Too Much Too Fast

Forsythia branches

“March brings too much too fast.”
— Hazel Heckman, Island Year

Yes, I am finding that March is bringing too much too fast.  I am feeling behind, and as much as I’d love to sit down and paint some flowers, I can’t find the time.  Here is a small sample of what’s bursting into bloom right now.  I took all of these photos this morning in my neighborhood.

Camellias

Daffodil

Hyacinth

Cherry blossoms

Forsythia

Grape hyacinth

 

The Nature of Summer

Keeping cool

“The summer came and went quickly, which is the nature of summer for people who are not children . . .”
— Jim Harrison, Brown Dog

I don’t mind the passing of summer because autumn, which follows on its heels, is my favorite season of the year.  I love sweater weather.

August Days

“Nature has, for the most part, lost her delicate tints in August. . . . The spirit of Nature has grown bold and aggressive; it is rank and coarse; she flaunts her weeds in our faces.”
— John Burroughs, “August Days”

Dried ferns

“August days are for the most part tranquil days; the fret and hurry of the season are over.  We are on the threshold of autumn.  Nature dreams and meditates; her veins no longer thrill with the eager, frenzied sap; she ripens and hardens her growths; she concentrates; she begins to make ready for winter.”
— John Burroughs, “Autumn Days”

We’ve had a drier-than-normal summer so far, so things are definitely weedy and seedy around here.  Here are some images from a recent walk about my neighborhood:

Dried fern

Bindweed

Is this yarrow?

Seed heads

Rose hips

Watercolor sketch of rose hips

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Removal of Habits, Noticing Ordinary Miracles

Appreciating the taste of summer in a Hermiston watermelon

“The habits of living day to day dull the senses — the ritual of getting up each morning, brushing your teeth, commuting to work, desk tasks, coming home, preparing for another day and heading to bed — so that I often cannot see the small wonders of the everyday world (grass growing, a cloud fleeting by in the shape of a bra, the child across the street learning to ride her bike; all ordinary miracles).  It is only when I am removed from habit that I can see a work of art that reveals a new mind’s vision, or when I am traveling in a foreign place, or when I fall in love.  And this seems a definition of love: the removal of habit, the ordinary world made foreign and wonderfully strange, life as a great visionary work of art.”
— Brian Bouldrey, Honorable Bandit: A Walk Across Corsica

I am spending my July and August months at home — no summer vacations for me.  But I like the message of today’s quote — that I can bring a vacation attitude to my daily life at home, step out of mindless habits, and look with beginner’s eyes at the ordinary things in my day.  And so I will savor the soft red flesh of this Hermiston (Oregon) watermelon, one of the miracles of this summer.  A small wonder, but precious because it is a seasonal gift in my everyday world.  It’s these small pauses of appreciation that can make an artful life.

“Commonplaces never become tiresome.  It is we who become tired when we cease to be curious and appreciative. . . . [We] find that it is not a new scene which is needed, but a new viewpoint.”

— Norman Rockwell, from Norman Rockwell: Pictures from the American People by Maureen Hennessey and Anne Knutson

 

Blackberries in August

Blackberries in August

August
by Mary Oliver from New and Selected Poems

When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the branches
nobody owns, I spend

all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking

of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body

accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among

the black bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue.

Searching for a Color Wheel in August

Blue hydrangea petals

I set out on a recent neighborhood walk to photograph a color wheel in the hues of a Seattle summer day.

Green acorns amidst green oak leaves

Yellow — floral suns in a blue sky

Orange signals summer road construction projects

Red flowers in a hanging basket in the shade of a porch

Violet clematis

And back to blue — the cloudless skies of a midsummer day

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Daisy as Crone

“But an August daisy is a sorry affair; it is little more than an empty, or partly empty seed-vessel.”
— John Burroughs, from “August Days,”  The Writings of John Burroughs, XI, Far and Near

Daisies in August

“In the Northern States the daisy is in her girlhood and maidenhood in June, she becomes very matronly in July, — fat, faded, prosaic, — and by or before August she is practically defunct.  I recall no flower whose career is more typical of the life . . .  How positively girlish . . .  is the daisy during the first few days of its blooming, while its snow-white rays yet stand straight up and shield its tender centre somewhat as a hood shields a girl’s face!  Presently it becomes a perfect disk and bares its face to the sun; this is the stage of its young womanhood.  Then its yellow centre — its body — begins to swell and become gross, the rays slowly turn brown, and finally wither up and drop. It is a flower no longer . . .”
— John Burroughs, from “August Days,”  The Writings of John Burroughs, XI, Far and Near

Well, isn’t this a dire look at growing old!!  Gross and withered.  Oh well.  I hope to retain just a bit of humor about the natural process of ageing.  I like this description by Margaret Drabble in The Pattern in the Carpet:  A Personal History with Jigsaws:  “A waistless stoutness lay in wait for all of us.”

Line-Dried Laundry: Folded Sunshine

Line-drying the laundry

Judith Kitchen, in Half in Shade: Family, Photography, and Fate, described line-dried laundry as “folded sunshine.”  Isn’t that an apt metaphor!  My Dad still does his weekly Monday laundry the old-fashioned way.  He uses the old wringer Maytag in the dank basement.  Then hangs his wash out on a line to dry in the summer sun and breeze.  Folded sunshine indeed!

Maytag in the basement

My dad hanging out the clothes

Wooden clothespins in an old plastic ice-cream bucket

This is the way we wash our clothes . . .

Looking through the kitchen window at the wash

We didn’t call it “laundry” back in the day; we called it “the wash.”  The following poem could have been written by a ghostly twin, so true are the images to my memories of wash days:

The Wash
by Sarah Getty

A round white troll with a black, greasy
heart shuddered and hummed “Diogenes,
Diogenes,” while it sloshed the wash.
It stayed in the basement, a cave-dank
place I could only like on Mondays,
helping mother.  My job was stirring
the rinse.  The troll hummed.  Its wringer stuck
out each piece of laundry like a tongue–

socks, aprons, Daddy’s shirts, my brother’s
funny (I see London) underpants.
The whole family came past, mashed flat
as Bugs Bunny pancaked by a train.
They flopped into the rinse tub and learned
to swim, relaxing, almost arms and legs
again. I helped the transformation
with a stick we picked up one summer

at the lake.  Wave-peeled, worn to gray, inch
thick, it was a first rate stirring stick.
Apprenticed on my stool, I sang a rhyme
of Simple Simon gone afishing
and poked the clothes around the cauldron
and around.  The wringer was risky.
Touch it with just your fingertip,
it would pull you in and spit you out

flat as a dishrag.  It grabbed Mother
once–rolled her arm right to the elbow.
But she kept her head, flipped the lever
to reverse, and got her arm back, pretty
and round as new.  This was a story
from Before.  Still, I seemed to see it–
my mother brave as a movie star,
the flattened arm pumping up again,

like Popeye’s.  I fished out the rinsing
swimmers, one by one.  Mother fed them
back to the wringer and they flopped, flat,
into baskets.  Then the machine peed
right on the floor; the foamy water
curled around the drain and gurgled down.
Mother, under the slanting basement
doors, where it was darkest, reached up that

miraculous arm and raised the lid.
Sunlight fell down the stairs, shouting
“This way out!”  There was the day, an Easter
egg cut-out of grass and trees and sky.
Mother lugged the baskets up.  Too short
to reach the clothesline, I would slide down
the bulkhead or sit and drum my heels
to aggravate the troll (Who’s that trit-

trotting…) and watch.  Thus I learned the rules
of hanging clothes: Shirts went upside down,
pinned at the placket and seams.  Sheets hung
like hammocks; socks were a toe-bitten
row.  Underpants, indecently mixed,
flapped chainwise, cheek to cheek.  Mother
took hold of the clothespole like a knight
couching his lance and propped the sagging

line up high, to catch the wind.  We all
were airborne then, sleeves puffed out round
as sausages, bottoms billowing,
legs in arabesque.  Our heaviness
was scattered into air, our secrets
bleached back to white.  Mother stood easing
her back and smiled, queen of the backyard
and all that flapping crowd.  For a week

now, each day, we’d put on this jubilee,
walk inside it, wash with it, and sleep
in its sweetness.  At night, best of all,
I’d see with closed eyes the sheets aloft,
pajamas dancing, pillow cases
shaking out white signals in the sun,
and my mother with the basket, bent
and then rising, stretching up her arms.

 

Of Thee I Sing

The kitchen window at my Dad’s house

Embroidery by my sister Margaret

Happy Fourth of July!  This is my fifth Fourth of July post, and it’s fun to look back on my past posts to see which thoughts and images I chose to celebrate this quintessential summer holiday.  Here are links to my old posts:  2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012.  Enjoy!

 

 

A Late Summer Walk in Seattle’s Washington Park Arboretum

Giant tree in the morning light

Sometimes I crave a walk amidst tall trees, and I’m fortunate that Seattle’s Washington Park Arboretum is not too far from my home.  The giant trees give long shadows, and it’s cool there even on warm sunny days.  Here are some photos from my latest visit:

Giant tree along the path of the Arboretum

Mottled leaves of English oak

Spiderweb stretched between trees

Sunlight edges the vines growing up this tree.

Nature’s lace — insect-eaten leaves

Watercolor sketch of English oak leaves and acorns