Posts Tagged ‘nature’
accents in red
We are still in the greys and browns of spring.
There are a few wildflowers blooming. The Coltsfoot is spreading carpets of yellow along the roadside. And flowers in the deep hardwoods have begun to display their delicate beauty. But most places are drab and colorless.
I watch for red this time of year. There are a few red berries, still clinging to their branches after winter.
And the stems of Red Osier Dogwood (Cornus stolonifera Michx.) are brilliant in the fields and ditches.
My favorite ‘red’ of spring is the muted red of the blueberry fields.
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fancy
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the blueberry barren
is faded scarlet
red osier in ditches
rosebush and hawthorn
a single berry, a single haw
Earth in brown
toenails red
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© Jane Tims 2012
oldfield
In my posts this summer, the space I expect to feature prominently is our summer property.
I’ve talked about this place before. One end of the property is along a lake (see ‘course of the creek’, September 12, 2012, and ‘ice is nice’, December 21, 2011, both under the category ‘waterways’). The lake edge is a bright forest of cedar, hemlock, birch and oak, and includes a beautiful marsh. We sit on our bench in the woods and look out at the lake, watching loons and deer and ducks. Once I saw an eagle plummet from the sky and dive into the water with a huge splash, to emerge with a good-sized fish in his talons.
Most of the property was/is an oldfield. When we bought the property in 2004, we bought an open field, thick with blueberry bushes and grass that rippled in the ever-present wind. There were a few trees, mostly bushy pine, spared year after year by the farmer’s bushhog. The field had been home to a herd of buffalo (bison) and we still find the dry, dusty evidence of their wallows.
The keyword in the last paragraph is ‘bushhog’! The farmer offered to keep the field mowed, but we are very independent. We were certain we could keep ahead of the various trees and alders sprouting everywhere.
The result has been the usual progress of an oldfield in the process of succession. Today our pines still punctuate the property, and there are enough blueberries to keep us satisfied, but other spaces have emerged… the alder swale, the maple grove, the path through the birches, the blackberry barrens, and, of course, our tiny cottage. There is a bit of grassy field still remaining and we struggle to keep it intact.
east boundary of our property, with our cedar rail fence, looking toward our neighbor's mowed field
When we go to the property I like to think about how it is changing, right before our eyes. Those buffalo would have a hard time recognising the place.
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evidence of buffalo
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“…in this field, years ago, I kept buffalo….”
beef farmer, selling his land
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massive posts brace a page fence
woven with wire birch
dusty wallows where soil is crushed
and only lichen will grow
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three apple trees trodden
parallel to ground
grey feed trough
strung together with nails
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cedar waxwings search the fence
coarse hairs for their nests
winds nuzzle and whisper
through the brush of pine
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© Jane Tims 2012
a moment of beautiful – ice in the ditch
the space: a ditch along the road
the beautiful: a skim of new ice
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When nights are icy cold after a day of spring warmth, water freezes in the ditches. Ephemeral, this skim of new ice will be gone as soon as the morning sun overtops the trees.
The ice is frail, but if you are careful, you can lift a pane of this natural glass and see the world through a different window.
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ditch ice
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on the last sub-zero night in March
we forge swords and slivers
cast a lens, a barrier to warm
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below ditch ice are sinuous
arrangements of water and breath
nostrils grope for airways
peer through frozen skim
as though through windows
learn the underside of pane
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© Jane Tims 2012
Dutchman’s-breeches (Dicentra Cucullaria (L.) Bernh.)
Our first summer home was located in a rich hardwood of Sugar-Maple (Acer saccharum Marsh.), Beech (Fagus grandifolia Ehrh.) and White Ash (Fraxinus Americana L. ). In these woods, in early spring, as the snow melted, wildflowers found ideal habitat. Many plants take advantage of the few days when the leaves of the overstory trees are still developing, and there is bright light in the understory of the woods.
One of these wildflowers is Dutchman’s-breeches (Dicentra Cucullaria (L.) Bernh.). This charming little plant blooms early in spring, in rich, rocky hardwoods. The white flowers are two-spurred, in groups of four to ten along a stem held just above finely divided, feathery leaves.
The plants is also known as breeches-flower, cullottes de Hollandais, and dicentre à capuchon. The generic name is from the Greek di meaning twice and centron meaning a spur. Cucullaria is the old generic name meaning hoodlike. The plant was named by Johann Jacob Bernhardi.
The flowers of Dutchman’s-breeches are an example of plant adaptation for pollination. The flower has a clever mechanism, in the form of fused flower parts, to ensure only certain insects (such as the bumblebee) can access the nectar and pollen.
In my copy of Roland and Smith (The Flora of Nova Scotia), I recorded my first encounter with this little plant – April 28, 1985, during one of our first visits to our property before we purchased it. We called our cabin Whisperwood, in part because of the subtle breezes in those wildflower-dotted spring woods.
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Dutchman’s Breeches
Dicentra Cucullaria (L.) Bernh.
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Dutchman’s breeches
brighten in sun
woodland washdays
have begun
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spring-clean trousers
hung in rows
inflated with breath
the May wind blows
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sprites are playing
tossing their hoods
above the damp
in the spring-fed woods
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little fairy laundry
trembles on the line
before greening trees
block spring sunshine
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© Jane Tims 1993
maple sap soda fountain
For the last two days, the maple sap has been running again. The nights have been below freezing and the days are sunny and warm. Yesterday, we had 12 liters of sap from our 10 trees. The day before, we collected about 5 liters.
Each tree has its own rhythm of drips. Our best producer today drips at a rate of about 9 drops every 5 seconds, or 108 drops per minute.
This evening, I had my ‘drink the sap from the tree’ experience. I took a small glass and caught the drips for a couple of ounces of the sweetest water ever. To me, the sap of each tree has its own taste. The sap from the big maple tree by our front door tastes a lot like cream soda without the fizz!
The maple sap is crystal clear, although it will turn dark amber (No. 2 Amber, according to our grading in Canada) once we boil it down to syrup.
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droplet
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one drop of maple sap
from the spile
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a seep from slate
at the waterfall edge
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in rain, a tear
from the margin of a leaf
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a pause in the envelope
between rough bark and aluminum
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© Jane Tims 2012
keeping watch for dragons #4 – a dragon overhead
Have you ever had a raven fly directly over your head? If so, you have heard the rhythmic compression of air, too intense to have been made by feathers…
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a dragon overhead
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a raven flies over
thrashes the air
percussion of dragon wing
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© Jane Tims 2012
maple syrup ups and downs
It may be a short maple syrup season this year. The weather has not been cooperative. In order for the sap to run, warm days are great, but the nights need to be cold. When the temperatures fall below zero, the sap in the tree runs from the crown to the roots. When the day is warm and sunny, the sap runs back up to the canopy. If there is no cold night, no sap.
So far we have collected about 40 liters of sap from our 10 trees and I have 3 bottles (each 500 ml or two cups) of lovely dark syrup! This compares to 136 liters of sap last year on the same date, from 12 trees.
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Cold night, warm day
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Icicles build
from the spile
sweet sickles of sap
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© Jane Tims 2012
Coltsfoot (Tussilago Farfara L.)
Although it has been snowing sporadically this month, our recent days of very, very warm weather tell me spring has arrived. As a result, I am watching the roadsides for the first flowers of spring. Even before the snow is out of the woods, it begins to melt along the roadsides as they warm in the lengthening hours of sun. And the cycle of bloom begins again.
Coltsfoot (Tussilago Farfara L.) is one of the first plants seen in early spring. It forms large patches in waste areas, beside brooks and roads, and on damp hillsides. People often mistake Tussilago for Dandelion, but it is quite different. Its yellow flowers are borne on scaly, leafless stems. The large, woolly leaves don’t appear until later in the season. In spite of its early appearance in spring, Tussilago actually has late flowers. The flower buds are formed in autumn at the base of the plant, and pass winter underground, flowering in the first spring sunlight.
Other names for the plant are Son-before-the-Father, which refers to the appearance of flowers before the leaves, and pas-d’âne (literally donkey-steps). The scientific names are from the Latin tussis, meaning a cough, referring to the use of the plant as a remedy for such ailments, and the Latin word for coltsfoot, farfarus. The plant was named by Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist who established the present day system of naming plants.
Although the plant was used by pioneers for its medicinal effects, it is now known that Tussilago contains harmful alkaloids. Tea made from Coltsfoot has caused health problems in infants and pregnant women, so its use as a cough remedy is not recommended. In some States, Coltsfoot is considered a noxious weed.
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Coltsfoot
Tussilago Farfara L.
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Gold-
splashed beside the road
like prints
of a frisky colt’s feet
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at first glance-
an early dandelion!
but-
too early
stem scaly
no leaves below the bloom
no perfume.
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Coltsfoot,
Son-before-the-Father
(flowers before the leaves).
Introduced from
far, far away.
Old wives say
boiled greens
will ease
a cough.
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Long ago
Tussilago
sprang from where
a burro trod
among the palms
(pas-d’ane)
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Published as: ‘Coltsfoot’, Winter 1993, The Antigonish Review 92:76-77.
Revised
© Jane Tims 1993
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maple syrup time
Well, the time has finally arrived. The nights are cold and the days this week are predicted to be sunny and warm. In our house the combination of cold days and warm nights means the sap is moving in our maple trees.
We tap Red Maple (Acer rubrum L.), although Sugar-maple (Acer saccharum Marsh) is preferred by commercial syrup producers. Last year we tapped 12 trees, about at the edge of our low-tech capability. This year we are tapping 10 trees.
We usually use the ‘old-fashioned’ spile and aluminum bucket method. This year, for the first time, my husband is trying a plastic spile and pipe system for 5 of our taps. It seems a little easier since the sap drips directly into a plastic reservoir and this eliminates one step in the endless pouring process.
For those of you unfamiliar with tapping trees for sap, the basic idea is to collect the sap and boil it down to make maple syrup. We select a tree, bore a hole, insert a spile and hang a bucket on the spile hook. The spile is a cleverly designed spigot which channels the sap from inside the tree into the bucket. The bucket is fitted with a cover to keep out rainwater or snow and reduce insect access.
So far this year, we have collected 25 liters of sap. This will boil down at about 40 to 1 to make a little more than 500 ml of syrup (about 2 cups). Last year, from a season total of 329 liters of sap, we made about 40 pint jars of syrup. If you try to calculate that at 40 to 1, it will never come out correctly since we don’t boil all of the sap to the same concentration and we drink some of the sap as a sweet drink.
Collecting maple sap is so much fun. It is good exercise and a great way to get your dose of warm spring sunshine. And, we have enough maple syrup to last for the year.
I’ll be keeping you up to date on our maple syrup adventures this year. Right now, the pot full of sap is boiling on the deck.
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sugar song
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cold nights
warm days
cold nights
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sap plucks stainless steel
different rhythm, every tap
quick and dead slow
in sync
with the downy woodpecker
or the bird with the round warble in its throat
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© Jane Tims 2012
snippets of landscape – ice falls on rock walls
When highways are built, they often cut through the bedrock, leaving rock walls along the margins of the road. If these intersect a brook or seep of water, the result is a waterfall on the face of the rock. In spring or summer, rains can create wild cataracts. In winter the water freezes, building frozen walls of blue-shadowed ice. In sunlight, especially when they begin to melt, these ice falls are dazzling.
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one warm hand
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icicles seep between
layers of rock frozen
curtains separate
inner room from winter storm
glass barrier between blue
light and sheltered eyes
memory of water flows
along the face of the rock
one warm hand melts ice
consolation, condensation
on the inward glass
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© Jane Tims 2012
