Rhapsody in green, and lilac buds

It’s unusual:  We’ve had snow and hail, rain and sun, all in our “cold semi-arid steppe” climate at 1,300 ft. above sea level, and all in the first three weeks of January.

We have lilac buds. Green grass has sprouted in yards and on the hills, but this is not unusual; we have always had to mow in January.

Effie chomps at dry stalks and dead vines, doubtless looking forward to the new catnip crop. In the meantime, Bluebunch wheatgrass satisfies her greentooth.

 

Lilac buds on north side of our house, and Effie

Lilac buds on west side of our house

Last season’s millet is okay as a preview of returning attractions. . .

but Bluebunch wheatgrass is Rhapsody in Green

One must have a mind of winter. . .

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

–Wallace Stevens: The Snow Man

sorghum and rabbitbrush

poplar and juniper

blackberry

Effie munching Bluebunch wheatgrass

First Snow 3: Effie’s blackberries

Effie’s warm tongue melts the frozen blackberries, our last of the season. My husband took this photo yesterday, and I see it as marking the onset of our garden’s dormancy.

An eternal dilemma in nature: hold on or let go

If it were time for these leaves to fall, they would.

Ice drops cling to little avail with a half-degree temperature increase. That’s the way their story goes. . . .

Effie would have no trouble jumping from the beam–except for the physics of the fact that the drop is longer than her leash. . .

so I picked her up and set her on the ground. Interventions happen. . . .

Sultry October afternoon sightings, and bugs

Our garden is full of praying mantises. The big green bugs I’ve been calling walking sticks are actually praying mantises. We’ve had walking sticks on the outside of our house and windows, but for some reason they seem to prefer our house siding and glass to our grounds. Effie enjoys batting at the mantises and carrying them around, but she has no interest in eating them. Evidently, they are nowhere near as delectable as grasshoppers.

One of my friends wrote to me, pointing out the distinctions between praying mantises and walking sticks. I had known these differences since the 5th Grade, but wasn’t careful to recall them, and my friend’s note was a helpful reminder to be more precise about these things, even if I remain a Bugs Are Bugs person. Perhaps I should be less reluctant to mention grammatical inaccuracies I note in others’ work. . . . In any case, I’m relieved to know that, unlike proper English usage, neither praying mantises nor walking sticks are in danger of extinction. They are not protected species, and Effie is in no danger of a visit from a Federal marshal or Game and Bugs warden.

We have a late blooming white lupine, a few hardy lobelias and nasturtiums that came late and might remain until our first frost, and ripening peppers. We still have hot, sunny afternoons, and crisp mornings.

Effie and praying mantis (probably with good reason)

Lupine

Nasturtiums and lobelias

Peppers

Tuesday Effie fix for those with real understanding

Monday afternoon, Effie caught a walking stick, carried it in her mouth, and put it down, ostensibly to eat it. Just then, the UPS man pulled up with my new snow boots. I was so glad to get them; I had wished I had them at six in the morning, when I took Effie out for a little stroll. It was about 40°, but it felt very cold. It was 73° in the afternoon when Effie captured the walking stick, and I was quickly becoming uncomfortably warm in the sun. My snow boots arrived; I scooped up Effie and went out the gate to meet the truck. I thanked the UPS man for helping me rescue the unfortunate walking stick, explaining that the timing had pre-empted Effie’s plan to dine on the poor, elegant creature. The driver seemed relieved to have belayed such a terrible fate.

I took Effie back into the garden and gave her a snip of catnip leaves. She snubbed the walking stick, which remained where she had dropped him. He appeared to be recovering, or at least alive. I decided Effie had partaken of enough adventure, even if no delicate insect drumsticks, and we went back inside. I wanted to try on my new snow boots. They fit perfectly.

As Fall blusters gently in

An hour after posting my cheery bird-and-bug piece yesterday, I witnessed a magpie flying by with a small grey furry creature in its mouth. I knew magpies ate carrion, but usually on site; this appeared to be the possibility of an actual catch. Apparently magpies do kill birds and small animals, a behavior evidently unpopular with British gardeners.

Resembling something somewhere between a flurry of tiny snowflakes and a faint meteor shower, the white gnats are back. Thankfully, the wind has dispersed them for now, but if I go outside when they’re out in force, they can make my tee-shirt look like a windshield within a few seconds.

One of our neighbors, a very pleasant, good-natured man, is dying of mesothelioma. He is receiving hospice care at home. I have noted no evidence that the dear man, who is just in his early 70s, has secure provision for his soul’s future. He has demonstrated great care and regard for his wife, and their home, and their boat, and their beautiful yard and garden, in which are placed three pairs of comfortable-looking chairs, one within an attractive gazebo. I have never seen anyone sit in any of the the chairs, though I have often seen the man or his wife planting and weeding around the inviting chairs. Much work seems to be done, but the elusive promise of contentment appears always belayed. When I drive by his house, I find myself praying for, not wishful, but true contentment for his soul. . .Take him captive into that captivity outside which there is no freedom. . . .

evensong

Such a lot of rain we’ve had, and cold; I think the last day one would call “sunny” was nearly a week ago; this is unusual for the Lewis-Clark Valley. This evening, the sun put in its first post-semi-retirement appearance just in time to set. The fiery sky caused me to forget that all week I have had to bundle up and wear a hat and gloves to get the mail. I’ve read that the Desert Tortoise spends 95% of its possible 100-year life underground. I can see his point. I won’t clarify that.

I ventured out on Monday to go see my doctor. Another day, another rash, but this one looked very different from the one I resolved with an OTC product last month. It was more like micro-measles or something. He asked whether I’d had any unusual pain recently. I suddenly recalled something that occurred a couple of weeks ago–I couldn’t remember exactly when because it seemed like no big deal at the time. I was driving, and suddenly I felt as if I had nettles up my sleeve and down my side. It didn’t interfere with my driving, and it lasted maybe 20-30 minutes. I wouldn’t call it pain so much as an annoyance.

My doctor looked closely at my rash and said he hated to tell me something. The pain can precede a rash, even by a few weeks, he said. The pain and rash of what? I said. This was uncommonly stupid, as we are both bluntish, intelligent people. Of shingles, he said. He was quite certain everything lined up pointing to shingles. I don’t deserve this, I said. I deserve hell. I don’t deserve shingles. The only person I know who has shingles is an ex-Marine who is leveled by an attack of shingles a few times a year. But the sense of having a hornet up my sleeve just really was not that bad.

He went over the various protocols and scenarios in case of a less moderate attack in the future. One of me wanted to cry; the other me wanted to affect cool indignation at such an affront coming from a stupid case of chicken pox I had when I was seven.

Something ugly: another day, another diagnosis–what a bore, this gratuitous insult from my own nerve ganglia that had waited in ambush more than 50 years! Then I remembered Jonah. God took back Jonah’s consolation, the gourd plant that had shaded him from the sun’s intensity and a scorching wind God appointed to discomfit him. And God gave Jonah to know that God’s own incomprehensible plan of salvation was more important than the mundane consolation that had contented Jonah, even as Nineveh was perishing.

God’s grace and the gratuity of all the beauty he gives us–hummingbirds, roses, and tulips came to mind as I fingered tiny representations of these things on my charm bracelet–the gratuity of beauty will not be overshadowed by the possibility of pain from a virus that lodges for decades in everyone who has had chicken pox. The cytological mechanism itself is miraculous, even beautiful in a way, if sinister; and most people will never present any symptoms at all of shingles.

And sadly, many people will fail to apprehend the gratuity of beauty, just as Jonah failed to reckon the value to God of all the souls he would save in Nineveh.

summer peaks, fall peeks

Our afternoon temperatures persist in reaching the 90s, and meadowlarks and killdeer still sing in the field; it seems that summer will not be rushed off to defer to crunchable colorful leaves and sweater weather. Blooming rabbitbrush hints that summer is beginning to share the Eastern Washington steppes with fall, and mornings in the sixties confirm the preview. I’m a complete amateur at these things, but it seems to me that our mountain ash tree is gainsaying the rabbitbrush: the tree’s berries are still quite firm and ripe and its leaves remain affirmatively green, revealing no immediate plan to go bronze, much less bald. I’m ready for fall, but by no means ungrateful for the long, beautiful, bone-warming summer.

Red popcorn! We’ve harvested a few: they are so delicious!

Rabbitbrush. When I lived in Arizona, I once used rabbitbrush fIowers to dye handspun wool yellow.

These wildflowers (black-eyed Susans?) contribute their dazzle to the golden season.

Our bold nasturtiums

Season’s first snow

Coolidge sat in his front-window observation post (FWOP) feigning his unfeigned-wise-and-gentle look for a long time, watching the thin clouds overtake the hills until the hills appeared to be one another’s shadows. Then the snow came, blanking out the hills; he lost interest, able, while I was not, to turn his back on the lavish flakes so perfectly sized for catching on one’s tongue. Our street is still; my neighbors’ horses, unperturbed, proceed with their grazing, aligned with some unspoken imperative of silence. However briefly the snow remains on the ground, winter has staked its claim.