Inside, that’s where I store these moments, accumulated in a cabinet of noticings and happenings, brought out when I need them most, to illuminate. I must go into the world to find new things. They are always there. Always.~ Dara McAnulty ~ Faced with devastating news from every direction, I have been reading an incandescent book. […]
I fell down a 300 million-year-old rabbit hole recently, and had such a good time there I’m now bringing you with me. I was looking for something else and came across my photographs from a visit to Joggins Fossil Cliffs in Nova Scotia. The Canadian Maritime provinces were the first places George and I visited
The drama of deep time: Joggins Fossil Cliffs Read More »
On a clear blue and gold fall day in seventh grade, I stood on the shore of the Hudson River. I was with a group of classmates, contemplating the oyster shell fragments at our feet. That was the year we learned about our town, Croton-on-Hudson, in southern New York. The instructor for the day told
…Be joyful Though you have considered all the facts. ~ Wendell Berry ~ Given the losses, both personal and communal, of 2020, and the fact that we were in pre-vaccination pandemic, I knew from the beginning that this year would be a quiet time of recovery. It was also, though I didn’t guess it then,
Songlines 2021: a year of quiet wonder Read More »
The Confederacy of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca nations in what is now upstate New York has been meeting for 1,000 years. United by a common goal to live in harmony, each meeting, large and small, is opened with the beautiful and incantatory Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address. This enfolds each gathering in a culture of
The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address Read More »
Blue is light seen through a veil.~ Henry David Thoreau ~ I have tens of thousands of photos in my files, the vast majority flowers. They are often of the same flowers, taken in different years and at different places. So, the numbers don’t reflect the number of species. Even so, of all those thousands,
The mystery of blue flowers Read More »
It is such a foundational act, to give name to. But not all naming is good naming. Naming can be an appropriative act of conquest and overwriting.~ Robert Macfarlane ~ Before Carl Linnaeus, if a European botanist wanted to specify the plant we know as a tomato, he would write, in Latin: Solanum caule inerme
A rose by any other name is complicated Read More »
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention…~ Mary Oliver, The Summer Day ~ Attention is the gateway to love and awe. There is no wonder without it. It can be an attending that stops us in our tracks or the kind we carefully make time for and nurture.
Attention is reverence: celebrating the Season of Creation Read More »
When I started my landscape design business in the 1980s, the staff at plant nurseries nicknamed me ‘the weed lady’. I kept asking for plants that most people were removing. As much as I could, I wanted to plant the grasses and wildflowers, trees and shrubs native to the glacial moraine known as Long Island,
One early May day, I was walking with a friend in a preserve near her home. I had discovered the trail the day before and was so delighted with the abundance of wildflowers I wanted to share them with her. She was also delighted. And then, as we finished the trail, said, “I’m so glad