Category Archives: Nature

Community, Faith and Spirituality, Nature

Frozen: On Ice and ICE

Eleven days ago, the first of this year’s much-anticipated winter storms reached Northern Virginia.  We were already in a deep freeze, with temperatures rarely rising to double digits for days in a row.  Snow began falling, as expected, in the pre-dawn hours that Sunday morning.  It turned to sleet around mid-day and continued until late evening.  It shouldn’t have been such a big deal; we measured about six inches of accumulation.  But due to the biting cold, the effects of the storm have only intensified with time.  

The sensation of walking through the white stuff that first day was decidedly odd.   It was a snow without unity:  its discrete frozen pellets seemed to be doing their best to remain separate from one another.   I was reminded of the dry and quickly shifting sands that border the dunes by the Atlantic at the Cape Cod National Seashore in Provincetown. My daughter enjoys the challenge of running that hilly path toward the ocean.  I do not.  

The following day, the top layer of snow had hardened into an icy crust.  Walking across the yard was especially awkward.  A first step might remain atop the layer, while the next would plunge suddenly into the depths.  

With consistently glacial temperatures for the past week, the icy top layer has hardened and thickened.  The current challenge is to remain upright while crossing the yard, especially on sloping areas.  On the bright side, neighborhood kids have enjoyed sliding speedily across the frozen expanses, no sled required.  

Architectural-looking snow blocks, still with us, eleven days after the snowfall.

When my husband cleared the steps that lead from our back patio to our basement door, the snow broke into boulders and sharp edged, ledge-like pieces.  Similar piles of snow rocks line the sides of local roads.  It’s a good time not to be a dog-walker.  

Our front yard looks beautiful, especially when the hard surface gleams in the sunlight with a polished, satiny sheen.  In appearance and consistency, it resembles the royal icing with which I coated the roofs of gingerbread houses I’ve made in the past.  

I find a year-round source of joy in observing our local wildlife.  This has been especially true during previous snowy seasons, when my feathered and furry friends look so charming against a snowy backdrop.  The sight of twelve brightly colored cardinals in a snow-frosted holly tree can hardly fail to lend the day some extra cheer.  

But this year’s extended period of extreme cold has brought worries about the outdoor critters.  Tiny bird bodies adapt to cold weather in remarkable ways: they fluff their feathers to create greater insulation, and their wiry, gnarled feet appear delicate, but they’re largely frost-resistant.  Even the smallest birds are surprisingly resilient.  But they have their limits, and this arctic chill was testing them.  The ice shield keeps insect-eating birds from their usual food sources.  That’s why we’re seeing bluebirds at our feeders for the first time ever.  I’ve tried to do what I can to help, including putting out more seed and suet, and getting a de-icer for the bird bath.   

Larger animals, as well, have been impacted.  We’ve spotted exceptionally few deer during this cold spell.  Nor have I observed many animal footprints of any kind in the snow.  No doubt the icy surfaces have proven treacherous for our four-legged neighbors.  Foxes have been largely absent.  My favorite regular, Freddie, whom I successfully treated for mange two years ago, has had an injured front paw.  He hasn’t visited since before the snow.  I expect I’ve seen his patient, wise face, sharply pointed ears, clear amber eyes, and fabulously fluffy (mange-free) tail, for the last time.   

Nature’s healing refuge is particularly potent when the  buzz of humanity takes on a menacing, anxiety-making tenor.  When the ravenous egos of the power-driven provoke victimization of the easiest prey: the most vulnerable and those labeled as other.  When truth and good will seem to be no match for the counterfeit currency of lies and dirty money.  

These days, though, I see in the frozen-over natural world a reflection of the barbarism of our human-made realm.   I understand that nature is not all greeting card sweetness.  I see the pair of enormous red-shouldered hawks monitoring my songbird sanctuary from afar.  I’ve witnessed their successful attacks.  I’ve seen a young fox prancing with jubilation, a squirrel in its jaws.  Predators, I know, must win some of the time. And I regularly see the painful effects of the manufactured world: deer, raccoons, squirrels, and even box turtles taken down by fast-moving vehicles.  The birds that meet with window glass.  All too memorably, I’ve witnessed the ferocity of a spike-topped iron fence.  The animals who live among us in our cities and suburbs were here first, and they’ve adapted to the perils we’ve brought.  In a sense, they signed up for these risks, and the benefits outweigh the negatives.

The animals in my neighborhood, though, didn’t sign up for weeks of intense cold and a blanket of brutal ice.  They aren’t arctic natives; they’re residents of the mid-Atlantic.  But now it’s as though the very atmosphere, the air they breathe, has turned vicious.  

In this respect, the frozen world of nature now mirrors American society.  ICE roams our city streets and intrudes with a vengeance into vehicles, homes, schools, work places and community centers.  Perhaps it’s only too fitting that a steely strait-jacket of ice currently threatens local wildlife.  It makes me want to hide away and try to ignore it all, both the chaotic world we humans have built, and the beautiful but sometimes cruel realm of nature.     

But I can’t hide.  And I urge you not to, too.  

What can we do? 

First, we must stay informed; arm ourself with facts, and be a witness to the truth.  Second, but even more important, we mustn’t give in to the urge to isolate.  Like birds that survive the coldest winter nights by huddling together, never forget the power of community.  When I most want to give up on humanity, I soon discover that I’m surrounded by great numbers of  brothers and sisters actively working for good.  Together, we can stand for and with those most in need.  We can’t do it alone.  And I believe that we can only do it with God’s help.  We mustn’t take the bait thrown out by those whose goal is to incite violence and civil unrest.  Even when our worst impulse tells us that those with whom we disagree deserve nothing but contempt, we must try to treat them with dignity.  

We’re at a pivotal point in the history of our country.  The most defenseless among us are being maliciously targeted.  But as we’ve seen with the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, it’s dangerous for everyone out there.  Time-honored marks of privilege, including pale skin, U.S. citizenship, education, a command of English and a home-grown accent no longer offer any guarantee of protection.  We face an administration that decrees and demonstrates, in words and actions, that disagreement with its ideology results in a total loss of Constitutional rights.  It’s a position that goes against everything America represents.  We’re past the time for keeping our heads down quietly on the sidelines and hoping for the best.  It’s time to engage, to show up, to make use of our unique gifts as we take up figurative arms in this just fight.  It’s time to follow the example of the brave and persistent John Lewis, who still urges us to make “good trouble.”

Snow mounds in the parking lot of our local shopping plaza.

When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them.The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.  (Leviticus 19:33-34)

For I was a stranger, and you welcomed me. (Matthew 25: 35)

Family, Holiday, Nature

Winter Solstice 2025

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Darkness descends early on  this winter solstice day.  But we’ve filled our home with our customary little white lights for the season, and so the early nightfall brings  with it a welcome coziness.  It’s the perfect atmosphere for my favorite holiday activity, staying in with those I love!

Happy Winter Solstice, friends! 

Holiday, Nature

December Scenes

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Yet again, I find it hard to believe that the end of the year is fast approaching.  Clearly time is moving faster than it did in my youth.  But most of our holiday decorating is done, at our house and next door at my mother’s, and we’re on our second light December snow.  It’s been looking like Christmas, I realize, for a couple of weeks.  And with temperatures well below freezing, treacherous icy surfaces and biting winds, it certainly feels like winter.  So, here are a few pre-Christmas scenes from our little bit of the arctic known as Northern Virginia.  

Christmas is nine days away!

Nature, Walking the Dog

Another Farewell to Fall Color

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.   

Family, Friendship, Holiday, Nature

Forest Bathing with the Skeleton Crew

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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!”  

 

 

Community, Family, Nature

A Tree, Now Absent

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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.

Family, Nature

Golden Years with the Silver Maples

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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.      

 

 

Family, Nature

Our House Was the One with the Old Maples

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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.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Community, Faith and Spirituality, Nature

More Squirrel-Planted Sunflowers

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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!