Tag Archives: nature

Fantasia on Color Theory

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digitally doctored acrylic on canvas painting

Color Infusions

Velour of the lawn is deep, deep green,

sun breaking sideways grey

or silvery-white, like the moon of night

pulled over the edge of day–

The mirroring water Caribbean blue

on the patio table and chair

to reflect the sky or the azure eye

of a hoverer in the air–

So winter to spring is giving ground

by violet margins and rose,

to erase from sight the black and white

of the season’s reticent clothes.digitally doctored acrylic on canvas painting

Flying Colors

On the horizon I spotted a kite

That swung in the wind to the left and the right

And splashed all its colors, exuberant paint

To swirl in the sky with a dip and a feint

Toward the grass, toward the sun, to a hill, to a tree,

A brilliant kaleidoscope there just for me

And the child whose hand guided the string of the kite

As it painted our world with new colors and light

Lily of the Valley

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photoOne of the rituals of fending off the dregs of winter’s chill is to linger in the hothouses and aisles of flower shops and every place that stocks us up with ideas and plants as we rejuvenate the landscape for the year. A splash of heated color draws the eye; the flash and gleam of leaves caught in each little draft pulls us in, from some pale-margined broad-leafed plant off to some lacy other. The faint sound of their fluttering evokes both sylvan breeze and birdsong and reminds us, beyond those, of springs and fountains drawn to life as winter thaws.

Perhaps the most evocative and pleasing sense that spring and summer lie in wait somewhere not far at all: perfume–the heady redolence that wafts from hyacinths and jasmine blooms, from sweet Viola odorata, from each little honeyed heart that says that life will soon return to earth. One of my favorites for sheer intensity and unstained loveliness of scent is Lily of the Valley–those clean, brilliant bells that cloister in the moss and keep their meditative calm a little secret ’til I’m close enough to catch their drift and see their whiteness glinting in the green. It may be, too, that breathing that intensity of air when these petite white satin blooms nod in the breeze calls up an atavistic searching in my blood. I start to hear that most beloved of Swedish songs (forgive me, my Norwegian forebears–but we were still ‘run’ by our cousins the Swedes until we parted ways in the early 20th century) resonating somewhere in the distance of earth’s slow axial turn, tolling in a sweetly sorrowful voice the tale of the grieving Lily King. Spring is like that–pierced with the lingering poignancy of winter’s deadly grip, but with an insistent, gorgeous urge to let earth be reborn; no matter the loss, the sorrow and the bygone things, to carry forward with what perfumed sweetness it can find.

The Romantic Nationalism that has periodically gripped the music world and produced such pleasures as David Wikander’s exquisite melody for poet Gustav Fröding’s Kung Liljekonvalje is that way too: longing for the old, but wanting something new raised up in it, like the rebirth that comes with spring. Sorrow and joy can mingle then, glowing with possibility and pain, with hesitation and with hope.

The text is sorrowful but evocative, I think, of the intensely bittersweet beauty of the Lily of the Valley; it isn’t hard to see how this must have captured the dark imaginings of many a Northerner in a Romantic frame of mind. I’ve included a translation of my own, meant not as a literal one but rather an attempt to understand something more of the character of the tale and perhaps, indeed, how it grew out of dreaming over the bowing bells of a tiny blooming thing, searching in its ice-white blossoms for promises of better and brighter things.

Kung Liljekonvalje                                  King Lily of the Valley

Kung Liljekonvalje av dungen                  King Lily-of-the-Valley’s in the green-wood,
Kung Liljekonvalje är vit som snö             King Lily-of-the-Valley, who is white as snow,
Nu sörjer unga kungen                            The young king now mourning his maiden,
Prinsessan liljekonvalje mö                      Princess Lily-of-the-Valley, in woe

Kung liljekonvalje han sänker                  King Lily-of-the-Valley now lowers                  
Sitt sorgsna huvud så tungt och vekt      His heavy head so burdened with grief
Och silverhjälmen blanker                       And on his silver helm gleams the sunset,
I sommerskymningen blekt                      Pale dusk that can bring no relief

Kring bårens spindelvävar                       Round her cold bier the cobwebs are woven,
Från rökelsekaren med blomsterstoft       And hang from censers flow’r-filled & spent,
En virak sakta svävar                               Their frankincense drifting down slowly,
All skogen är full av doft                          The forest all filled with the scent

Från björkens gungande krona                From birches’ swaying crowns to their bases,
Från vindens vaggande gröna hus          From winds that rock the green-wood’s home
Små sorgevisor tona                                Small tunes, songs of sadness and mourning
All skogen är uppfylld av sus                   Fill all of the woods as they roam

Det susar ett bud genom dälden             And rustle as wind through the glen; find
Om kungssorg bland viskande blad       The King all cloaked in whispering leaves
I skogens vida välden                              As full sorrow falls on the wood-world,
Från liljekonvaljernas huvudstad             The whole of the Valley still grieves . . .P&I drawing

Tulipomania Revisited

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P&IHaving grown up in western Washington, where the largest bulb growers in the US have their fields, and spending my youth in the ‘Daffodil Valley’ where I attended school with tulip and daffodil farmers’ kids–and our town celebrated an annual Daffodil Parade with daff-covered floats and yellow-gowned princesses–I might be excused for having a penchant for bulb flowers, Tulipomania of my own sort. With a climate fairly similar to their old home’s in the Netherlands, it’s no surprise that the van Lierops and others of my classmates’ ancestors found the rich volcanic soil and temperate weather of the Pacific Northwest very welcoming as an environment for restarting their bulb-growing life stateside. The Skagit Valley, set in between where I spent the majority of my growing-up and the place where I did my grad-school growing, is one of the most fertile and spectacular places to go tulip-viewing in peak season outside of the fabled Keukenhof gardens.

All the more reason that it shouldn’t shock you that I have a teeny little meltdown of adoration when the Valentine’s Day displays of tulips appear in all of the shops. Here in Texas, however, and particularly with what I’m learning is typically a pair of widely separated and very short viable growing seasons, and only with a lot of attentive care, I’m skeptical that a large investment in tulip bulbs would be the smartest way to spend my gardening money. I think I shall devote more of my time, dollars and attentions to water control systems and hardy prairie and semi-desert plants hereabouts. But I’ll never stop enjoying tulips when and where I can. Knowing my eternally optimistic streak, I won’t say absolutely that there won’t be tulips in this transplanted Texan’s garden anyway.P&IAs you can see from today’s set of pen and ink drawings, it’s not only the brilliant colors and satiny textures of tulips that appeal to me, but also their form, and the graceful graphic beauty they lend to their environs. The first drawing above was made for the cover of the service programs for my sister’s wedding, when she very thoughtfully married a man whose parents ran a wonderful florist shop and supplied their Spring nuptials with a gorgeous rainbow of bright pastel tulips that burst with brilliance for the occasion and for many long days after. Thankfully, there was and is ever so much more to her man-of-choice and his family, but the tulips sure didn’t hurt! The second image came from a set of sketches drawn for a series of greeting cards meant to raise funds for a church group, and since I knew that the cards were very often sent as get-well wishes, condolences, congratulatory notes and other quite personal greetings, it seemed to me that there were few images that could supply the right note of kindness, cheer and gracious care than a bunch of tulips.

All of this is a rather roundabout way of saying that, though I did not (as yet) plant tulip bulbs, that vision in yesterday’s errand-running expedition all over town of all the shops being inundated with the life and joy of tulips got me salivating for garden goodness, so I wandered out to our back-forty (.04?) and, basking in another round of wildly inappropriate-for-February warmth, planted a bunch of seeds. What will become of them, I cannot tell, but I’ll keep y’all posted. Meanwhile, I am happy at just having stuck my fingers in the dirt with some positive purpose for a little bit and planted my little measure of hope.P&II’ve a fondness for so many growing and blooming things, but no particular mastery of helping them along that path, so I will fumble along with what I can. In the next few days I’ll tackle the spring grooming of some of the other parts of the garden, including the bed of irises I transplanted when I found them last year under the paving stones so nicely placed by our house’s previous owner and was astonished to see that they had refused to die there. Whether they can thrive enough to bloom after however long they were interred, I have yet to see, but they are already leafing out in their new digs happily, and if they don’t drown in one of our brief outbursts of heavy-duty rain before I can redirect the brunt of it off of them, they will at least provide their small oasis of green glory to the garden until the Texas sun beats them back into the hard clay ground they wrestled so innocently to escape. Not to mention that my lack of Master Gardener status means lots of things must fend for themselves bravely. That’s just the way things go here: plants must be as tough as they are attractive to get the green-thumbs-up from Mother Nature de Tejas. Or me.

Dream a Little Dream . . . But How to Choose?

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photo-collage + textI never tire of fantasizing and imagining my ideal. But some days it’s really hard to decide what would be better. To be slung sidelong over a rocking chair in the wash of yellow afternoon, watching the lift and ruffle of wisteria where it is teased by currents chasing around me on the old screen porch, drinking Blackberry Acid and reading Evelyn Waugh while the sound of Gershwin laughs its way out the door to shake the sleepy cat into a semblance of watchfulness? Or perhaps I should the rather be curled in a high-backed leather wing chair with Zola, maybe Garcia Marquez, a faint dark stain of Verdi’s Requiem insinuating its way slowly through my brain, the lamp turned barely high enough to read so that it doesn’t fade the firelight or those lights fourteen stories down where the city shimmers below, and with the scent of Boeuf Bourguignon drifting into the paneled room from where it’s simmering down the hall?photo-collage

Yes, I say, sometimes it’s hard, so hard to choose which I should prefer. Would it be finer to be wandering up a quiet path in checkered green light, perfumed with the heady incense of cedar and douglas fir, emerging from their shadows into meadows lapping with avalanche lilies and paintbrush and gentians at my feet as I climb up higher, drowsy with the sun and hypnotized by the river crashing away, just out of sight, to my right, and stopping at last to rest on the stony shore of a glassy lake and slake my thirst, assuage my hunger, with a crisp sweet apple and some salty well-aged cheese? Or should I better like to stride out through wildly waving waist-high grass onto the dunes just as the lowering sky with its mass of high black clouds starts spitting a sand-fine mist of icy rain, but bundled so warmly to the eyes that only my cheekbones feel the chill, and watching the storm blow up a wave so high it seems to engulf the top of the sky before it shatters to smithereens on the bouldered bulkhead there–and just as that cloudbank starts to split to disgorge its mighty gout of rain, tearing up the beach to the safety of the white-painted cottage, where I peel off the layers of storm-proofing down to my jeans, drag the little table to the window to watch the show, cracking the Dungeness crab that I bought at the shop today, to drown it in butter while watching the shoreline also drown, and eat crab sweetness messily to the tune of pelting rain and smashing sea?photo

I suppose if all else fails I could simply ask my butler to make the selection, you see. No, this one I know: I’d rather ask my love, since whichever it is, it’ll be that much better a dream if he will only share it with me.

The Googly-eyed Romantic Point of View

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Admit it, you start to slip into a coma the instant someone else starts spewing the horrifically saccharine details of their great love story. I do too; it just doesn’t stop me from being the mushy bore myself the moment I see a hairline of an opening. Honestly, don’t we all do it? There’s nothing much any of us are more inclined to brag about than our happiness, and nothing much that gives us greater happiness than fancying ours the Greatest Love Story in History.

You can be forgiven if you didn’t know yet that that title was already mine.

photoParticularly since I’m quite certain my love story doesn’t conform quite perfectly to your–or anybody else’s–idea of the ideal romance. We’re not much, around this household, on many constant and overt expressions of commercially endorsed couplehood: bouquets of roses, spontaneous gifts of expensive jewelry and sports cars, and going out to chateaux with extravagant four-star restaurants to toast each other over mortgage-worthy vintages are just not high on the list of things we often do. On the other hand, I am in the company of someone still teenager-enough to really like holding hands, hugging like there’s no tomorrow, and blurting out “I love you” pretty much every few minutes or so, even if we happen to be sitting right next to each other. He also reads to me, cuts my hair, laughs at my pitiful jests, cooks for me when there’s time, takes me on meandering road trips or spectacular world travels when the opportunity arises, covers my eyes when the really gruesome surprise is coming up in a scary movie he’s seen before so I won’t have to be tranquilized later, and sings me ridiculous made-up songs in the car.

Thing is, being soggy Romantics isn’t just about the stuff or the standards. It’s about finding pleasure not only in those storybook moments of ecstatic bliss but especially in the ongoing and real kindnesses and shared tasks that fill up the everyday, because the everyday is such an insurmountable percentage of our lives, singly and together.

So there’s no question that one of the things I find most romantic in my partner is that he does have an appreciation for all kinds of beauty and learning and amusement and work, from nature’s resources to friends and family, from rambling around a run-down part of town to finding starlight in the arts that we share as both as passion and as vocation. It’s reassuring, after all, that there’s not some impossible measure of queenly perfection I myself am expected to meet but that he sees good in the ordinary me and values it as though it were something romantic.

All the same, it doesn’t hurt that he’s fed me filets, tirelessly supported my “Expensive Hobby” career of being an artist/writer, and he’s taken me to castles and cottages, forests and mountains, cities of great sophistication and incredible vividness and hidden hamlets with more shaggy livestock than human population, and to seas both of the stormy north and those surrounding tropical islands. It is, truthfully, pretty romantic to stand at the shore of the ocean with the best person in you whole life right by your side.

photo + textThe most striking fact of our coming together as such a love-sodden twosome is that we were both quite content in our single lives and expected to live that way perpetually. I’m convinced that because we both liked who we were and how we lived our lives, had surrounded ourselves with a constellation of astonishing friends and loved ones, and had endless interesting things to do with our time and attentions, it was easier in reality to fall in love than if we’d been avidly hunting for something either of us felt too keenly that we lacked. And that is for me the romance in any part of life: that we don’t necessarily require it to make us whole or contented or excited or whatever-it-is; it’s a genuine, unexpected, unearned treasure. A gift, a bonus. The prize.photo

Tiger in the Tall Grass

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We have a watch-cat. Our relationship with Him is very simple, so simple in fact that I cannot say for sure whether He is actually male. Clearly we do not “own” him; cats are seldom owned but rather ‘run operations’ as it is, but in this instance we are talking about a cat whose relationship, if any, is with the people living about four houses down from us. But he patrols the neighborhood, and seems to take particular care checking the perimeter of our place, both house and property, daily, so he is ours in that way–or we, his. In any event, he has no name here other than Watch-Cat, because being a businesslike and vigilant gentleman he seems to require no other, and we have both grown quite attached to him.

My husband isn’t even a so-called cat person, since he has allergies to those of the feline persuasion, which makes this arrangement ideal for him, and seemingly so as well for Watch-Cat, because on those rare occasions when we see him making his appointed rounds while we’re outside rather than observing from a window, he prefers to halt in his path or step aside discreetly while we pass and then continue unperturbed on his way. He’s a compact cat, appearing younger than I think he is because he’s fine-boned and small and sleek, but has such admirable equanimity and steadiness of purpose that I cannot imagine but that he’s fully mature.

photoWatch-Cat has a fine domain here, as we live on a wonderfully peaceable road with no through traffic and our modest property is bordered, however closely, by the fenced gardens of very kind, if nearly invisible, neighbors at either side (all of them also rather fond of small creatures) and by an excellent small leafy ravine with a sometime-stream that bears both the city’s storm drain access and the more meandering waters of ordinary rain runoff. Additionally, the greenbelt there has an outstanding mini-forest of oak and soapberry and elm, some lacy variety of Mahonia that is almost visually impenetrable by virtue of its large-numbered community, and enough other friendly brush that the birds, possums, raccoons, rabbits, foxes (so I’m told), armadillos and the elusive-but-heard bobcat all find it exceptionally homey and inviting. There is plenty to keep Watch-Cat’s vigilant attentions at any given time.photo

[Disclaimer: This armadillo does not live in our ravine, but nearby, so I’m pretty sure he has cousins in our ravine.]

And while he apparently eschews suddenness or unpredictability, he is in fact a fine guardian for our place. I have observed his managing with a certain sang-froid a rather noisily growling stare-down from a much larger and more imposing stranger-cat that dared to come hulking uninvited into our territory. I’ve seen Watch-Cat zoom up a tree after a piggish squirrel nearly the cat’s size and tell it in no uncertain terms that it was not welcome to be quite so impertinent. My favorite indicator of his dominance over the wilds of his territory was when we had afternoon guests one day, and as we sat in the front room visiting I looked out the window next to us to see Watch-Cat sauntering by with a small dark snake in his jaws. The snake hung limply on either side, looking remarkably like a very impressive bandito mustache on the handsome little black and white cat, and it seemed to me a perfect representation in that way of his insouciant approach to running his universe here.

That said, I think it’s fair to guess that Watch-Cat has an admirably confident sense of his authority and value in the world, one indeed from which we could all take a lesson. I’m quite certain that if he happens to catch his reflection as he passes by our windows or if he should pause at the ravine’s tiny stream, what he sees looking back at him is a magnificent and unconquerable beast, the ruler of his marvelous territory (where, luckily for us, he allows us to live as well), and the beneficent master of all good things. Who are we to argue with that?

photo

Who's the Kingliest One of All?

I curtsey now to our little king of the suburban jungle, because it is Thanksgiving Day, when I am particularly aware of how many people–and creatures–do their part to keep us safe and sheltered and loved and well attended in every way. Including you!