Grid Happy

   Working on design for the Girard avenue subway station in Philadelphia. Need:  foil, to make actual size panels and imagination.

   Departure from usual routine: walking at Blue Marsh, and largely along the trails made from rural roads through a process of maintenance atrophy. On one slope, the erosion of blacktop exposes slate layers.

   Deprived of herons. In stead: a wet, unleashed happy yellow lab whose name might be Biscuit if that is what the owner called out. A prime Queen Anne’s Lace flower the size of a dinner plate. Row of rolled straw bales in the morning sun the shadows making a kind of archway pattern. The hickory nuts are plentiful. A tan couple, he carrying a to go cup of coffee, quiet sort.

   On the drive home, behind a van with a red dog halfway out the passenger side window, catching the breeze.

Big Poppy

Dear Reader,

   In search of photograph of Big Poppies from Ikea that was on Craigslist. Do you have it?

Sincerely,

The Heron Report

p.s. It ain’t over til the Big Papi swings.

Old-Fashioned Nature Walk with Porcupine Pat

 

Porcupine Pat McKinney shows soapwort

 

      On Location: Kaercher Creek Park, Hamburg, Pennsylvania. Park date 7.11

    “See the spider traps on the juniper?” asked Porcupine Pat McKinney. “On a field the size of a soccer field there may be 300,000 of these. Even steel isn’t that strong.”

    The Schuylkill Conservation District Environmental Educator explored within a compact area and condensed time frame an open number and array of natural subjects: from tensile to edible to toxic to utile.

    McKinney Mythbuster: sassafras has four, not three, different shaped leaves: The single lobe, the three-lobed and the two lobed or mitten: left-thumb and a right-thumb!

   McKinney Emcee: Will the real ragweed please stand up? Not to be confused with goldenrod.

   McKinney Audio: That was the sound of a squirrel warning!

   McKinney Mixology: To make Indian tea, mix cold water with staghorn sumac and flavor to taste.

   McKinney Maple Module: Helicopter, nose ornament, OR earlobe piece.

   McKinney Magic: Touch Me Not, or jewelweed seeds release when the cornucopia-like flower is touched. And you can eat them.

   McKinney Olfactory: Every season has its smell.

   McKinney Video: How do you know when an animal is prey? Predator?

Special thanks to Berks County Parks and Recreation: www.countyofberks.com/parks

Pickerel weed

M M and M Phlox Nest Hunter

 

Phlox Nest

 

Four day, Purple reigns.  Purple four-lobed wild phlox is in bloom, tall and simple. A blossom is upside-down and becomes a pathling, a natural object or assemblage that occurs naturally or by accident in the path.

Two-toned slate and black catbirds in the trees. A black and blue-slate heron flies under the red covered bridge, skims the two feet of airspace above the creek for a smooth ride.

 A portion of robin’s nest fallen from its aerie, blue shell bits in the grass of it.

 Abandoned goose eggs at the locks; the geese, feeding in the swampy locks pond, fail to defend the nest when I step close enough to be a shutterbug. Fail? Hold it; they don’t even try.

   The letter “M” is written in the path. An “H” which is linked with the name Hun*ter, as it is written and spoken, broken into two syllables. Another ‘M’ and another. Each one about three inches by three inches.

   On my way back something unpleasant if entirely natural, a half eaten fish regurgitated or lost in transit. The bones of the filet stand out, some flesh, the tail and some innards. Orange roe. I sense a change in conditions.

   The GIANT PAID sticker that’s been on the path for several days is now deteriorated. Once it was whole, round, sticky and fluorescent orange-red. Now it is distressed, pale orange and white, and too limp to lift intact. It could not have been regurgitated. How it was lost in transit here, found here?

It’s four-letter day, the 13th, and a letter 4 day. $$$$ Bird’s nest soup! 4getmenot.

Hi Mom

Phil and Annjeannette

   I wish everyone could know my mom.  Her name is Annjeannette. She is sweet. She is beauty. 

   After breakfast, we wash her face, brush her teeth and apply some lipstick. We sign out of the assisted living unit to take in the beautiful bright and windy Mothers’ Day morning.

    There is a panorama of farmland and manicured retirement village. Horses grazing and a cell tower. Green fields, azaleas and Gerbera daisies. We plan to sit and watch the vegetables grow.

“Shall we call Uncle Phil?” I ask.

“Yes!” she replies, she would like to talk to her brother.

A heron flies overhead that very moment.  What are the odds?

   A conversation with my mom these days is creatively constructed and rarely follows a normal path. What Uncle Phil hears on his side of the cellular phone is difficult to say. I know it does my mother good to hear his voice. When they were children and their mother was at work, he would play opera records for her.  He says the most beautiful sound there is is the sound of the human voice.  Aria!

   “Your mother was the most organized person I ever saw,” he told me some time ago when we drove together to visit. “She always carried a little notebook in which to write everything down.”

   After the call, we venture to the water garden. To get her up out of the wheelchair requires balance, focus and patience. It  feels good to help her stand and stretch and hold her.  We sit on a swinging bench. She looks uncomfortable. I swivel her legs so she’s reclining with her head in my lap and we remember her mother, Lillian. Of all things, bright and beautiful; exacting, and never a line on her face.

 ” Let’s plant some flowers for Grammie,” I say.

“Oh that would be wonderful!” says my mother. It’s one of the few full sentences she’ll say. So we swing and enjoy the sun and the water babbling and when she gets too chilly go inside. The dual metal spiral sculpture spins, a pinwheel, a flower, into eternity.

    Before we return to her room to listen to The Merchant of Venice tapes, we sit by the fire and sample some cheese and grapes.

   There is a little quilt display in the hall and write-ups from each of the residents who made them.

   The colors and patterns – cats and paws and fruits and stars and checkerboards – catch her eye and I ask: ‘ Here are their stories, shall we read them?’ She’s quiet, quiet as can be, considering these fabrications. Listening to other people’s stories and hers is not among them.

    I am reminded of when she was moving here and said to me:

   “I guess I didn’t make very much of my life.”

   Let me say “Oh, Mommy!  You are the best mother anyone ever had! ”

   If she were a quilt she could not be contained on this wall or this hall; her story is so far beyond a one-page synopsis. Always there for us, never letting us leave empty-handed.  To express her love of paper products and stationery would take reams. To list the books she has explored and shared, volumes. To show you the gardens and places she’s gone, album after album. 

   How to say at holidays the gifts she wrapped were too beautiful to open? 

    In truth she is a finely-stitched garden full of the most artistic, generous and wonderful flowers and plants imaginable and paths both stimulating and soothing.  Full of surprise and interesting elements. And her smile, Well, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Dandelion Stella

 

Dandelion Stella

 

   Stars on stems. With a button in the middle like those round spongey things on the backs of picture frames. That’s what the male dandelions look like after the white seeds have gone. Stunning little weeds that they are. Wading herons and walking goslings, yellow downy and fluffy like a dandelion globe.

Muse Planet Arbor

   Without the um, arium and etum;  visited the grounds of  the Reading Public Museum Saturday .

Broken Arrow

  

 

 An extra envelope of moisture is in the air this morning, and the early sun highlights the spider webs in the wild woods.  

 ”You need a foghorn out here today!” one of the runners says.

  A heronless morning, as far as I can see. The bloodroot flowers look like white sable paintbrushes, tight smooth cones and the celandine, picked and flattened, shows as the simplest flower and that is peace. A chipmunk shows up.

   Near the end point of this writer’s walk, find a broken paper arrow, aqua on one side and partial green on the other.

4.5 Periwinklephus

Periwinkle plus

Periwinkle (aka Myrtle) blooms this morning, five-petal pinwheels, they are.

 As a member of the dogbane family, the plant is, therefore, the bane of dogs which are disallowed in the park anyway.

 Glorious sunshine, green grass, trees, limestone walls in an ess curve. Divine blue skies from which nothing can be divined because they are without a mark.

 

 

Opportunity costs. If I do item X on my to do list, it means I may be unable to do item Y. To do Y and Z costs X.  There is so much to and prioritizing is necessary.

 

 The Eggstravaganza egg hunt was yesterday; colored chalk drawings are left behind. Presumably, all the eggs taken.  Something wicked this way comes.

 Dyed eggshell pieces on the path. I drive home to fetch the Nikon, hoping no runners and bicyclists disturb the arrangement in the next 14 minutes.

Have You Left Your Mark?

  

R Mark for Thursday

 

   Life would be simpler if we could use R as the abbreviation for Thursday.

   This morning is foggy and icy, the grassy margins of the path are more walkable than the middle. In the section I call the upper third, the air has the scent of sweaty horse/wet horse: earthy, fecund, damp.

   One heron stands at the helm of an island that has accumulated a good bit of natural junk: the logs and tree limbs that drift from upstream and find temporary lodging there. It flexes and flies, black wing tips and all,  in a hairpin loop, landing upon a limb a story above the water.

   At the 7 marker  lies a Pepsi can, left by someone operating under the law of spontaneous disposal.  It is an empty can bearing the headline: Have you left your mark?  Having picked it up, I read this pick up line on one side of the can: ” ‘Have we met before?’ Every aluminum can produced in the United States contains at least 50% recycled aluminum.”  I like this can designed by C.M. of Oak Creek WI.

   Make your own mark. “Do you come here often?” I can tell you SPENSA (or a ghost writer of Spensa) left a spray-painted mark on one of the trees along the bank.  And that I neglected to mention yesterday the first of the spring flowers appeared:  winter aconite, yellow heads waiting to open. Mark. Get set. Go.