Corny Chirp

Chirp of Life.

I’ve not posted since May – much work for a dollar, but it’s always a blessing to have work, so no complaint there.  Despite the neglect though, the plants took good care of themselves – apparently I’m not on their critical path.  One stalk of corn has done a record bit of growing, pushing 18 feet I daresay – you judge –

Corn 1 Corn 2

I am waiting for the ears from this one save as seed corn.  I have a few ears from its stunted brethren.  I think they must be understood as decorative.

Ears

Now something I’d never noticed before, was that corn has additional, aerial roots at each of the lower segments.  I’m still dwelling on why, or is vestigial, how much so, etc.

Corn 3

And last, a leftover from last year, an escapee, if you will, from that harvest, a runaway purple carrot

Purple Carrot

The light ebbs here, but it does that every year.

 

Late May 2014

A bit of a walk about town, gray day, what spoke. First some yellow buttercups in a creek Creek Buttercups

then some orange lichen very vivid on a gravestone Orange Lichen Fern flowers – if that’s what they are or more like spore bearing fronds – I think it’s a cinnamon fern – Fern Flowers of course baby grapes on honeysuckle – where has our mythology gone, there certainly should be a story about this Baby Grapes with Honeysuckle A furry resident Chipmunk   Some chinkapin oak leaves – I favor this tree because I planted it as an acorn and it’s not exactly native but it’s thriving and the leaves are lovely. Chinkapin Leaves   Some ginseng I rescued from an Asian supermarket – the roots looked so like they wanted to grow, and indeed four of them now do. Ginseng and lastly some hops that are overrunning the back end of the garden – I need do something about them Hops

Early Spring 2014 Yard

In Loiusville Kentucky late in August of the year 2000 I remember the thistles as being very large and lush, as thistles go, so much so that I took several clumps of their seeds home.  I scattered them in a wild-ish area and they persist till this day, almost fourteen years later.

Thistle

Here now are platycodons just emerging.  Note the palette, very subtle and rich

Emerging Platycodon

Another wonder of tone, false indigo arising.

False Indigo

 

and staying in the the blue green family, hosta, followed by grape hyacinth.

 

Emerging Hosta

Grape Hyacinth

Here’s another subtle palette picture – baby bamboo shoots – you may have to click on the picture – look carefully, but most of all notice the rich and nuanced tones at the ground.

Bamboo Shoots

Varieties of pink tulip

Tender Petals Pink Tulips

 

purple tulip and Van Gogh tulip.

 

Purple TulipVan Gogh Tulips

 

This pink one is not a rose of Sharon, but the name is escaping me.

 

 

 

 

 

Not Rose of Sharon

Chinkapin oak bark and buds

Chinkapin buds

Peony

 

Emerging Peony

Blue spruce buds

Budding Blue Spruce

Plus tubular bells!

Subtle working

Ganesh, in the Hindu tradition, is known as the remover of obstacles.  I have a garden for him within which are many exotic stones and plants.  This also is the memorial garden for my father passed almost ten years now.  It’s a chaos of rocks and plants and themes. I want it to be so chock full of disparate elements that new possibilities are created.

Last year I set Ganesh a challenge I thought he had a chance at, described (here).  Well, it was a very cold winter.  It was so cold it killed even some of the mega cold-hardy bamboo I have.  The eucalyptus in question was covered in snow most of the winter and even as the snow receded it looked like it may have made it.

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but that was quite the bit of wishful thinking, like how green a vegetable might look coming out of the freezer before it realizes it’s dead.  The aftermath (aftermath, I like that connotation) of the challenge follows.

Ganesh Teaching

Now the question is whether obstacles were removed.  This may be the subtlety of Ganesh.  I thought that the obstacle to be removed was the seemingly necessary death of this plant staying outside in so cold a winter.  Apparently the obstacle to be removed was my thinking that it would live.  What an effective removal of an obstacle!  A great magic indeed.

Now of course my ignorance is deep and persistent.  I have another such Eucalyptus and I think it fair to believe another winter will come.  Surely it cannot be that death must befall it, surely.  Surely?  We will see, of course.

Pepino Resurgent

When something refuses to die, and not counting Bruce Springsteen’s question ‘Is a dream alive that didn’t die, or is it something worse?’, I usually am impressed.  Tenacity in nature.  One such is the pepino below.

Pepino

Not speaking of the orange thing either, which never (I sincerely hope) was alive, notice those leaves at 1 o’clock.  Late in the summer of 2012 I planted the seed that became this pepino.  It wintered uneventfully and may have attained 10 leaves before spring 2013 came.  That summer it showed that the stalks really wanted to re-root, and it did so majorly and all of ten stalks arose – no flowers though.  Brought in with the autumn, it throve till March or so – even flowered, but no pollinators were around.  Then the eviscerating bugs got a jump it, those with wings and webs, so I put it outside a few days in April, taking it in at night to protect it from frost.  One night I goofed and it just could not take 30 degrees.  Sure looked dead.  Hard no to believe in this one though, especially knowing it had some very vibrant rooting tendencies, so I watered the dead thing for a few weeks, just until the chance of frost had passed, and out it went.  Not ten days later, up comes the green.

The heroic micro-drama, aye.

Where are the five Swans now?

When the last update was given on the great journey our protagonists were a trifle chilled and moldy, not exactly comfortable but going unabashed down the road of great promise.

Today they are just not sure they are going to make it to that hallowed state of permanent things.  Indeed, one of them was remarking to me about Ozymandias and sphinxes and that really that there are no permanent things and that it’s a farce to go for that and that they should go to Hollywood or better Vegas and bill themselves as the Five Swans and see how it goes, that they have at least as good a chance of making it there as they do in the quest for permanence.

The five swans ASome gourd enthusiast was telling me that for a gourd to cure properly it needs to have had 120 days of 80 degree temperatures.  These guys are lucky if they got seventy days of eighty degree temperatures.  There is only one where the body or neck does not have a crack and the walls are not at all substantial as compared to most of the gourds I’ve gotten from the American heartland.  Hearing that they might not have what it takes made this group of gourds agitated.  Made them question the meaning of being.  They are turning into angry philosophers on their way back to the earth.  ‘Ozymandias!’, one keeps muttering, over and over, as if there was something that must be understood by the listener.

 

Early Spring 2014

April 17th, in particular

Budding hyacinthsBudding hyacinths

A crocus –

Crocus

And best of all, lilies ambush a brick paver.  Notice how they have surrounded it.  I am not sure if they plan to lift it up and throw it or to break it into little pieces, but they are clearly on the march this April.

Lilies ambush paving brick

Early Spring 2014 – Many themes

To begin with, here near Concord, MA, we’re at April 5th and the snow is just leaving the ground.  The crocuses started to bloom a few days ago, buds are fattening, but it still freezes at night.

I saw one I’ve never seen be so bold as to come to the bird food on the deck.  I was able to walk pretty close to him before he or she decided to scamper.20140402 A

Now one of the great experiments over the winter was the planting of a previously potted Eucalyptus Neglecta at the feet of a brass statue of Ganesh in a small garden built for said Ganesha.  The garden was under snow until a week ago and now the eucalyptus is revealed somewhat the worse for the wear but with still a few encouraging bits of green.  Frozen string beans are green too, so this does not necessarily indicate abiding life.  We’ll have to see what does or does not spring forth, but this is just part of the wabi sabi journalism we do here.

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Speaking of, we do have a casualty to report.  In his life he was an ebullient fellow, known to his friends as ‘bear dog’.  Here he is pictured in brighter days.

Bear Dog with Daisies2

 

He was born just after the turn of the century from the trunk of a wild cherry that had overgrown it’s location.  For many years he peacefully attended our comings and goings.  Never had he a cross word.  He lay in state for a few days (pictured below).  Plans for his final disposition remain private at the request of the family.

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His friend Cat Pig, pictured below, said of him that he had never encountered one less inclined to complain of his suffering.  “He was a simple inspiration”, said Cat Pig.

Stone Cat 1

Whispers of his passing swept through the local community of artificers.  Just today there appeared what was described as a model of a burial mound.  Not many details were yet available but his impact on that community was clear.

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Cat Pig went on – “While Hobbes, in Leviathan, said ‘For what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many strings; and the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body, such as was intended by the artificer?’ I do not think that we need to work backwards as this logic does.  I would rather that we go looking for the bear dog equivalent of an homunculus and posit a sort of inverted formation path, of spirit arising from flesh.  I’d almost like to posit that while the artificer, whoever that might be, set forth bear dog in part from the imagination and in part from this manifold flux, that with such seeds new things arise, things uncontemplated previously, things that change the world.  Don’t be surprised if you read the newspapers and see reference to the doings of some seeming ursid/canid sprite – it’s just squarely in the realm of the imagination.

And so Spring begins.

Tom at the door

This morning

Tom at the door

There are three toms who hang together and have been visiting pretty frequently this winter. This morning one was a little less shy than usual.  This is a really high definition image, I recommend maximizing it.

Tom