Linkbait Sunday, Mar 15 2015 

gardening , acairfearann 20:12

Following on from an excellent presentation at our Land Trust’s annual meeting* by Dr. Kimberly Stoner from the Ct Ag. experiment station on native bees. I can’t wait for our crocus border! It always attracts the bees and now I know why. (early food source for overwintering bumble bee queens amongst others…and there are many different bumble bee species)

One of the best places for information:

http://www.xerces.org/

Take particular note of the publications menu, a lot of information in it.

*In the interest of full disclosure, I am the Land Conservation Commission Chair on the board for the land trust.

 

It’s raining Saturday, Mar 14 2015 

gardening acairfearann 20:56

And somewhere beneath all those feet of snow, those spring bulbs must be growing.

Gardening is a lot of patience, a lot of hope, for an uncertain reward. In some ways, it is the most honest of many modern individual pursuits. It is an uncertain balance between enjoying the immediate moment: the sunrise, the day lily; and the enjoyment of the potential future: the young tree, the gradual change of the seasons. It is also the past. The trees that have grown and died, the lawns that have risen and fallen.

I am currently reading a rather fun book on the history of tulips (and Tulipmania of course). It is interesting to consider the connection between an Ottoman emir some five hundred years ago, a Dutch merchant, and a gardener today. All hunting that perfect flower and that perfect land. That is a very human connection despite the very different people, very different times, and very different worlds.

 

Snowdrift Thursday, Mar 12 2015 

Modern Photos acairfearann 21:16

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For all the complaining, it has been lovely. There is still a lot out there, but not quite this crisp and clean now. Spring is coming hard and fast I think.

 

Fragments Tuesday, Mar 10 2015 

Uncategorized acairfearann 14:47

Persephone
With dead gold
You gilded my tomb.
But I,
I escaped to the heedless earth
Where the spears
Of Spring’s eternal wealth
Pierce my breast
Embracing the soft flesh
Of my body’s flower
 

 

Errrr Friday, Mar 6 2015 

Uncategorized , acairfearann 20:33

As part of one of my jobs, I have the entertaining duty to try to sell birdhouses. I have been diligently telling people that early March is the ideal time to put up said birdhouses.  It is, after all, that time of the year for a number of the birds that favor birdhouses: the chickadees have been pairing off, as have the woodpeckers. There are a remarkable number of blue birds hanging about, though no swallows yet.  (A good thing, since swallows need flying insects and are long-distance migrants; bluebirds however can overwinter as far north as Pennsylvania and sometimes even southern Connecticut).

However…..there is a bit of a problem with actually putting a house Up this year. Since most houses are best mounted on poles, one needs to put the pole in the ground.  This is fine if the pole is already in the ground.  But if it isn’t….well, I am sure this snow will melt someday… I just hope none of my customers remember what I said in December.  It is true most years!

It is remarkable though, how loud the woods get at this time of the year. All of the woodpeckers are debating their trees, the smaller birds are very active, the crows are beginning to move about more though they are not yet paired off again.  On a warm day, the woods are alive even if they don’t look it.

 

 

 

Shadows Wednesday, Mar 4 2015 

gardening and Modern Photos acairfearann 21:51

027

I do like our pergola!

 

A short walk Monday, Mar 2 2015 

Landscapes and Modern Photos , acairfearann 21:09

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Please note the buried chair….

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I should Not be eye to eye with top crossbar of the pergola….

036

That fence is 4 plus feet tall….

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Hey! I found the driveway!!

 

March Sunday, Mar 1 2015 

Esperanza acairfearann 18:26

and snow…

But I was also thinking the other day about music in this house. There is a remarkable variety: from shape-note hymnals, to Congregational, to Lutheran, to Anglican. Then there is the classical piano pieces appropriate for a young lady in the late 1800’s: a heavy emphasis on Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Schumann. Then there is a whole Raft of other classical pieces from Chopin to Sibelieus, Rachmaninoff to Shostakovitch. Then the organ music, and the clarinet, and… Then the folk music: from the New England folk music revival of the 1960’s to the early Fireside Book of Songs which first really re-popularized so many pieces, then there is an odd collection of pop music from the first pop era….then there is….

And that, I should hasten to add is the Just the Sheet music!

I will learn to play the piano 🙂

025

 

Sun Angles Friday, Feb 27 2015 

Uncategorized acairfearann 21:06

Unlike the birds, modern humans don’t tend to pay too much attention to the sun. Or the angle of the sun. Neolithic humans did, but we like to think that….well anyway.

However, there was general consensus at the dinner table that indeed we do notice the sun angle.  For southern New England, the sun angle is suggesting that (while still winter) spring should be coming. The snow should be soggy, the air should have some moisture in it.  There certainly should not be snow clinging to tree branches, burying southern facing roofs, and still crisp, sharp, and slippery.

It is jarring to have spring sun and a winter landscape. Some bit of our old brain still works!

 

Tick-Tock Wednesday, Feb 25 2015 

Esperanza acairfearann 16:26

I was contemplating a recently repaired clock today, quietly purring away, and thinking how artificial digital clocks are. If one considers them in culture, they tend to represent implacable countdowns of some mechanical/technological catastrophe. Always in either glaring red or green. They simply don’t lend themselves to ornamentation, names, or anything else.

But mechanical clocks have hands and faces, they are grandfathers or slaves, they strike and speak, they are cats, cuckoos, and skeletons. They run for a day, a week, a year.

Can you imagine Cinderella’s midnight hour being indicated by a digital clock? Or Hoffman’s owl atop one in Tales of the Nutcracker? Dali’s clocks as digital?

Maybe in a thousand years….or maybe not. The steady beat of a mechanical clock, tick-tock, has far more connection to the beat of the human heart than a silent set of numbers.

 

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