Every year around this time, as fall cedes the ground to winter, it’s my habit, and wistful delight, to look back and celebrate yet another spectacular season.
Brilliant autumn colors were a bit late in arriving this year in Northern Virginia. Thankfully, they’ve also been reluctant to depart. The trees were gracious in shedding their leaves little by little, allowing time for us to reckon with their approaching absence. On this mid-November day, most of the hardwoods are now bare. The Japanese maples by our screened porch, though, have saved their intensest, rubiest reds for right now.
The pin oak at the center edge of our front yard is also stubbornly tenacious, still holding fast to most of its gilded leaves. This is a gift tree, courtesy of a squirrel that buried an acorn some fifteen years ago. It’s perfectly positioned and now sizable. It glimmers in the early-morning sunshine.
A few flowers of this twice-blooming azalea still linger in our yard. In the spring, the blooms are uniformly a dark pink. They save their more dramatic, variegated palette for the fall.
The photos that follow attest to fall’s beauty now past.
Our small sassafras tree is now devoid of foliage, but in late October, it provided pops of orange that stood out distinctly against the gray-brown bark of our lone surviving silver maple. The tree is unusual for its leaves of three shapes: single-lobed, mitten-like, and tri-lobed.
The black gum tree behind our church put on the glorious scarlet show that the local community has come to anticipate.
Our heavily wooded neighborhood never fails to offer a beautiful autumnal display. Mornings with the dog-walking crew are feasts for all the senses, for humans and canines alike. The field below was one of Kiko’s favorite spots for a wild romp when he was in his prime. I can see him running there now, his dark red coat another dash of welcome color in the fall landscape.
I had the pleasure of accompanying a friend to the Hillwood Estate and Museum in DC earlier this month. A furloughed federal worker, she wanted to take advantage of the Museum’s offer of free entry for out-of work government workers during the shut-down. I’d never been to this remarkable place, the carefully curated former home of Marjorie Meriweather Post. The grounds were gorgeous on a sparkling November day. Several towering ginkgos were resplendent in the sunshine, their fan-shaped leaves at their yellow-gold peak.
Two more fall panoramas at Hillwood: the Japanese Garden and the Lunar Lawn. Incidentally, my skeleton friend Slim asked me to mention that the Museum is offering guiding forest bathing walks on the grounds next week, on November 21 and 22.
And back on our little acre, the black walnut trees were heavy-laden, until recently, with golden-green orbs. The telltale thuds of the falling fruit have become for us a signature sound of autumn. Our fortunate squirrels will enjoy the bounty all winter.
And as the season’s bold reds, golds and greens continue to disperse and take flight in November’s chilly winds, I find comfort in knowing that the reduced palette of the months to come will be, in its way, equally enchanting.
View of the Courtyard of the Palace from the Villard rooms, October 2015
The New York hotel that I zeroed in on, three decades ago, when we were poor grad students, was the Helmsley Palace. It’s attached to the historic Villard Houses, which I’d read about in Paul Goldberger’s book on New York architecture. Dating from 1884, the houses were modeled on a Renaissance palazzo in Rome. Six adjoining brownstone townhouses surround a central courtyard, giving the effect of one large, grand mansion. The first project of the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, the compound was built for Henry Villard, a former journalist and president of the Northern Pacific Railway. The location is Madison Avenue, directly across from St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
The New York Palace, October 2010
View of the east side of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, from the courtyard of the Palace, 2025.
During the 1970s, the developer Harry Helmsley acquired the air rights to the Villard Houses and made plans for a fifty-story hotel atop the compound. Preservationists raised the alarm after hearing that Helmsley intended to demolish large portions of the historic buildings. Plans were modified, and the developer agreed to preserve most of the townhouses, including their interiors.
Inside the Villard Houses, October 2015
I saw glimpses of these lavish interiors in commercials for the hotel during the 1980s. The ads showed Harry’s second wife Leona Helmsley posed imperiously atop the central stairway, flanked by subservient staff. The tagline was “The Helmsley Palace, Where the Queen Stands Guard.” Leona may have considered herself the Grande Dame of her husband’s hotel empire, but thanks to her bullying, demanding behavior, her employees dubbed her the Queen of Mean. Having remarked that “only the little people pay taxes,” Leona later went to prison for tax evasion.
My interest in the Palace Hotel had nothing to do with Leona Helmsley, and everything do with the beautifully preserved, gilded-age interiors of the Villard Houses.
One of the Villard Rooms, with chairs set up for a wedding, 2015.
I can’t recall the details that went into my booking what I thought was a night at the Helmsley Palace. I must have caught wind of some pre-Christmas discount, because money was short in those days.
The same room, from a different angle, 2015.
What I can’t forget, though, was that we arrived in New York from Princeton in the midst of a significant nor’easter. I hadn’t heard that weather term before, and I’d certainly not experienced it. My husband and I quickly learned that a nor’easter, especially in December, is not a pleasant time for leisurely, big-city sight-seeing. The winds howled without cease, exacerbated by the tunnels created by the tall buildings. A frigid mix of sleet, snow and rain swirled around us, pelting our faces. The streets of Manhattan appeared to be littered with hulking black birds in their death throes, as useless, abandoned umbrellas flapped in the breeze. I can’t remember what we wore, but I know we were not appropriately dressed for such dire weather. My husband didn’t have a hat. I had a scarf, but it was quickly soaked, giving the effect of wearing an ice pack outdoors in winter.
A hallway inside the Villard rooms, October 2025
Why did we not cancel? Most such details, fortunately, are hazy. Probably because I’d already paid. Probably because we thought, “Oh, how bad can it be?”
It might have been worth braving the terrible weather if we had only been able to find shelter at last in that sought-after destination, the Helmsley Palace.
But no. Somehow, I’d booked our stay not at the Helmsley Palace, but at the New York Helmsley. I can’t remember when or how we discovered the mistake. Did I realize the error before our departure? Or did we go to the Palace at Madison and 51st, only to be turned away? To be sent back out into the icy winds and make our sad way over to 3rd Avenue and 42nd?
Another room in the Villard Houses, 2015. Now it’s used by the hotel as a breakfast space.
The New York Helmsley (now the Westin New York Grand Central) was, and is, no dive. Its 40-story tower was constructed in 1981, a bland rectangular block similar to that at the Palace. But its lobby was, to me, a dull, forgettable, contemporary space, and a huge disappointment when I was expecting the time-tested opulence of the Villard rooms at the Palace.
Our room was perfectly fine, definitely the nicest I’d ever entered in New York at that point. It was a vast improvement over the youth hostels and threadbare accommodations I’d been used to in my low-budget student travel in Europe. There were two windows, and an actual view. Not an especially good view, out onto a gloomy, windswept 42nd Street, but also not onto an air shaft.
My mother likes to tell the story of a Manhattan hotel room she and my father stayed in when they were young and newly married. In the adjoining bathroom, the tub appeared to have been cut in half by a wall. That was one surprise, at least, that we did not encounter during our trip.
Clock in a Villard Room hallway, October 2025.
We stayed only one night, which was a blessing. A two-night visit was beyond our means. The next day, a Saturday, the bad weather persisted. I had hoped we’d enjoy cheery lights and shop windows adorned for Christmas, but I recall no such festive sights. I assume we took refuge in a museum or two. But we walked the icy streets long enough to be very uncomfortable. We went into one of the hundreds of Sbarros in Manhattan to try to warm up. The door, oddly, had been open, and we closed it when we entered. One of the employees rushed out immediately from the kitchen to close it again. Really? I rarely cry, but that day I put my head down on the cheap laminate table and sobbed. My husband, shocked at my unseemly display, appealed to the employees, who were overheated because of their work near the pizza oven. H promised the young men that we wouldn’t be long. We’d eat our slices, thaw out a little, and be on our way. They allowed him to close the door.
We probably headed back to Penn Station shortly after we emerged from the Sbarro. After two days of enduring New York in a nor’easter, it felt like luxury, for once, to settle ourselves onto those ugly orange seats in a shabby New Jersey Transit train.
In the courtyard of the Helmsley Palace, October 2010, during a nicer visit.
We finally managed a weekend stay act the actual Palace Hotel in 2010. We’ve returned there a few times since. This past October, we had planned a weekend get-away at what is now known as the Lotte New York Palace. A nor’easter was predicted to coincide with our visit. This time, with the wisdom that comes with age and experience, we postponed for a week.
Since the beginning of October, our family has been enjoying the active company, once again, of our old family friend Slim and his loyal pack of pups. They spent the past eleven months mostly in quiet contemplation and sound sleep in their comfortable new domain, my attic art studio. Sometimes as I went upstairs to paint, I’d find them peering out from their favorite lookout perch in one of the dormers. Slim kept a pair of binoculars close at hand, along with his birding journal.
One morning in August, when our family was in Cape Cod, they were roused from napping by the sound of heavy machinery. From the attic window, they witnessed the removal of our old silver maple. It was with great sadness that they watched as the remainder of the tree was cut down, chipped up and hauled away. Slim and I are kindred spirits in our love of trees. He brushed a tear from his eye as he told me that he wept most of that summer morning.
Once the pack was feeling lively enough to venture outside to roam the grounds, they headed directly to the site of the old tree. “Hello, dear pal,” Slim said, as he settled himself in the center of the mulch pile. “I can still breathe in your essence, your goodness!”
Somehow it was news to me that Slim was an early adopter of the practice of “forest bathing.” He was introduced to the therapeutic relaxation technique during the months he spent backpacking through Japan in the early 80s. It’s one of several lifestyle choices that he holds responsible for his health, vigor, trim frame, and longevity. As we walked over to the remaining silver maple in our yard, he became my forest bathing instructor. “Get up close to this old friend,” he advised me. “Snuggle in, nice and cozy. Lean your back against the bark. Feel that solid, reassuring presence. Imagine that your feet are roots. Take deep breaths. Be aware of all your senses. Listen to the birds, watch the beetle crawling among the fallen leaves, feel the breeze on your face, and smell all those fantastic fragrances of nature. Keep breathing, slowly, deeply. ”
The practice is a great stress reducer, but it’s more than that, Slim told me. “It’s those phytoncides, you know.” I didn’t know. “They’re tree oils, great immune boosters. We breathe them in, and they have amazing healing properties. The more trees around, the better. That’s why they call it forest bathing. But we can get big benefits right here, in the company of our silver maple sister, and even from the mulch chips of her much reduced sibling.” I’ve known Slim long enough to reach eagerly for the pearls of wisdom he offers. I’ve always enjoyed being around trees, but now I know to seek them out more intentionally when life’s annoyances, large and small, start to wear on me. I expect there will be many of those times.
Slim delighted in the last of the squirrel-planted sunflowers that bloom along the fencerow.
He exulted in the clump of late-blooming Montauk daisies by my mother’s driveway. “These smell almost as good as a maple tree!,” Slim exclaimed. “Flower bathing has its benefits, too!”
My husband and I celebrated a recent anniversary with a weekend trip to New York. We share the same attitude toward that great city: we like to go there, briefly. And then, especially, we like to return home.
I was in my mid-twenties before I got a first-hand glimpse of New York. A friend and I were on the way to Vermont for skiing. We’d flown from Atlanta to Newark to see his family in New Jersey before we made our way north. From the passenger-side window of the rental car, I gaped at the city’s immensity as we sped across the George Washington Bridge. Overwhelmed by the vastness of those towering building-upon-building-upon-building streetscapes, stretching in opposite directions as far as I could see, I felt like a country bumpkin, through and through. It was fine with me that we didn’t set foot on that intimidating pavement during the trip.
Cleveland Tower at the Princeton Graduate College
The next year I began graduate study in art history at Princeton. The University is situated in what I consider an ideal environment. Its lovely campus, with historic collegiate Gothic buildings, forms the heart of a bucolic, graciously landscaped small town. And it’s about an hour south of New York by train. At the University Book Store, I bought Paul Goldberger’s “The City Observed” to begin to familiarize myself with New York’s iconic architectural monuments. In those pre-internet days, it was a treasure.
During my first semester at Princeton, I relished the opportunity to be in New York every week. My “Art of Ancient Rome” class was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was taught by Maxwell Anderson, early in his career, when he was the Met’s Curator of Roman Art. He’d later be named director of the Michael Carlos Museum at Emory University, and then of New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art. A couple of classmates and I would take New Jersey Transit from Princeton Junction to Penn Station. We’d briskly walk the fifty blocks up Fifth Avenue to the Met. The class extended past the time of the Museum’s closing, and it was a thrill to linger in that hallowed space after the guards had ushered out the crowds. We also had the privilege of access to areas that were off limits to the general public. To prepare for my term paper on the Boscoreale room of preserved Pompeiian frescoes, I was able to step across the velvet rope and take my time to closely examine the ancient paintings.
Just as I loved being immersed in such unique surroundings at the Met, I was energized by the bustling atmosphere of the vibrant city. But I was always relieved to arrive back in quiet Princeton. That relief was particularly pronounced one evening when a fellow classmate and I fell sound asleep on the train, missed our stop, ended up in Trenton and had to backtrack.
Throughout my years as a grad student, I was in New York on a fairly regular basis, but for day trips only. I dreamed of spending the night in a beautiful hotel after a leisurely dinner, instead of rushing with a crowd of strangers to pack onto a grimy, harshly lighted New Jersey Transit train. One December, I seized on a chance to do just that. I planned what I hoped would be a very special trip to the city, complete with Christmas lights and a grand hotel, for my husband and me.
It turned out to be a memorable visit, but not in a good way.
Princeton Grad College
In an upcoming post: the story of that ill-fated trip.
During the early part of this summer, an afternoon deluge, fueled by intense heat and humidity, became a near-daily event here in Northern Virginia, as in much of the country. The cascade of events leading to the loss of our second-to-last silver maple began with one such violent thunderstorm in mid-July. An ear-splitting boom told us that lightning had struck perilously close to our house. My husband saw puffs of smoke dissipating as he stepped outside. A tall pine in my bird-feeding area bore telltale signs of the strike: pale vertical gouges where the bark had been blown away.
The storm raged on, and the power soon went out. We were expecting six guests for dinner in about an hour. Salmon was in the oven, half cooked. Earlier in the week, we’d almost canceled the get-together, when it seemed unlikely that our new HVAC system would be installed in time. We’d been largely without AC for over two weeks. But the work had been completed that very morning. The entire house had just begun to cool down when the electricity shut off. Should we forge ahead? We considered our options. This was a welcome meal for our new minister. After all the prep, I didn’t want to postpone. I could finish the cooking on my mother’s gas-powered stovetop. So we pressed on. H began a search for battery-powered candles.
In the rush to prepare for the evening, it escaped our notice for a while that an enormous, tree-sized portion of a tall white pine lay stretched across the front yard. The noise of the wind and rain had masked any sounds of its fall. The top-most part of the tree had come to rest in the crook of the divided trunk of one of the two remaining old maples.
When our friends arrived, we gathered on the screened porch for drinks (much-needed) and watched as torrential rain poured down around us. Happily, before long, the power was back on. Our new HVAC system was running again, thankfully.
The next morning we began to realize the extent of the lightning damage. Several outlets at our house and next door at my mother’s were visibly scorched, and numerous lights, interior and exterior, were no longer working. WIFI and internet were out, as was a ceiling fan that H had replaced twice before. My new computer seemed to have been affected. As we continued to discover still more ways in which the lightning strike had wreaked havoc, we decided to stop lamenting the losses, and instead to be grateful that we had escaped both fire and death.
It took a while to get the fallen pine completely cleared away. The final remaining portion resembled a long-legged creature crying out for a head. I added a plaster mask left over from a school art project, surrounded by a fall wreath.
Two weeks later, we had just begun our Cape Cod vacation. During dinner at the home of friends in Wellfleet, a neighbor called to tell us that one of our trees was down, blocking the side street. It was, of course, the maple that had been struck by the falling pine. Half of the huge tree had collapsed, crushing our mailbox as it went down. We’re very fortunate in our neighbors. Without our asking, and before we even knew what had happened, these kind and thoughtful people were out with chainsaws, working together to clear the impassable road. They sent photos to keep us informed.
Friends who assessed the condition of the remaining part of the tree were in agreement: it was dangerously unstable. An expert echoed the diagnosis, and said it would likely fall toward the house and could well hit the roof. We had little choice but to have the rest of the maple taken down as soon as possible. We hated the thought that our old tree would disappear from us while we were away. We wouldn’t get to say goodbye.
Later, as our long drive back from Massachusetts neared its end, we braced for the first glimpse of home after the removal of the tree. We still weren’t prepared, and the sight hit us like a punch. The house appeared uncomfortably exposed, like someone caught unexpectedly undressed. It looked vulnerable and a little embarrassed.
And that flat, sheared-off stump! It became the first thing I saw every morning as I looked out my bedroom window. It would soon be reduced to a pile of mulch, and will eventually be planted over with grass seed. My husband and I both mused regretfully over whether we should have left the base of the tree, as we did with the slowly decaying and battered maple nearest the road. Would that be a less painful sight? We examined the photos sent soon after half the tree had fallen. It might not have even been possible to leave a snag, a stump, because there had been a hollow space near the bottom of the maple ever since we moved in. A big, low branch must have broken off many years ago. The bark had grown back around the opening as the tree healed itself.
In this photo, the evergreen boughs from the fallen pine suggest that the maple is decorating itself for Christmas in July.
From certain viewpoints, the opening resembled a heart.
With the maple, we also lost a robust, sizable holly that grew close beside it, in the sheltering embrace of the larger tree.
I realize that in the grand scheme of things, the loss of a tree, and an old tree, at that, is no big deal. Certainly not in the face of ongoing wars in which helpless children escape battle strikes only to die of starvation. Certainly not when the killing of neighbors going peacefully about mundane activities has become a routine, even expected, everyday occurrence.
But the loss of a tree can be seen as the loss of an agent of peace. We need our silent friends in the plant realm to counter the pervasive meanness and brutality of the world we humans have managed, somehow, to build. In times of distress (and when is there not a reason for distress?) nature stands by to offer comfort and solace. In the assuring company of a familiar tree friend, we may yet experience a soul-filling escape. We may find a fleeting illusion of harmony amidst this twenty-first century disharmony.
Charlie Kirk was the most recent public figure whose life was cut short by gun violence in America. His death, on September 10, at 31, was a tragedy. In no way can his murder be justified.
Below are some names that represent a tiny fraction of those killed by guns in America. Every single one of these deaths is a tragedy. In no way can any of these murders be justified.
Melissa Hortman, 55.
Mark Hortman, 58.
Melissa and Mark, along with their dog, Gilbert, were shot in their Minneapolis home in June of this year. The couple was targeted by a gunman who disagreed with their political beliefs.
Jacklyn Cazares, 9.
Makenna Lee Elrod, 10.
Xavier Lopez, 10.
Jacklyn, Makenna and Xavier are three children among twenty-one adults and children killed during the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas in 2022.
Roberta Drury, 32.
Aaron Salter, Jr., 55.
Ruth Whitfield, 86.
Roberta, Aaron and Ruth are three of the ten individuals killed at the Tops Market shooting in Buffalo, NY in 2022.
Javier Rodriguez, 15.
Maria Flores, 77.
Raul Flores, 83.
Javier, Maria and Raul are among the twenty-three killed in the Walmart shooting in El Paso, Texas in 2019.
Melvin Wax, 87.
Irving Younger, 69.
Richard Gottfried, 65.
Melvin, Irving and Richard are among the eleven killed in the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, PA in 2018.
Scott Beigel, 35.
Alyssa Alhadeff, 14.
Nicholas Dworet, 17.
Scott, Alyssa and Nicholas are among the seventeen adults and teens killed in the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, FL, in 2018.
Charlotte Bacon, 6.
Dylan Hockley, 6.
Catherine Hubbard, 6 .
Charlotte, Dylan and Catherine are three children among the twenty-six children and adults killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.
(In every shooting cited above, gunmen also wounded as many, or more individuals as they killed.)
And then there are these public figures shot down in the past:
Robert Kennedy, 43, in 1968.
Martin Luther King, Jr., 39, in 1968.
Malcolm X, 39, in 1965.
Medgar Evers, 37, in 1963.
John F. Kennedy, 46, in 1963.
Abraham Lincoln, 56, in 1865.
46, 728 people in our country died from guns in 2023, the last year for which we have complete statistics.
Gun violence has replaced car crashes as the leading cause of death for children and teens in America.
Shooting incidents have shown us that no place is truly safe: not our schools, (not even those for our youngest children), not our places of worship, not the local grocery store, no public event, and not even our homes.
Some questions regarding firearm deaths:
When it comes to gun violence, are some lives more important than others?
Is an “assassination” more of a loss than the indiscriminate killing of strangers?
Must we be personally acquainted with those targeted to be impacted by their deaths?
When it comes to free speech, should protection apply only to those with whom we agree? Are all others fair game?
Can we at least pause to learn the facts before jumping to demonize our fellow brothers and sisters?
Can we refrain from blaming the actions of a single person on a big group of people with whom we disagree?
If we are outraged by abortion, shouldn’t we also be outraged by the shooting deaths of young children?
For those who believe that every person is a child of God, shouldn’t we want to do all we can to reduce the numbers of God’s children shot down every day?
Aren’t there things on which we all agree that might diminish these horrific numbers?
Can’t we acknowledge our shared humanity and work together to stop killing each other?
Can’t we use those “thoughts and prayers” as a catalyst toward meaningful action?
After settling into our house in January of 2000, the silver maples out front quickly became integral to our idea of home. They were sort of like heirloom furniture–cherished and comfortable, arranged pleasantly in an expansive, open-air room. No, they were more than that; they were almost like our extended family, part of our beloved community. My husband attached a rope swing to a branch on one of the trees closest to the house, and it became a favorite spot for our daughter and her friends. Other trees served as her lookout perches. The maples were frequent backdrops for Christmas card photos and others of our daughter and dog that I sent to grandparents throughout the year. The trees have been gracious hosts to our feathered and furry friends. They’re particularly popular with woodpeckers. Last fall I watched as two enormous pileated woodpeckers worked their prodigious beaks like jackhammers on opposite sides of an upper branch in one of the trees.
Our daughter on the rope swing, 2006.
Our daughter, December 6, 2005
Our daughter and young Kiko, March 18, 2008
Our daughter and Kiko, December 2015. I love it that our dog looks comfortable perched in the hollow of the tree.
We knew when we moved in that the old trees were nearing the end of their life span. Silver maples aren’t like oaks that can endure for centuries. We tried to keep them trimmed to enhance their longevity, but our efforts had their limits.
The tree nearest the street at the center point of our front yard was the first to begin losing some major limbs. In the above photo from 2010, one of the big branches had recently fallen.
The center front tree, battle scarred.
Our house sits on a sharp curve of a narrow road. The trees along this outer edge are vulnerable to errant vehicles. We lost count of the number of times that a driver misjudged the curve or lost traction after a rain and collided with the tree above. As limbs fell or were removed, it became the stump that we decorated each year for Christmas. The protective bulk that remained continued to be a useful block for our yard, so we allowed it to diminish and decay naturally. Even in its last gasps, the tree, paradoxically, was full of life. Its final remains became a hub of fantastical lichen growth.
The tree toward the center of the photo above became a home for a family of barred owls in the spring of 2004. I remember standing on the front porch with my father as we spotted a big, beautiful owl soaring toward the tree. Its wingspan was immense. Amazingly, the bird disappeared into a cavity high atop the tree. A bit later it emerged, flew away, and returned to repeat the process. I was peering through binoculars when I saw a huge eye staring back at me from inside the tree, right after the owl had departed. We gaped in awe as a second large owl emerged. Wow! Both parents were coming and going, we realized. Often, one owl would keep vigil on a branch near the nest. Slightly smaller than the other, we presumed her to be the female. Exuding gravitas, she eyed our family with cool confidence. Did we imagine that she was sizing up our small daughter, who would start kindergarten in the fall, as potential prey? Could she manage a catch of that size? We doubted it, but we didn’t let D go out in the yard alone. While the mother guarded the nest, the male typically remained within eyesight, watching from a more secluded post.
After a while, we began to catch glimpses of their young. Two pale, fluffy heads began to peek out from the cavity. Then we started to see the mother owl disappear inside the tree and pop back out nearly immediately. She did this over and over. Next she’d sit on a nearby branch and gaze intently at the nest. Soon, we’d see an owlet emerging, tentatively, from inside the tree. The mother, it seemed, was encouraging her young to venture out, to give their wings a try. How scary that thought must be for a young bird! After a while, the female appeared to dive emphatically into the tree cavity, as though she were losing patience. “Come on!,” her body language said. “You can do it! Trust me!”
We didn’t witness the owlets’ first actual flight, but I saw proof of their new-found ability. One morning I was out in the yard shortly after dawn, when I saw the two owlets outside the nest. Their fuzzy, pearl-gray bodies were draped, liked minimally stuffed dog toys (or those melting Dali clocks!) over the branch of a nearby tree, just above my head. Their eyes were closed. I remember gasping audibly, because I thought they were dead. I waited in trepidation, hoping for signs of life. Just when I was about to assume the worst, the owlets began to stir. Their big, dark eyes opened. They groggily roused themselves and gradually summoned the energy to sit up. Whew! They’d survived what must have been an exhausting first night of flight. We saw the young ones flying short distances a couple of times. And soon afterwards, the whole family was gone.
My husband’s daad took this photo of owl parent and baby, in May 2004.
When the natural shelf for the nest collapsed the next year, my husband and daughter worked together to build an owl box, seen above and below, and attached it to the tree. When the owls failed to return to the box in its initial placement, my husband positioned it much higher up on the limb, as seen below. Over the years, we often hear the distinctive cries of barred owls in our neighborhood: Hoo hoo hoo hoo! Who Cooks for You? But never again have they nested in one of our trees.
We were eating Easter dinner on the back porch on a quiet, perfectly still afternoon in April 2011 when we heard a thunderous crash. We rushed to the front yard to discover, with dismay, that half of the owl tree had fallen heavily to the ground. Sadly, we had no choice but to have the remaining, unstable portion removed. Like the owl family, the owl tree left us suddenly and too soon.
Our daughter with a cicada friend, May 2004.
The spring of the owls coincided with peak season for the seventeen-year cicadas. Our maples, we discovered, are choice cicada territory. Our yard was abuzz with the lumbering, clumsy creatures, and the maple trunks were studded with a multitude of tan exoskeletons. Our daughter, ever a fan of nature in all her odd manifestations, found the cicadas charming. The owls evidently shared her appreciation, or at least they recognized in the slow-moving insects an easy food source for themselves and their young.
For the past ten years or so, only the two maples closest to the house have remained. Their long branches created the leafy frame through which I will always imagine our home. On snowy, moonlit nights, the shadows cast by the trees were magical.
As of this month, the maple frame is lopsided. In mid-July, we experienced the start of the series of unfortunate weather events that would lead to the fall and removal of one of the long-lived pair. The last surviving maple, we’re told, has exceeded its life span. Likely, it’s not long for this world. Much as when a well-loved family member lives to a ripe old age, we’ll try to be grateful for the many good years we shared.
With my daughter, in front of the house, December 1999
It was the day after Thanksgiving in 1999 when we first saw the house that would become our home. We’d moved to Northern Virginia from New Jersey the year before, and we were renting a small townhouse near my husband’s office. Our daughter was eleven months old. We’d gotten the hang of packing her into her car seat and settling her in her stroller, and she was typically a happy short-distance traveler. Our primary weekend activity had become house hunting. House looking, really, because we weren’t yet prepared to buy. It was free, entertaining, it got us out of our increasingly cramped space, and it was a good way to get to know the area. Most homes were well beyond our means, but we looked at everything we found vaguely appealing; we wanted to get a feel for the wide scope of the market. At an open house that fall we met a realtor with whom we felt an immediate rapport. We appreciated her humorous quips, made all the more amusing when delivered in her posh British accent. She won me over completely when she referred to our daughter as that “ex-quisite child.” (Dawn Jones is savvy.) She was determined to take us under her wing. We told her we weren’t sure how serious we were about buying. Nevertheless, she persisted.
Buying a home was a very big deal for us. We were used to university housing and eccentric rental spaces. As a grad student, I lucked into a cushy house-sitting job on lovely Battle Road for a Princeton professor. I even managed to get my husband-to-be a similar gig in another beautiful home right across the street. We relished being mortgage-free high-end real estate dwellers. And then we began our married life at the other end of the spectrum, in Princeton’s bare bones and now-demolished Butler Apartments, built in the 1940s as temporary quarters for returning GIs. We’d never had a place that we could truly call our own.
We’d seen several homes with Dawn when I found an online listing that seemed promising, if oddly worded and rather puzzling. The internet was fairly new back then, and I was proud of myself for using it to browse local real estate listings. The photo showed what appeared to be a sizable white house, far bigger than we expected to afford. But surprisingly, it was in our price range. The description read as follows: This is a lovely home that can also be remodeled. The garage can be fixed. Painting done, finish the basement with bedroom and full buth (sic), price would be $150,000 more. It had been on the market for months. Worth a look, we thought, but there must be something seriously wrong with the place.
The photo from the real estate listing, 1999.
We anticipated disappointment as we went to meet Dawn at the address. We expected to find a dilapidated shell, an extreme fixer-upper in need of a daunting amount of work. What we saw was a plain, unassuming American Foursquare farmhouse with a central block and two symmetrical wings. Aluminum siding on the outside. Inside decor featured mid-1970s stalwarts like orange shag carpeting in every upstairs bedroom and faux French provincial white and gold detailing in the bathrooms. In the kitchen, there was a sort of fake shake roof thing that extended the full length of two walls. The former owner had been a heavy smoker, and the copious wallpaper, thick carpeting, heavy draperies and all the woodwork were yellowed with nicotine. Structurally, the house appeared to be sound. It was spacious, and we loved the floor plan, with a central hall surrounded by four large rooms on each level. In short, it seemed to be a good, solid house with unfortunate surface treatments. Familiar territory, for me, from my childhood home in Atlanta. We could make this old house our own.
Our house in December 1999. Our daughter, in her stroller, wearing a red knit cap, is on the front walkway.
And then, there were the trees.
The photo from the real estate listing showed parts of two big trees that appeared to frame the house. Turns out they were silver maples, much like those outside my grandparents’ farmhouse, the beloved central focus of my childhood. Lots of people dislike these trees. They grow quickly but tend to shed their bulky limbs regularly. Their knobby roots, spreading far and wide, are the enemy of a pristine lawn. But I was delighted to see that a semi-circle of six grand old maples sheltered the front yard. As I wrote in a post from 2012, those trees spoke to me. They said, “You’re home!”
The house dates from 1920, and the trees are of the same vintage. Not long after we moved in, church friends helped me contact a woman whose family had built the house. In her 90s at the time, and living in southern Virginia, she spoke with great fondness about her childhood home. Back then, it was on two hundred acres, on which they raised wheat. When I mentioned how much I loved the big maples, she told me that as a very little girl, she had helped her parents plant them “from switches!”
Since settling in, in January of 2000, we’ve described our home as the old white farmhouse with the old trees in front.
That description is less accurate as of this summer. Due to recent weather events, only one maple remains.
Around this time two years ago, I wrote about the sunflowers that were unexpectedly appearing throughout our back yard. They were planted not by me, but by squirrels. We shouldn’t have been surprised at the flowers’ emergence. We’d been watching our squirrel friends as they chose a single a sunflower seed from below the bird feeders, carefully placed it in the ground (usually on the lawn, to my husband’s dismay) and covered it with soil. They’d pat down the earth thoroughly with their delicate hands, hop back for another seed and repeat the process.
Evidently squirrels can be as forgetful as humans, because we have a sunflower garden now.
This summer, the squirrel-farmed yield is particularly plentiful.
Some lowers are larger than ever. They stare at me, eye to eye, high atop perches on thick, prickly robust stalks.
As I observed in my earlier post, the sunflower is among nature’s artful miracles of geometry. A sunflower head is, in fact, a compact colony of tiny flowers. What appear to be petals are individual flowers known as ray florets. Their bright yellow color attracts pollinators to the numerous minuscule disc florets of the center. Our sunflower garden teems with bees and butterflies. The disc florets begin opening around the flower’s outer rim, so that the amazing inner spiral is eventually surrounded by a shaggy, deep golden fringe. Each one of these florets is a perfect, five-lobed tubular bloom, rather like a lily, sized for a fairy. They will, in time, grow into seeds.
The individual florets that make up the center are visible in the two photos above.
I love the way the petal-like ray florets unfold in sections to reveal the sunflower’s round center, as in the photos below. I’m reminded of a winking eye, or a child playfully peeking through her hands.
As the flowers age, the disc florets are transformed into seeds, and the ray florets wither. Once they pass their prime, they attract seed-loving birds, especially similarly colored goldfinches. The elderly flowers below may lack their youthful loveliness, but they continue to fulfill their purpose.
If I pause for a moment to survey our squirrel-planted sunflower garden, with flowers at varying points in their life cycles, I can sense that elusive but perpetual presence of the sacred. It’s evident as the big flowers turn their heads to follow the sun. I’m reminded that God’s creation is ongoing. It’s happening all around us, despite the toxic fog of human meanness that we allow to cloud our world. I can hear the sunflower offering valuable advice: Follow the light, be a beacon to those who need you, and live abundantly, at every stage along the journey!
A blog about motherhood, marriage and life: the joys and frustrations, beauty and absurdity, blessings and pain. It's about looking back, looking ahead, and walking the dog.
