray.

CONTEMPLATIONS

• What illusions color your world?
• What tickles you?
• What fragrant memory wafts by you today?
• Have you seen any fairies lately?

DOWNLOADABLE AFFIRMATION CARD

click image to enlarge, right click to save and print

Dance under more moonlight here.

I linger beneath the fluttering parasol and close my eyes, allowing summer to whisper: soon, soon, soon.

CONTEMPLATIONS

• What promise does summer whisper in your ear?
• Do you spend enough time with favorite green neighbors?
• How will you embrace summer this year?
• Can you find ways to show extra love to the earth this summer/

Hug another special maple tree here.