Into The Woods Again

I took a quick walk in Wolsfeld Woods yesterday morning after picking up annual flower plants at a nearby greenhouse. At first I thought that it would be a photo-free walk because I didn’t bring my camera along. Stopping to walk in the woods was a last minute decision as I drove by on my way home.

But I still had my phone camera. And the beauty of the woods sang to me. So…here there I was

Into the Woods Again

making photographs.

I took a side path that I don’t often take and it led me to a beautiful glade filled with ferns growing under the shade of tall sugar maple trees. It was so peaceful and beautiful I could have stayed there all day.

The jack-in-the-pulpits were in bloom all around me on this trail. Though close-ups with a phone camera are challenging for me to hold steady enough, I made a few images that I like.

I have a single jack-in-the-pulpit flower growing in a flower bed in front of our house. Every year I think that perhaps it won’t return this year. And every year I am surprised again when it makes a late appearance. I have been looking for it for a couple of weeks and yesterday I saw that it had finally begun to pop up. It is not nearly as far along as the ones in Wolsfeld Woods, but it looks like it will bloom again this year.

For the Bees, Birds, and Butterflies

Yesterday afternoon I planted annual flowers in the flower beds in front of our house. I keep thinking about getting some perennials those spaces but can’t figure out what would stay small enough to thrive there. So I plant a few smaller annuals that grow well there and attract pollinators.

One or Two Things

Don’t bother me.

I’ve just

been born.

 

The butterfly’s loping flight

carries it through the country of the leaves

delicately, and well enough to get it

where it wants to go, wherever that is, stopping

here and there to fuzzle the damp throats

of flowers and the black mud; up

and down it swings, frenzied and aimless; and sometimes

 

for long delicious moments it is perfectly

lazy, riding motionless in the breeze on the soft stalk

of some ordinary flower.

 

The god of dirt

came up to me many times and said

so many wise and delectable things, I lay

on the grass listening

 

to his dog voice,

crow voice,

frog voice; now,

he said, and now,

and never once mentioned forever,

 

which has nevertheless always been,

like a sharp iron hoof,

at the center of my mind.

 

One or two things are all you need

to travel over the blue pond, over the deep

roughage of the trees and through the stiff

flowers of lightning—some deep

memory of pleasure, some cutting

knowledge of pain.

 

But to lift the hoof!

For that you need

an idea.

   — Mary Oliver

The flowers are a gift to myself and also to the hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies.

Wishing you a beautiful day and walks in wild woods my friends.

May you walk in beauty.