This is the view outside our back windows. We didn’t plant these sunflowers, they came up on their own, with help from squirrels and the bird feeder. These are the ones that goldfinches and bees love so much. Even a photo can’t capture the brightness of the flowers. They glow! They make me so happy each time I see them. I also always think of a dear friend who loves sunflowers, and that makes me happy too.
Another source of joy are the pond lilies, that have also multiplied. In other years, we’ve had many one bloom the whole summer, or maybe one bloom at a time. So in the morning, I see these sunflowers out my window. Then I take a little walk back to the pond, and see the blooms, and the little frogs. I hope they will bring a smile to you as well.
We’ve had a string of very hot weather and then lots of rain, and I hadn’t seen our three bullfrogs in the pond for a while. I wondered what that might indicate? Today, I went out and a pond lily was blooming, and there were three new tiny green frogs sitting on lily pads. Who knows where they came from?
I woke this morning feeling heavy and sad with all the problems in the world, with isolation, with a lack of direction or purpose. So I brought myself outside and this little surprise happened and it lifted my spirits. I am grateful for that.
There is so much beauty in the spring, but it all seems to be moving so fast. I can’t keep up. Mayday has come and gone. Already this season is half over. After two months of physical therapy for my hip and lower back, I am able to walk fifteen minutes and more again. The other day I walked to Capisic brook and onto the path nearby, and saw the trout lilies that usually grow there, a lovely spring ephemeral. American Heritage Dictionary defines ephemeral:
Lasting for a markedly brief time.
Having a short lifespan or a short annual period of aboveground growth. Used especially of plants.
Spring itself and all its beauty feels markedly brief. Is my love of photos a way of trying to hold on to all that is ephemeral? Is my need to write an attempt to halt the relentless flow of time?
I have been drawn outside more and more each day, excited to see daffodils and violets and green shoots coming up everywhere. And, happily, the peach tree is now covered with pink blossoms, and the cherry trees have many blossoms too. Last year, because of the weather, there were none–so these beauties seem fragile and extra special because of that vulnerability.
Peach blossoms on a foggy day.
There are many projects in the yard to attend to. Many branches fell from trees in the storms of winter and early spring. Margy has been cutting them up and hauling them around. Some of these we’re using to make a brush pile in the back corner for wildlife habitat. The other day, I cleared that space of invasive plants. I also set up our eight rain barrels again. We are going to get an new order of firewood, after using up our last old logs in the storms. So we are working on the space for the firewood, and purchased a rack to keep them off the ground.
Yesterday, I added two more pond lilies to the plants in the little pond, and as I was tidying up old dead shoots from other plants, I found strings of toad eggs attached to the old ferns. (So of course I left those.) We haven’t had toad eggs in the pond before. But there are a few frogs beginning to make an appearance–shy ones who have been diving under when they hear me approach.
The robins did not come back to the nest on our back porch that they had used for two years. Maybe that pair are no longer living. I read that their average life span in the wild may be just two years. I also read that they often don’t reuse nest sites–so we were lucky to have them in that spot for two years. Another ephemeral.
Then we discovered a nest in the yew bush near our front door–able to be partly seen from our living room window. So new robins are raising young nearby again. Maybe one of them fledged from the back porch.
Blue robins egg barely visible behind branches.
Is my love of photos a way of trying to hold on to all that is ephemeral? Is my need to write an attempt to halt the relentless flow of time?
I was cuddling with my cat Billie on the couch and suddenly felt a deep sense of our own impermanence. She is 13, I am 70. Senior cat, senior human. How much more time do we have? Someday, I won’t be able to feel her warm little body, with its soft fur and sweet smell, curling up on the pillow near my face. Someday, she will be gone; someday, I will be gone. We too are ephemeral. I want to hold on, but life seems to be about movement, about letting go into the next moment.
The pond lily leaves have reached the surface of the water.
Last fall, I moved my pond lily plant, pot and all, to the bottom of the pond, from where it had been positioned on a step about 18 inches down. This was to help it survive freezing temperatures in winter. I wasn’t sure what would happen, but I was delighted to see red leaves starting to form around April 22, when I took the following blurry photo through the water.
Red pond leaves seen through the water.
Thursday, the first leaf reached the surface on a tall thin stem, and others are following. They are red and round, but I imagine that they will turn green as the sun shines on them, since last year they were green. In the up and down world of gardening, it is thrilling when the perennial plants thrive on their own.
The sweet flags I planted this year are also doing well–you can see them in the top photo near the stones. The blue flag irises are also coming back strong–their leaves are in the foreground. Meanwhile, the green frogs are happy–I’ve seen three so far. The bees are happy, and the tadpoles are still around. The maple trees scattered their seeds all over the yard, and many fell into the pond, but I didn’t scoop them out.
The last few weeks have been full of ordinary tasks around the house and yard. Sometimes we forget to be grateful for these very ordinary things. I think about people whose lives have been disrupted by war, by floods, by fire, by despots. Margy and I are able to do our ordinary tasks and ordinary meals and ordinary rest, undisrupted, and for that I am grateful.
A couple weeks ago, I painted the trunks of the orchard trees, to protect against winter sunburn and insects. This time I used a half and half mix of white milk paint and “Surround”–both powders that are mixed in water. I don’t know if it is really necessary–certainly I see fruit trees around the neighborhood without anything on them. But one morning, I had the energy and decided to try out the mixture. Surround is a kind of porcelain clay organic product that can disrupt certain insects. Last summer, I sprayed the fruit trees with it, and they remained light colored all winter. This summer I didn’t do any sprays like that, but why not try it as a winter paint? So that was one little project.
Peach tree with white paint on trunk.
I’ve been using the skimmer to clear leaves off the pond, and then I also have been cutting off the dead stalks of pond plants. I got into the pond one day, placing my feet very carefully down to the second step in, and lifted the pond lily pot, then dropped it down to the deepest part of the pond. The deepest part is 2 1/2 feet, so I am hoping that the hardy lily might survive the winter this way. And maybe in the spring it will need to be lifted back out, or maybe it will just reach its leaves up to the surface from there. I asked Margy to watch with me, just in case I slipped. But I didn’t! A few frogs are still hanging out, since the weather has been unseasonably warm still.
Since we had an extra weekend of warm weather, I finally painted the upper beam of the roof on our deck. Some of the wood had been left bare when a friend put in the roof, a few years ago, so protecting it has been on the long-term to-do list. Happily, there was some primer in our basement that I could use, leftover from the prior owners. It took three days, and each day after working on it for only a couple hours I was dead exhausted. But it is done today!
Deck beam half painted and half still undone bare wood.
Meanwhile, we’ve been filling in our absentee ballots, and researching the details of 13 referenda questions for our city of Portland, as well as the candidates running for office. I am grateful for democracy, as flawed as it might be practiced, and pray that we’ll still be able to have a democracy going forward. Rising fascism in our country has been alarming and discouraging, as well as the attack on the bodily autonomy of women, and the threats to such importance common goods as Social Security and Medicare. So much of my life’s work has been about expanding the benefits of democracy to those who have been excluded, fighting for equality and justice and liberation for myself as well as others. My work has included criticism of the way that our democracy has been incomplete, flawed, and unjust. But I think of voting as harm reduction–I may criticize candidates and policies, but I will vote for those who will do the least damage. Right now, with the Republican party being taken over by fascists, that means voting for Democrats across the board. So I am extra appreciative these days of the ordinary benefits we can take for granted, and pray that many many people will be moved to vote to keep those benefits.
We finally got two solid rain storms this past week after a long drought. What a relief! And now four very tiny frogs have appeared in the pond. (I don’t know what happened to the one we had before that was a little bigger.) A few days ago, this new water lily flower started blooming, and today when I went out to see it, it had disappeared. But I found three of the tiny frogs perched on lily pads! The fourth was on the other side of the pond on a rock. I didn’t look too closely under the water to investigate the missing flower, so as not to scare the frogs.
But slowly I sat down near the edge of the pond and watched for a while. A dragonfly came and perched on blue flag iris leaves. The frogs stayed on their pads.
Tiny frog on a lily pad
Second tiny frog on another lily pad
Taking close-up photos makes the frogs appear larger than they really are. They are only about an inch long nose to backside. I wonder if maybe it was the rain that enabled these small frogs to travel from some other place to our little pond? I feel refreshed by the rain too. Cool nights with windows open, listening to the dark sounds. Lovely.
The first pond lily bud appears on Saturday in our pond.
It starts to open slowly on Sunday.
I sit by the pond during the morning to watch it as it changes.
very slowly…
It is so meditative to sit by the pond watching the lily. I also see a frog, and some dragonflies. I add some water to the pond from the rain barrel, which is why the lily now seems deeper in the water.
As it opens it forms a little white cup, with yellow peaking out from the center.
It reminds me of an egg.
It doesn’t fully open on Sunday, and once the shade of the trees cover the pond in the early evening, it closes up again.
This morning, early, it is still closed up. I watch for a while, and then go inside to eat breakfast.
When I come back out mid-morning, here it is in all its beauty!
Marsh Marigolds and Blue Flag Irises in the pond, with pad for tending on the side
After several chilly windy days, we finally had a sunny warmer day today, and I worked on tending the pond. I rinsed off the soil from the two potted Marsh Marigolds I purchased last weekend, and “planted” them in the stones of the plant shelf in the pond. The blue flag irises nearby are shooting up their spikes with great vigor, and they have multiplied. The ferns on the other side have new shoots, as well as the sweet flag. But several of my other plants aren’t doing anything yet–we’ll see. If they can’t survive Maine winters, I’ll abandon those species and use other plants. But this is our first spring, so I don’t know their patterns yet.
Also arriving yesterday, a pond lily plant! After last year’s attempt to grow one in pebbles didn’t work, I tried another option this year. I put it in a pot with clayish soil, per the directions, with a layer of pebbles on top of the soil. I looked all over to find a native water lily, but didn’t have much success with that. I finally ordered one on Amazon of all places. It is from Chalily.com and is the variety Virginalis, which is a hardy variety with prolific white flowers, they say, and good for small to medium size ponds. It arrived as a tuber with several leaves already growing on it. I have high hopes that it will flourish.
Water lily underwater.
After taking care of these three plants, I positioned myself lying flat on the ground, with a little pad over the stones near the pond, and I went around the pond reaching in to fish out dead leaves. I also reassembled any areas where stones had become dislodged over the winter-thankfully not too many of those, though I did notice that several of the white stones I bought from a big box store have cracked apart. I wonder if they were stones at all? And one extra promising note–when I was using the skimmer to see if I could take out some deeper leaves, I saw the movement of some small critter swimming quickly away–I think there might be a frog under there already. I also saw several dragonfly nymphs. I am so happy that now the pond is ready for the season!
I also feel really thankful that I had the energy to do all these tasks. I even transplanted some violets out from the asparagus bed, over to the area around the pond. It is always a mystery, what my energy will be with chronic illness. It is touch and go, and then, when I run out of energy, I can’t do another thing. My mind goes on with what it wants to do next, but my body demands rest. I seem to do worse on colder days and better on warmer ones.
Despite the chilly days we’ve been having, the yard has been waking up nonetheless. The cherry and peach trees have buds almost ready to open. I’ve harvested my first asparagus. The chives are exuberant. And there are pansies all over the paths in the orchard. So cheerful. I decided to keep them all as a ground cover. I was feeling discouraged about the thuggishness of the oregano growing under the trees, but now I’ve decided that oregano can be a ground cover too. If you can’t beat it, welcome it? Doing a bit of research, I discovered that some people even plant oregano to be a ground cover. So if it really wants to spread, that is what it will be. Finally today, when I ran out of energy, I laid in the hammock and just listened to the cardinal singing. It has been a glorious day.
One of the many patches of pansies in the orchard.
Finding Our Way Home 