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
I am a star that has grown out of the earth. Created from the gifts of my celestial sisters and the rich ground at my roots. I hover above the soil I grow from, luminous in constellations of white and rare, palest yellow in quiet, dappled forests. A vibrant sea of purple, royal in exuberant,
A wild iris at the Council of All Beings Read More »
Vision is an art, and nature an old master painter teaching us how to see the underlying reality of things to be — before they actually are.~ Monica Gagliano ~ In 1977, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City had a major exhibit of Paul Cezanne’s paintings. On my first visit, I took
Cezanne, shamans, and the intelligence of plants Read More »
The first year I saw nothing but handsome corrugated leaves with irregular brown markings. They reminded me of the trout lilies in my native northeast forests, so I looked forward to the flowers. But they never came. Though the leaves looked like the type that would accompany flowers, forests have lots of plants that leaf but don’t bloom, so I wondered if that was the case. Or was it an off-year for that plant? Were they biennials, which bloom every other year? Or had I missed them?
Stalking the elusive adder’s tongue Read More »
When my partner, George, died in October 2020, one of the things I dreaded was the coming rainy season. After my brother’s death that June, I was consoled by the beautiful blue and yellow days. By the long soft evenings, the silken roses in overflowing gardens. In October, I feared I had only darkness and
Rain: beauty and magic Read More »
After reading my last essay, A Year of Love and Death, on the losses of 2020, both personal and worldwide, my brother-in-law sent me a poem by John O’Donohue called For Grief. My partner George’s Irishness was a wild and wonderful force in his life. In the years before his death, he explored Celtic spirituality with
here is the deepest secret nobody knows(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life…) and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart~ E.E. Cummings ~ In mid-October, I was sitting at the deathbed of my beloved, thinking about love.
Songlines 2020: a year of love and death Read More »