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Winter Blooms
February 21, 2000
This page is not celebrating Presidents Day. I’m all for honoring persons of great accomplishment, though not leaders as a class, and certainly not if they’re famous for cutting down a tree. That’s not the sort of holiday we keep around here. This page is going to the Park instead.
Valentine’s Day
What will I say? I could speak of Saint Valentine, of whom little is truly known. Or Valentinus, a Gnostic closer to my own heart. Or how folklore correlates this date with the pairing of birds, precursor to spring mating. All in the service of Love. But I cannot presume to speak of Love to lovers more ensconced than I. Not that kind of love. Is mine the perspective of the outsider? I like to say that I am in love, just not with someone. Still I will contend that I am of love, at the least. Just so, we say that God Is Love, and who would argue such a case? We well conflate two of our most important words. Words invested with so much meaning that they cease to mean at all. This is a signal that we are in important territory, an ecstatic stratum of existence where words must fail. Here Tradition has resort to symbols of a different sort. In this spirit, please accept my Valentine Bouquet:A single rose, or what is left: a last red, wrinkled hip, that’s lingered since last summer, among the briars on the northern height of Strawberry Fields.
A fitting gift, if one of recent vintage (February flowers suggest the modern florist industry.) Apt, though: the Rose is the iconic flower of the West, that through its blossom, fruit, and thorn, sums up the promise, the reward, and the pain that lies between. One plant condensing the journey of the Spirit into an image that sends its stems winding through our lives, from time to time unfurling an unexpected bloom of Love, out of the thorny underbrush of being. A flower in the sere season.
Just now, the indigestible Hawthorn holds sway, but we have stores from last year’s harvest. It’s no mistake that our most familiar fruits are of the Rose clan. Cherry, Plum, and hairy Peach form the single genus Prunus. Malus, the Apple, crabbed or full grown, and Pyrus, the Pear, are also cousins. All now so bred that their natural history is inseparable from the history they share with humans. Even in hybrid form, traces of their heritage remain, in fruit and thorn, and most of all in blossom. Long before modern genetics, gardeners, and lovers, recognized Rosaceous commonality, equating sustenance of heart and body.
So do not pity, or resent, my withered gesture; it is made from Love,
and we too will confirm this offering, not soon enough, but soon;
When the Promise of Spring is given, amid a riot of blooms.
The Snow is Melting
With rain, and more warming on the way, it will soon be gone. Three weeks on the ground, not bad by recent standards, but not the Winter of our Imagination. Some nostalgic jingle bell, Currier & Ives (yes, that's the Park) image of winter still pertains across the country, notwithstanding that few of us see such a season. In the face of real weather, I tire of it quickly. I’ve enjoyed the snow, but it’s retreat has me thinking of the path towards Spring, and wondering whether Winter has the strength again to intervene.How Many Stages in the Life of a Tree Can You Count in This Picture?
Sad news from the Conservatory Garden: one of the ornamental Magnolias in the south garden is gone; cut in the last week. I hadn’t noticed a problem with it, though several Magnolias did suffer from a fruit deformation last year. Perhaps there was storm damage, but no gardener was around, so I couldn’t find out what happened. The tree anchored the northeast corner of the garden, and will be missed. Here is a comparable survivor.An Old Chestnut,
and a New Chestnut
Looks like a Chinese Chestnut, or some hybrid thereof. The American Chestnut is virtually gone, wiped out by a fungal disease in the first half of the twentieth century. Surprising that nobody’s made a horror film: "The Chestnut Blight". Sounds terrifying! Well, at least it could be a movie of the week. I guess drama without psychology is a tough sell. With the disappearance of the trees, even the metaphoric use of the word is fading from the language, but the old roots are still out there, and still sprouting. I’ve seen one in the North Woods; will get a picture when the leaves come out. Eventually it too will acquire the disease and die back. At least that’s been the pattern. The American Chestnut Foundation is trying to restore the tree, by breeding disease resistant forms, but so far we must do with imports.Other trees have their own problems. When Shakespeare mentions hissing crabs, he means crab apples, not crustaceans. We don’t eat them much anymore, but crab apples used to be a treat in the lean season. They’re still popular with birds; the crab apple harvest in the Conservatory Garden is quite an event in the fall. Mixed flocks of Robins and Cedar Waxwings, along with the ubiquitous Starlings, spend a couple of weeks working over the ornamentals, until hardly a fruit remains. So what’s wrong with this young tree on the Great Lawn, barely touched? I guess it just tastes bad.
Groundhog Day
Has anybody seen my shadow? I’m sure I left it somewhere around here...Actually, it’s about being half way through Winter, and if the forecast is correct, we’ve still got another half to go.
What's in a Name?
The atmosphere never appears more transparent than on a bright, dry, winter's day. Saturday was such, and not so cold as has lately been our lot. Aside from fallen twigs, storm damage was not much in evidence. By Sunday night another messy precip mix was straddling the freezing line, but warmer temperatures are in the offing, so the question now is how long will our snow blanket last? An icy crust has developed over the fluffy snow beneath, protecting it from wind driven evaporation, but only shadowed hollows can resist sunny days in the 40s, which may be on the way. January is typically our coldest month, and now it’s over. Of course, conditions at ground level can differ greatly from the officially reported air temperature, and forecasts are notoriously inaccurate, so we’ll wait for the expert’s prediction on the 2nd.Cold or not, the birds keep busy. There was a great deal of avian activity. Spring molts seem to be in progress already. House Sparrows were courting, the male showing a full black bib, not just the winter chin spot. Many were taking the opportunity to bathe; I guess it was warm enough, though they didn't look very comfortable as they fluffed and fidgeted to dry out. A Flicker bathing in the Loch nearby looked as if it had been freshly painted. Most birds have two full-scale molts a year. Some species, particularly migratory ones, completely change their appearance between spring and fall forms. Others, like the Flicker, simply renew their plumage, but the feathers actually do wear down over time, so a newly molted bird can appear much brighter or sharply defined than it will late in the season.
The Flicker (that is, the Northern Flicker, Yellow-shafted race) is one of five woodpeckers commonly seen in the Park. Unlike its relatives, it prefers to eat ants off the ground, but at this time of year, it must resort to more traditional woodpeckering behavior. In the summer, Flickers flock, and are quite numerous, but in the winter the classic woodpeckers predominate. These are the Downy, Hairy, and Red-bellied Woodpeckers, and the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. All are patterned in black and white, with at least one red accent, though only males show red among the Downys and Hairys.
It's the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker I'm interested in at the moment. This has to be one of the most strikingly named birds going. It's a mouthful, and the conjunction of an epithet for cowardice with an alliterative compound of two words with negative connotations invites ridicule. This name, or some preposterous parody, is often used in lampoons of bird watchers and the complex taxonomies they must employ. On this occasion, I was privileged to see an adult male literalizing the name; sucking the sap that ran from a row of holes, (drilled earlier), in a Norway Maple on the edge of the Ramble. The flow was profuse, and likely to summon a side dish of insects to delight his bushy tongue. Yum.
The yellow belly, however, was not in evidence. That's because one rarely sees the underside of this bird. The name, as with most North American birds, goes back to colonial times, and naturalists with a bird in hand, i.e. a dead specimen. They often picked out distinguishing features that are rarely visible to observers in the field. It's the same with the Red-bellied Woodpecker: you'll thrill to it's bright red nape, but search in vain for other ruddy spots.
Accuracy aside, names are a necessity. As such, they are imposed upon us, and we always, to some degree, resent them. The New Age community displays a nostalgia for the Traditional practice of earning one’s true name in the course of life, the birth name being merely provisional, but you may name yourself in vain; none will satisfy.
Names are a requirement of a Fallen Creation. To share the Name of God is our innate desire, and to forget our own. In moments of ecstasy we receive a model of this state, and lose ourselves; to love, to music, drugs, or food...birds, even. Whatever deep involvement it may be, it draws us in, compelling all attention, obliterating time, until we hear again, as it were, a voice that speaks our name, returning us to the World. On the way back, we feel obliged to mark where we have been, leaving behind a trail of names, that winds its way through a maze of namelessness.
That is to say, when first confronted with a scene, like the Park, we find an indiscriminate field of ignorance, which we proceed to parse. Each name applied takes us a step along the trail, and throws what we don’t know into sharper relief. If we could learn the names of everything, would it dispel the mystery of being, or teach us the one Name that would contain them all?
I do not know, but I appreciate all the help I can get, not least from a bird that teaches its own name.