Tag Archives: Trout lilies

Even the Humblest of Beings

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trout lilies in old leaves, with mottled green leaves, and yellow and brown blooms

The trout lilies bloomed last week before several days of rain. This photo was from May 5th. Today the blooms are already fading or gone. The trout lilies live near a path by the Capisic Brook that I visit most mornings, though I don’t always make it as far as that path. I was glad to walk a little further to see these lovely small beauties.

I want to continue to post from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which I started a couple weeks ago. It is such a good reminder that every person, no matter how humble, or seemingly insignificant, is worthy of dignity. (In this quote of the declaration from 1948, for simplicity, I am using the original language, in which the pronouns he/his/him were understood to refer to all people).

Article 12: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home, or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13: (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Article 14: (1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution. (2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from nonpolitical crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15: (1) Everyone has the right to a nationality. (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Can you read them again? So important in the light of what is happening to migrants today in our country. Everyone has the right to seek asylum. Every one has the right to a country, or to leave a country. Everyone has the right of return. And yet so many are denied that right. We have to keep speaking up for what we know is right, even if our societies have never fully lived up to these values.

Ephemeral

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Trout lilies are blooming near the brook.

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:

  1. Lasting for a markedly brief time.
  2. 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.

Trout Lilies

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Trout Lilies

With all my working in the garden, I didn’t have a chance to walk by the brook for a few days.  When I came back, I found these little beauties.  The woods is absolutely carpeted with Trout Lilies.  I even thought about transplanting some for our yard, but read that they take several years to settle in and bloom.  So why not just enjoy them where they are?

There is so much beauty everywhere I walk–singing catbirds and cardinals, flowering cherries and magnolias, even just the leaves opening up on the trees are so magnificent.  The ferns are stretching out, and swamp cabbage is green along the brook.  Violets, dandelions and wild strawberries are flowering in the lawn.  Meanwhile life is busy, but I have to steal some moments to stop and enjoy it all.

May Day in Maine

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Daffodils in orchard

I arrived back home in Maine Monday night, and found Spring bursting forth with flowers, including all these daffodils around the fruit trees in our orchard.  I planted the bulbs last fall because the Holistic Orchard book suggested that they could be protective of the young fruit trees.  But they also create so much beauty as the tiny trees are waking up, and look so spindly and fragile.  But guess what?  If you look closely, you can see that the new peach tree has tiny pink flowers budding out too.

I think we’ve come to that week when everything seems to wake up all at once.  In years past, this has occurred in mid-April, but this year it is aligning with May Day.  As I took a walk around the block, the forsythias were bright yellow, the grass in people’s yards was green and exuberant, and the trees were budding out. I walked along the brook and the trout lily’s spotted leaves were poking up all along the path. Back in the yard, I noticed tiny asparagus stalks emerging from the trenches where I had planted the crowns!

Ostrich Fern Fiddleheads – Version 2

Back in March, I had purchased an Ostrich Fern root at the Maine Garden Show, and kept it in the garage while it was frosty outside.  This morning I noticed that even the fern was already growing bright green, curled-up fiddleheads there in the dark, in its plastic bag, so I planted it next to the white pine tree.

Today the temperature is rising to 80 degrees, but hopefully it will even out again to the 50s and 60s that are our average for Maine in May.  I love this time of year!

May our hearts wake up, too, rising from the weariness of the long winter, into the joy and exuberance of this season of growth and life.

Trout Lilies

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These lovely small flowers were near the trail on Capisic Brook. A couple days after I took this photo, I went on a Nature Walk at our Ferry Beach retreat and I asked the person who was leading us about this little yellow flower with the mottled green and brown leaves, and she suggested the identification. These are buds that haven’t fully opened yet. I am getting to know my new neighborhood.

Trout Lilies