Monday, November 25, 2024
Caring for the birds in winter
Wednesday, October 26, 2022
One of Mary Oliver's most popular poems--The Summer Day
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
+ Mary Oliver
I first came across the last two lines of this poem before I knew that there was an entire poem in front of them. This poem is from Mary Oliver's House of Light collection. I've since purchased several volumes of her poetry and am savoring them as I read them. So much of what she writes about is a reminder for us to be truly mindful (before it became a trendy word), to be present in our own lives. She wants us to pay attention to our own life and the life around us--insects, birds, fish, small animals and large animals. In some of her other poems she even wonders about what stones feel and think. I love that.
In this poem, her way of praying is to pay attention, to fall and kneel in the grass, to be idle and blessed, even though she isn't really sure what a prayer is. But what is prayer if not this? She cultivated the ability to 'wonder', to be surprised by and grateful for nature at every turn. 'Wonder' is defined as 'a feeling of amazement and admiration, caused by something beautiful, remarkable, or unfamiliar'. It is the wonder we experienced as children when we came across something beautiful or unfamiliar. I know I felt wonder when I as a child looked at the underside of fern fronds and saw spores, which are the ferns' method of reproduction, or when we went on a field trip and went looking for moss's reproductive structures. Or observed lichen growing on a rock. Or when we collected leaves from different trees in the autumn. Or when we saw snow-laden branches on a fir tree, how beautiful they looked, or ice formations in small brooks and even on the Hudson River. I knew wonder when my father and I sat at his desk in the evening with the small microscope he and my mother bought for me, and we looked at the already-prepared slides of diatoms (single-celled algae) that came with the microscope set. So amazing to see these magnified tiny organisms that make their home in sea water and fresh water.
I think if we retain our ability to wonder throughout our lives, we will be able to tap into our 'child lives'. Not childish or silly lives, but rather lives that are open to the world. A kind of purity of soul, uncontaminated by the negativity and evil around us. Innocent as it were. It's not easy. But if we say no to cynicism and negativity, we leave more room for wonder. It's a good start.
Saturday, July 31, 2021
Summer days in July
It is still summer in Oslo, in fact, it's been quite a warm summer from mid-June until now. My garden is thriving; we've already eaten zucchinis and cucumbers that grew quickly in the summer heat. We will have a bumper crop of tomatoes this year--both regular and cherry tomatoes. Whenever I am away from the garden for a few days, as I was now while we vacationed in Hedmark, and then come back to the garden, I am always in awe of just how much growth can occur in the space of a few days. Yesterday was the first day I was back in the garden after having been away since Monday. There were gooseberries and raspberries to pick, and the blueberries are also starting to ripen. I still have a formidable job of berry-picking ahead of me. The two gooseberry bushes alone are weighed down by the sheer numbers of berries on them. As I was picking raspberries, I was competing for each berry with the honeybees, who are now sucking the nectar out of the raspberries. They did that last year as well, but there were very few of them. This year it's as though all the worker bees descended on the raspberry patch.
Today is the last day of July, and next week it will be back to work for most of us. I will finish out the month of August and then I am free forever of the work world. But that is another story for another time. Today I want to share with you Mary Oliver's beautiful poem The Summer Day. The feelings and thoughts she describes in her poem are about where I am in life at present--willing to immerse myself in the nature around me, willing to abandon myself to the awe and wonder of it all. A garden is God's manifestation of a miracle in nature; how a pollinated flower produces a long hanging cucumber is a mystery and a miracle at the same time. I never cease to be amazed by the power and beauty of nature. I have said it before, but it's worth repeating--it is no surprise to me that paradise is described as the garden of Eden. Paradise for me would have to be a garden.
The Summer Day
Wednesday, July 14, 2021
Nature's gifts
When my husband and I lived in San Francisco for a year (back in 1993), we visited Muir Woods, which was one of the most memorable places we visited that year. This national monument has many old redwood trees, some of which are more than 150 years old. I remember being in awe of the redwood trees, how tall they are, how beautiful, and how amazing it is that they exist. Muir Woods was named for John Muir, the Scottish-born American naturalist, writer, and advocate of U.S. forest conservation (info from Wikipedia). Just some background for this quote for today, which is so true. Nature provides connection with the life around us, peace, solitude, silence, and simple joy.
Sunday, January 10, 2021
When people think they are god
Time moves us on, away from unpleasant events and unpleasant people. Given enough time, chaos evolves into calmness and life begins to feel more normal. Balance is restored. That is the way of the world. Nature for example, continues to do what it always has done. Provide us with beautiful views of sunrises and sunsets, of pristine lakes, of snow-covered mountains, gorgeous gardens and green forests. But where there is beauty there is also brutality. Where there is life there is also death and decay. Where there is paradise on earth, we know that there is also hell on earth. We know that from all of the nature documentaries that drive those points home. We are careful when we are in nature, because it is wild and unpredictable. There are earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, landslides--natural catastrophes that we cannot prevent or warn about with 100% effectiveness. We cannot just wander onto a mountain covered in snow and ignore avalanche warnings. We would not sail a boat out onto the ocean in the middle of a hurricane. We use reason to create a relationship with nature that we can live with, in order to co-exist peacefully with it. Sometimes we try to subdue it and sometimes we are successful at it. But we cannot tame it.
Nature is a reminder that there is good and evil in the world. Both exist independently of man. If humans had never set foot on the earth, there would still be gorgeous sunsets and hellish volcanoes and tsunamis. There would still be gentle animals and brutal ones. There would still be life and death.
Human beings did set foot on the earth. Mankind became a part of nature, and has even tried to dominate nature. But humans will never succeed at that. Human beings have tried their best during all the centuries to dominate nature and other humans in the quest for power and greed. Many humans don't understand this obsession with power and greed; I am one of them. When this obsession gets out of hand, as it has especially during the past decade, nature supplies a correction that we are forced to focus on because if we don't, it means that many human beings will die. The current pandemic is a good example of such a correction. A vaccine may help to control it, but there will come other pandemics. There have always been, and always will be, bacteria and viruses that infect animals and humans. They exist in nature, independently of man's existence. Sometimes human beings make critical mistakes, that lead to bacteria and viruses getting the upper hand. Sometimes those mistakes are made in the name of greed and power. Hubris is a major failing in human beings, and has far-reaching consequences. Hubris says that man can do whatever he likes in and with nature. He cannot.
I bring all this up in light of the current political situation in the USA. Nature does not care about Donald Trump, nor does he care about nature. That is a problem by itself. Corrections will continue to come regardless of whether he cares or not. But if he was more respectful toward everything, he might contribute to a world where respect for the power of nature increased. As it stands now, he does not understand his role as leader or even why he exists. He has abused his position and disgraced our country. His gods are greed and power. The irony is not lost on me that it is under his administration that a pandemic arose. From a scientific point of view, I know that it is merely a random event in nature; it could just as well have arisen under Biden. But its emergence in the age of Trump is simply one more reminder of the importance of having respect for nature, for its wildness, its unpredictability, its brutality. It is a reminder that we cannot ignore the natural world because it doesn't 'fit' with our plans. He is not a person for whom respect is important. I would imagine that if he could, he would bend and destroy nature to suit his purposes. He thinks he is God.
Friday, September 28, 2018
Nature is a good reminder of all that's right with the world
Thursday, March 23, 2017
Birds, wild animals and food and reflections on Cities (Planet Earth II)
One of David Attenborough’s Planet Earth II episodes, Cities, dealt with the topic of how wild animals and birds have adjusted to city life, because food is plentiful and they don’t have to spend hours scrounging for a meal. There are the hyenas in Ethiopia, who enter the city of Harar each night to receive meat from the butcher shops and city dwellers who are not afraid of them. Those were amazing scenes, but also scary ones to witness. There are the leopards in Mumbai, India who hunt the pigs and small animals on the city outskirts and in the parks by night, where humans walk. There are the monkeys in Singapore that steal fruit and vegetables from the city produce markets. There are the peregrine falcons in New York City who feed on the numerous city pigeons. And so on. Many of these animals and birds are not afraid of humans or the masses of humans in cities, and that is a good thing from the standpoint of their getting more than enough food to eat. It is a bad thing for us if some of the carnivores decide to add humans to their menu. In any case, it is interesting to observe the wild animal and bird world (from the safety of our living room couches) and to marvel at how well they adapt to the growth/expansion of cities and to the loss of their natural habitats. That is not always a good thing. I would prefer that wild creatures remain in the wild, for their sakes and for ours, but mostly theirs.
Sunday, February 26, 2017
Sunday's photographic treasures
the beautiful Akerselva (Aker river) |
Akerselva |
Akerselva |
Akerselva |
unsigned street art, or is BT the artist? |
unsigned street art |
Gamle Aker church |
Kjærlighetsstien |
Friday, September 16, 2016
Connection to nature
It's been a very warm September, so my pumpkins are almost ready to harvest. I've already harvested two of them, one that is fifteen pounds and the other eight pounds. I planted twelve pumpkin plants and each of them yielded a pumpkin; the slugs ate one, leaving eleven, of which ten have grown to maturity. I'm still getting runner beans and string beans, but all other veggies are done for the season. I plan on drying some of the runner beans so that I can get seeds for planting next year. The corn was very good, just small, so next year I'll plant corn in richer soil so that it can grow larger. The hollyhocks and daisies are still blooming. I've been working hard prepping the garden for winter--taking up dead plants, cutting dead branches, and preparing the soil for next spring. Plus mowing the lawn and raking up dead leaves and dried grass to use as soil cover.
I bought honey from the garden's beekeeper who was selling small and large jars of the honey he had collected from hives in our community garden and from the Botanical Garden here in Oslo. It's very good honey, and it's kind of cool to know that my garden contributed to the honey that the bees made. I love that idea.
ripening pumpkins |
runner beans |
two harvested pumpkins |
honey from our community garden; soldugg means 'sundew' |
Sunday, August 31, 2014
A visit to Duke Farms
near entrance to Duke Farms |
sycamore allée--Duke Farms |
unsure what kind of bird this is |
notice the frog sitting on the rock |
algae-covered pond in background |
the foundation for a mansion that JB Duke never built |
dead tree in algae-covered lake |
the Great Falls empty into Vista Lake (not much flowing water at the time this photo was taken) |
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
The feeling of Easter--walking along the Akerselva river
Flirting at the river's edge |
Reaching for the sun |
Pigeons roosting |
Magpie nest |
Hanging blooms |
Reflections of spring |
The Akerselva River winding its way through Oslo |
River curve and tree shadow |
Ivy on its way to taking over a wall |
Daffodils add color to the greens |
The waterfall at Hønsa Lovisas house |
Tulips are a true sign of spring |
Monday, December 31, 2012
Winter comes to Norway
The Spinners--It's a Shame
I saw the movie The Holiday again recently, and one of the main characters had this song as his cell phone ringtone. I grew up with this mu...