The Pink Rain

This is one of my favorite times of the year. I call it the season of the Pink Rain, when the cherry petals drop and carpet the sidewalks.





The picture on the left was taken on April 28, when the sidewalks were peppered with petals like confetti.



The next two photos were taken on May 7 when the dusting of petals had become a carpet, filling the gutters with pink rain.




These last two photos were taken on May 14 and May 16 and show the heaps of petals covering parked cars and covering the surface of a decorative pool in front of an apartment building. The pink rain is almost over, alas!

A Trip to the Iris Farm in my New Car

On Mother's Day, I made a quick trip down to Schreiners Iris Farm just outside of Salem, Oregon. It's a pilgrimage I plan every year but seldom execute. This year the leisurely trip I planned ended up crunched into one grueling day of driving. But it was all so much more pleasant because I was driving my new car, which I bought last Mother's Day. That's a whole story in itself. I just thought I would celebrate the ease it has brought me. It's a 2007 Ford Focus and it really looks good parked next to my neighbor's tulips. I'll post more about the iris farm trip in a few days.

Fragrant Rhododendrons

Ever since I read the book Tales of the Rose Tree by Jane Brown and learned that the earliest rhododendrons, brought to England from Nepal and China by plant explorers, were fragrant, I’ve been searching for a fragrant rhododendron. Seattle is rhododendron city; there’s a rhodie on every block, practically every yard. It’s our state flower after all. But, despite sniffing every rhodendron I passed, I couldn’t find one with any scent. That’s partly because, as with other highly hybridized flowers, the scent has been bred out of them in favor of big blossoms and vivid colors.

Then on May 1, when I was leaving the Museum of History and Industry after a great reunion of Nearby History participants, I smelled the most intoxicating fragrance. I looked around and the only blossoms in sight were on a huge rhododendron with large white flowers. So I thought I would try sniffing the blossoms. Ah! A heavenly aroma. A truly fragrant rhododendron.

A few days later, I was celebrating an impromptu May ceremony with some friends, tossing wreaths into the lagoons at the end of the Arboretum, when I saw another white rhododendron, right next to the gatehouse that leads into Broadmoor. I pointed it out and we went over to smell it. Again, that intoxicating fragrance, a lot like honeysuckle. We stuck our noses deep into the blossoms to inhale the scent and when we raised our heads, there were smudges of pollen on our noses and sticky pistils. The flower had lured us, hapless pollinators, to spread its seed around. A perfect ending for May Day.

The photograph above is not either of the bushes described but it may be the same cultivar. This is Polar Bear and it’s a fragrant rhododendron offered for sale by Banwy Valley Nursery in the UK.

The Berkeley Horticultural Nursery has a wonderful list of fragrant rhododendron cultivars.

I was especially fascinated by the distinctions made in describing their scents. Bill Massey is very fragrant with cinnamon/chocolate overtones. Fragrantissimum smells of honeysuckle and nutmeg. And Fragrantissimum Improved has “an almost tropical fragrance with nuances of jasmine and cloves.” McNabbi smells like nutmeg and Mi Amor has hints of musk and tarragon. Paul Molinari has the scent of wild honeysuckle (I have a feeling this is the cultivar I enjoyed) while Scott’s Valentine smells like jasmine. It’s enough to make me run out and buy some rhododendrons for my garden.

One thing this flower project is doing for me is making me fall in love with flowers I always disdained (like the bergenia and the big showy, scentless rhodies).

May Flowers

As we do every May Eve, my daughter and I went out last night at midnight and wandered around our neighborhood in the dark, armed with bags and clippers, looking for fragrant flowers in the parkways and the alleyways (where we consider them fair game). This year, to our astonishment, there were no lilacs in bloom (except at the very top of the bushes where we couldn't reach them). We brought home a few buds hoping to force them in the warmth of our house but with no success. This tells me that spring is truly late this year (I've been refusing to believe it, since other flowers, like the daffodils, bloomed on time.) The only May flower which is blooming on time is the sweet woodruff, the plant traditionally used to flavor May wine.

The picture of the little basket is from last year when we had a better haul, and shows one of the offerings we left on all the doorknobs in our apartment building. This year we simply filled all the vases in our apartment.

Are your May Day flowers blooming on time or are they late, like ours?

The Mystery Plant

At the start of March, I embarked on a new topic in my year-long quest to learn about flowers. I began to focus on plant identification. I read Botany in a Day by Thomas J Elpel, a wonderful book that teaches you to identify plants by learning about plant families, then went out walking, eager to apply my newfound knowledge.

Unfortunately, I ran into a snag right away. I decided to identify the plant on the left. I call it the snail plant because snails love to eat the leaves and it usually looks pretty ratty by this time of year (the one on the left is looking pretty good). I used the process of keying out described by Elpel and quickly established that this was a Pyrola or wintergreen. I was thrilled! I had identified my first plant. Wanting to confirm my conclusion, I Googled Pyrola only to find out: this is not a Pyrola.

I was relating this story over lunch to some friends and one of them after hearing my description (round leaves with scalloped edges, pink flowers on red stalks) suggested my mystery plant was bear's britches. Again more excitement.

I rushed home and Googled Bear's Britches, the common name for acanthus mollis, the ancient plant whose leaves often decorate the capitals of Roman columns. Unfortunately, my plant is not Acanthus mollis (although I did have the good fortune, now that I know about it, to find an Acanthus on my walk to work this morning)

So I was sulking and feeling like I couldn't post anything because I was such a failure as an amateur botanist. Then I realized, this is what the Internet is for. One of you will surely recognize this plant. Can you tell me what it is? I look forward to your wisdom.

One thing that has happened as a result of my quest is that I now love this plant that I used to hate. I'm much more intimate with it now, having pried apart the five pink petals to count the ten tiny white stamens. I admire the combination of colors the bloom displays as it fades: the vivid magenta of the petals, the greenish-purple sepals and the deep maroon of the stem.

Spring Equinox in the City: An Iris Blooms!

It's not a glamorous photo but it records a sighting that made my heart leap with joy! The first iris bud of the year. Spotted at the corner of Broadway and John in Seattle on the first day of spring.

When I went to write this into my phenological journal, I noted that the first iris bud appeared in the front yard of the apartment building across the street a week earlier (Mar 13) in 2005. I wonder if there is one over there right now? I will have to go check.

Besotted by Violets

I spent the last week in a happy haze of violets.

It all began when I bought a chunk of violet-scented soap from Lush, my favorite source for hand-made soap and bath bombs.

It was named Gratuitous Violet in an internal rhyme that made me smile. Immediately, it became my favorite soap, a pleasure to slide over my skin, the sumptuous scent lingering on my skin in a shimmer of fragrance for hours. It reminded me of the scent of irises (and I have since learned they share a common chemical compound: ionone) which I love. It is floral without being pretty, sweet without being saccharine, with a hint of dark spiciness. It did not seem familiar to me, and this is probably good, since many people seem to associate the scent with old ladies doused with violets and powder.

The soap soon became an addiction. Alas, on my last trip to Lush on Winter Solstice, I discovered they were discontinuing this soap. I bought the largest piece I could afford and am still doling it out, one little slippery shard at a time, but meanwhile it was time to look for a new supply of violet scent.

I’ve been haunting perfume review sites for some months, eavesdropping on the fabulous discussions of perfumes far too expensive for me to dream of buying a bottle, where I learned about the Perfumed Court, a small company run by three women perfume addicts who got the bright idea of selling samples of decanted perfumes from those big expensive bottles so people like me could try these extravagant pleasures for a minimal price. I searched for “violets” on their web site and found that they offered a violet sampler which I immediately ordered.

While I was waiting for my violet sampler to arrive, I received an email from a Living in Season reader who had read my wistful comment that I had never smelled a real violet as I didn’t believe they grew in Seattle. Not so! She replied. Martha had violets growing in her yard and she volunteered to give me some for my garden. So last Sunday I drove to Martha’s house and we got on our hands and knees and pried them out from among the day lily bulbs.

Martha had several varieties: parma violets with their almost psychedelic red-violet color, and delicate pale apricot colored violets, but the real prize for me were the sweet violets (viola odorata). The tiniest of the lot, you couldn’t smell them unless you got down on your hands and knees and stuck your nose inches from the soil. No wonder violets are so often associated with humility (in the language of the flowers) as they bring us so low to appreciate their fragrance. But the scent! It was intoxicating! Martha told me she picks a few stems and floats them in water. The scent, she said, is so strong it imbues the water with fragrance.

I rushed my transplants home and planted them in my plot in the community garden. The apricot-colored violets have been the happiest with the transfer, but the others are surviving, though they still look a bit crushed. I did pluck three stems of the sweet violets and placed them in a glass of water on my desk where I could periodically reach out and bring it to my nose. The scent is heavenly.

And then my perfume sampler arrived. Thus began a week of prying open tiny glass bottles, one at a time (remembering one of my prized possessions as an adolescent, a box of perfume samples packing in skinny glass ampules, as thin as toothpicks, which you snapped open to release the few drops of liquid inside). Every night I daubed my wrists with violet-themed perfumes, then spent a happy hour trolling the Internet reading perfume reviews.

The jargon amazed and baffled me. Reviewers raved about silage and top notes, threw around terms like dry-off and dark base. It was like being at a wine tasting with a bunch of snobby connoisseurs. One reviewer found notes of blond hay, tobacco, mint, aniseed and violet in a perfume where I smelled merely intense, obnoxious sweetness. To my delight, the perfumes I liked the most were the simplest and the most true to the violet scent: Violetta di Bosco and Violettes de Toulouse, named after the French city which celebrates the violet with a festival every year. I think I will have to visit next year.

Song of the Plants

This is a picture of the first quince blossom I saw this year, taken February 25. But I didn't choose this picture to illustrate that important phenological event but simply because it's the best photograph I've taken to illustrate the rather mysterious topic of this blog.

When I first launched my project of getting to know the plants in my urban neighborhood, it wasn't really because I wanted to learn their Latin names or know what date they bloomed in a particular year but because I wanted a deeper connection with the natural world.

All through February I've been tracking and annotating the buds and blossoms, the proliferating of twigs on branches and the reddish haze at the top of the linden trees, even the elusive scents that are drifting through the spring air. But my phenological observations while helping me engage more with the natural world, still keep me at a distance. The plants are the objects of my scrutiny but they are still objects, data pinned in the pages of my notebook.

Then about a week ago I was walking home from work in the dark. And I became aware that my mind was churning over my list of to-dos, as it used to do during my walks before I became distracted by the plants. One of the lovely things about walking as a phenologist is that I'm freed from this sort of incessant mind chatter. But in the dark, it seemed I had no plants to observe.

My friend Janis had just remarked on how much she was enjoying reading one of Stephen Buhner's books about plants. He writes about how native healers in different cultures learn about the herbs they use medicinally. They say the plants speak to them, some say the plants even have specific songs that tell something about their character.

I wondered if I could tune in to the plants in the dark, so I walked a little more slowly, with curiosity, my head tilted a bit to see what I could hear. I was blown away by what I experienced. Every plant I passed was singing its own song. Mind you, I heard no distinct words, no instructions for their uses. But their personalities were distinct. Some were lively, some greedy, some dispirited (that was the English ivy).

I've felt the energy of trees before (I wrote an essay for my newsletter on tree hugging) but
this was more like walking through halos of energy, or clouds of lyrics sung in a foreign language. Walking in the dark past the plants and being aware of their presence was a miracle. I think maybe life is really like this all the time but we don't notice it.

Daffodils for St David

Last year I wrote a long post all about daffodils on this day. This year I thought I'd share photographs I took of the daffodils blooming in my neighborhood.

The daffodils on the left are growing in the garden of a nearby apartment building. The daffodils below, usually the earliest to bloom in our neighborhood, are in front of Horizon, the used bookstore on 15th.

I also went in and bought some cool gardening books during their 50% off sale. I got a copy of a hardcover book called called A Paradise out of a Common Field: The Pleasures and Plenty of the Victorian Garden by Joan Morgan and Allison Richards. Looks like it will be good for my Victorian historical novels as well as my garden research. Also a book with beautiful flower arrangements called Country Flower Style by Jane Newdick. Jane recommends displaying daffodils in bunches or with twigs. She says that they cause other flowers to die more quickly (I wonder why?).

I also got an amazing book called Lilies of the Hearth: The Historical Relationship Between Women and Plants by Jennifer Bennet. It covers, among other things, the way medieval women used plants in their stillrooms, plants and convents, the way botany became a pleasing area of study for 19th century women, and ends with biographies of some my plant heroines like Maud Grieve and Rachel Carson.

My rule about buying new books is that I have to take some off the shelf and give them away when I put more on. But I can't resist buying more books about plants and I'm not willing to give up any of my old ones.

The Red of Spring

Red has always been the color of spring to me, particularly March.

In Bulgaria, on March 1st, people tie red and white tassels called Martenitzas around the wrists of loved ones, also cars, house doors, trees, and young animals. These tassels are protection amulets that are worn until the first stork returns, signaling the beginning of spring.

In Eastern European countries, scarlet eggs were symbols of resurrection and were placed on or buried in the graves of the family dead. A Romanian tale says that eggs are dyed red to represent the blood of Christ. But the Chinese used to exchange scarlet eggs at their Spring Festival in 900 BCE, so it is more likely the red color is the symbol of life.

The month of March is named after the Roman god, Mars, also the name of the Red Planet. Before he was the god of war, Mars was the god of fertility and vegetation. And the new growth of spring is often red.

In the days when I drove up to Clear Lake once a week to visit my mentor and friend, Helen Faris, I always loved that time during the year when the woods on either side of the highway took on a rosy flush, an almost imperceptible halo of color, slowly replaced in the weeks that followed with green.

In my neighborhood the change is a little less obvious since the trees aren't assembled en masse. I often stop to gawk at individual trees and shrubs on my walk to work, convinced they've changed but unable to say exactly how. The first inklings of spring are invisible yet apparent.

As spring rolls on and the leaves unfurl, the shift to spring becomes visible. The twigs of trees flush red at the tips. Right now, the leaves unfurling on the rose bushes are as red as the roses will be later. The new leaves of the hebe (to the left) are dark red, almost violet.

And, of course, who can miss the magic of the ubiquitous photinia, a popular shrub all over Seattle because of this--it's one trick--the bright red of the new leaves which slowly deepen to a darker, rubbery green.

Thanks to a letter posted at my favorite phenology site, Journey North, I now understand why. Anthocyanins. Those pigments that are so good for you, which are found in the skins of grapes and blueberries, are present in the cells of plants, creating the red color which acts as a sort of sunscreen protecting the plant from too much sunlight. As the plant develops, it is able to absorb the sunlight and convert it to chlorophyll, the green pigment, which overshadows the red., which won't be seen again until fall when the leaves of trees die and stop producing chlorophyll and the anthocyanins flame out in their fall colors.

The Journey North web site suggested an experiment which I carried out. I poured some purple grape juice into three cups, filled with bleach, water and white vinegar respectively. The purple color of the grape juice completely disappeared in the bleach, while it intensified in color in the vinegar and became diluted in the water. Don't know what that's supposed to prove but it was fun.

How to Identify a Black Locust Tree in Winter

I spent the day getting signed up with the Budburst Project. I'm going to be reporting on nine plants that grow on my block. My instructions are to report the following markers: budburst (also known as first leaf, when at least three leaf buds have unfolded), full leaf (95% of leaf buds are unfolded), first flower (when you can see the stamens of the flower), full flower (when at least 50% of the flowers are open), end flower (when at least 95% of the flowers have dried up) and seed or fruit dispersal (when seeds or fruits start dropping naturally).

I chose the following plants from a long of possibilities.
American linden, common dandelion, common yarrow, forsythia, lilac, California poppy, purple passion flower, field mustard and white clover.
All can be found on my block except for the linden which is kitty corner from the northwest corner of my block.

I wanted to add a black locust tree to my list, since black locusts have always been magical trees for me. My mascot tree on the UW campus, the one I always hug (furtively) before and after my classes, is a black locust. But I wasn't sure if the locust tree on my block was a honey locust or a black locust.

Luckily I have Jacobson's Trees of Seattle, a wonderful reference guide which not only describes each tree but also provides addresses and directions so one can find specimens of each tree in residential neighborhoods and parks. (If your town doesn't have such a reference guide, you should create one. It's marvelous.)

Jacobson gives a nice breakdown of the differences between the two trees. Black locusts are likely to be older, grow wild and have extensive root suckers, while honey locusts have usually been planted, are younger and don't put forth suckers. You can see in this photograph of mine, how prolifically black locusts put forth suckers. This was was one of two trees in my neighborhood that were cut down to put up some condominiums. The two trees were damaged in a fierce windstorm and all the branches removed from the top of this one. In the few months it had vigorously re-asserted itself. Unfortunately, both trees are gone now so I couldn't compare them to the tree on my block

According to Jacobson, a black locust has showy white flowers while a honey locust has small greenish flowers; a black locust has 8 to 14 inch leaves with 9-25 leaflets while a honey locust has smaller leaves and up to 36 leaflets. Since there are neither flowers or leaves right now, I wouldn't be able to use these indicators until spring. Right now the tree is covered with lot of golden, bean-like seed pods. In a honey locust these should be 20" long and scarce, in a black locust, 2 to 5 ' long and abundant. My tree has abundant seed pods which made me think it's a black locust.

Then I found the lovely photograph above on Flickr and looked at the photograph of a honey locust on Wikipedia (did I say how much I love the Internet?). Now I'm sure my tree is a black locust. So I'm going to go add it to my observation list.

I also learned from Wikipedia (this time the article on black locusts) that the black locust is a major honey plant (bees love the fragrant flowers), it produces a wonderful hard wood used for fencing, railroad ties and firewood), it helps fix nitrogen in the soil (it's a member of the bean family and the seed pods do resemble bean pods) and it was named after the tree that supposedly fed St. John the Baptist in the desert, though, being native to America, it was not that tree. Jacobson says that black locusts have a beneficial influence on plants around them (unlike Black Walnuts which have a baneful influence). He writes: "Grass under locust trees is remarkably dark, green and lush." No wonder hugging my mascot tree has always inspired feelings of good will in me.

Reference:
Jacobson, Arthur Lee, Trees of Seattle, Sasquatch 1989

first Robin of the season

On Monday, February 18, when I was heading to the flower store to order some flowers for my Mom's birthday (which is February 19--Happy Birthday, Mom!), I noticed a bird sitting on a telephone wire above the street in front of my apartment building. He (sex uncertain?) was making a lot of noise--I'm not sure I could call all of it singing, though most of it was quite lyrical. I went running back into the apartment and asked my daughter to come out and look at the bird since she's the one with some birding experience but neither of us could tell for sure what it was. I was hoping it was a robin (I've been looking for one for weeks) but when I listened to the robin calls posted at Journey North, one of my favorite phenology sites, they didn't match.

On Friday, February 22, when I dropped off my (way overdue) books at the library, I noticed big bird with a rather fluffy orange-red chest in a tree alongside the library. I prowled around the tree for quite a while, looking up, trying to decide if it was a robin. It looked a bit odd, as if it's orange-red breast was split in two and I always think of robins as having smooth red breasts. But, thanks to Journey North's video, I realized I was seeing a robin preening. He must have felt quite safe up there in that tree as this is not an activity a robin would engage in if he (again I'm not sure of gender but apparently male robins show up first) was feeling unsafe.

I went to Journey North to see if I could figure out if my robin was a male or a female. Probably a male, as the males arrive first. They listed the following markers for Robin phenology: first male seen, first wave (a group of robins seen together), first earthworms, first robin singing (male robins mark their territory with song), first female (they come later after the male has established his turf), first male battle, nest building, incubation of eggs, young hatch, young fledge, young take wing, new nest (or next batch).

I doubt that my singer on the telephone wire was a robin since no one else in my area has reported hearing any robins sing. But it was great to look at the robin map and see the first two robin sightings in Seattle were reported by Beth, who's a School of the Seasons subscriber.

I also found a great article on the etymology of the scientific name for the American robin: Turdus migratorius. No it's not what you think. Turdus is Latin for thrush and the author explains its relationship to the word Sturdy, which originally meant "trashed" or "hammered" because of the way thrushes act after they feast on fermented berries in fall. The French have an expression which means "drunk as a thrush."

Chickadees for Valentines

Ted Andrews in his book on animals writes about a folk belief that the first bird you see on Valentine's Day will predict who you will marry. If you see a blackbird, you'll marry a minister; a dove, a good-hearted man; a goldfinch, a rich man; a sparrow, a happy man; a crossbill, an arugmentative man; a robin, a sailor; a bluebird, a happy man; a hawk, a soldier; an owl, a man who will die soon. If you see a woodpecker, you will never marry. This sounds like 19th century British folklore to me, though he doesn't give the source.

The first birds I saw this Valentine's day were chickadees, a whole flock of them in the holly bush outside my apartment building. I'm not sure what it means. Perhaps it means that I will find my flock, the group where I feel like I belong. That would be wonderful since I usually feel like an outsider around groups.

While searching on the Internet for some possible folkloric meaning of chickadees, I found this wonderful site which features a chickadee dictionary. (It also features Signs of Spring: tulips are up all over the country and the first robin has been sighted in many places. I haven't seen one yet here in Seattle, although I saw the first robin on February 9 in 2005.) I like knowing that chickadees have a call they use when they're separated from their flock which means "I'm here! I'm here! I'm here!"

Bird Chirping

I woke up two days ago to a strange sound. At first, I thought it was just the radiator, which usually makes fizzing and hissing and cranking and burbling noises. (I do note the first coming on of the radiator in my old (1905) apartment building. Apparently it is not turned on by a human hand but related to some complicated measuring of temperature, which makes it a true phenological sign. It first came on September 19 last year; it would be harder to measure when it goes off, since one is never quite certain, until some time has passed what was the last day it was on.)

But no, this sound was not the radiator. It took me a while before I recognized it: a bird chirping. Sweet and low, quiet but cheerful. Have no idea what kind of bird it was but I realized that I haven't heard that sound for quite a while. Spring is here!

Snowdrops for Spring

Here's a picture I took last spring on February 4 of snowdrops growing just down the block from my apartment building on Capitol Hill in Seattle.

This Sunday, February 3rd, when I was walking back from the library with my new books, I passed the same clump of snowdrops and they looked just like this.

I notice that at the phenological website for the UK, no one has yet reported any snowdrops in bloom. I suspect that's because the technical definition of "in bloom" is that one can see the stamens of the flowers, and these are still tightly closed. I like them almost better like this. They look like little white lanterns.

Signs of Spring in Seattle

I found this cherry tree blooming in my Capitol Hill neighborhood on December 9th. There are certain cherry trees which always bloom around this time of year in Seattle. I'm not sure why.

On December 20, the day before Winter Solstice, I found this forsythia in bloom. It was on the east side of a brick building. These plants that are right next to buildings which radiate the heat of the sun often bloom before anything else. Still it was surprising to see this sunny promise of spring so early in the year.

My Favorite Books Read in 2007

I'm in the middle of the review process I go through every year, closing the door on the old year and dreaming of what I want in the new year. As part of this process, I go through my journals for the past year and make notes of important ideas, accomplishments, interactions, insights, dreams and the books I read. Since I read about 2 books a week, the latter is quite a list In fact, last year I read 142 books according to my list (I know there are some I didn't write down).

Unfortunately there were as many books last year that I stopped reading as that I finished. My list is peppered with comments like Ugh! and Ew! I don't know if this comes with increasing age (and thus increasing discrimination--I don't want to waste my time) or if the quality of published books has really declined. I suspect both are true. Everyone in my writing group had similar complaints about the difficult of finding good books to read last year.

Nancy Pearl, our famous Seattle librarian who wrote the book, Book Lust, has an age-related rule for how many pages one should read before deciding whether to finish the book: Take the number 100 and subtract your age. That's how many pages you must read before making your decision. Thus if you are 99, you only have to read 1 page. If 50, 50 pages. If 20, 80 pages. I like this rule. There are just far too many good books to read and not enough time to read them all.

Speaking of good books, here is my list for 2007:

Novels

Dark Angels, by Karleen Koen, an old-fashioned and complicated historical novel that really plunges you into the world of restoration England under Charles II. As L. P. Hartley wrote: “the Past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”And it is. In this novel, people don't just dress in costume, they act from a completely different set of beliefs and operate in a different context than we do. The characters are fascinating, especially the feisty, scheming heroine; the details are rich, sensual and historically accurate. I read Koen's Through a Glass Darkly many years ago and loved it, so I went back and reread that as well as her second book. I think this is the best of the three.

Ruby in her Navel by Barry Unsworth is a marvelous historical novel about Sicily in the twelfth century. It interested me because one of my favorite historical novels of all time, Great Maria by Cecilia Holland, also takes place at this time period and focuses on the Normans in Italy. Whereas Holland's novel focuses on the brigand-like life of the Norman barons in the mountains, this novel is set in the sophisticated and cosmopolitan city of Palermo where the Norman King Roger, rules over a kingdom of Muslims, Christians, Jews, Latins and Greeks. The narrator is a bureaucrat. Despite the fact that he's in charge of providing entertainment for the King, he thinks like a bureaucrat, very observant of details and costs and office politics (some reviewers at Amazon thought he was boring). In the end the office politics bring him down, betrayal comes from unexpected places and he has to free himself from his own prejudices to survive.

Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley is equally complicated. Think of what Dickens would have written if he had tackled the world of horse-racing. The writing is superb. Finely crafted yet translucent. We're introduced to a panoramic cast of characters and the action ranges across the United States. The point of view shifts marvelously, we even enjoy learning how horses think about life. I have to admit I found it hard to keep everyone straight and yet I thoroughly loved this book. I’m told it’s like Moo which I have not yet read.

Song of the Crow by Layne Maheu

[this review comes from my August newsletter at School of the Seasons]

Layne was one of the students in my blogging class. His publishers wanted him to start a blog to promote this book which features a crow’s eye view of the Flood. Even though I’m a huge fan of crows, it sounded like a weird premise, that is, until I started reading it. What a delightful and magical book. I’m hooked on the plot, savoring the delicious language (crows have a very earthy appreciation for life) and thoroughly enjoying the experience of life as a crow. It’s one of those books which I’m forcing myself to read slowly because I don’t want it to end. Those of you who are also crow fans will appreciate the bibliography at the back and the crow epigraphs at the start of each chapter.

Non-Fiction

Wild by Jay Griffiths

[this review comes from my Sept newsletter at School of the Seasons

I met Jay Griffiths at the first Take Back Your Time Day Conference in Chicago in 2005. She was an incantatory presence, reading from her book A Sideways Look at Time. Like a bard of old, she wove a spell of magic and enchantment with her words, exhorting us to open up to the juicy possibilities of time.

Last year she released her new book, Wild: An Elemental Journey, one she’s been working on for seven years and she’s packed in seven years of insights and adventures, research and reflections. Jay knows the magic of words. She knows their raw meanings and loves to play around with them. She uses them to dazzle and delight. She follows them down serpentine paths that lead to surprising places. Though she is always pondering meaning, her work is never dry; she is always grounded in the sensuous and the sensual, even the bawdy and the erotic.

I’ve been reading this book slowly ever since I bought a copy when Jay was here in Seattle in February to read at Elliott Bay Books. It’s the kind of book, you can savor, dip into here and there, use as an oracle. The structure is based on five elements: earth, ice, water, fire and air, and corresponding landscapes Jay visited: the jungles of the Amazon, the Arctic, the South Seas, the outback of Australia, and the mountains of Papua New Guinea. In each place, she connects with the indigenous people, the plants, the animals, setting aside Western assumptions and exploring what it is like to live in these wild places. You can read it as a poem. You can read it as philosophy. You can read it as a grand action/adventure story. I don’t think you can read it without being challenged and changed.

Jay was just given an award by Orion magazine for best book of 2007. For an excerpt from Wild go to the Orion site.

Flower Confidential By Amy Stewart

Stewart writes in a much more journalistic style. Her language is clear and her story is compelling. I couldn’t put it down even though all I was doing was following Stewart on her world-wide tour, exploring the flower business, from the greenhouses where roses are grown in Ecuador, to the giant flower market in Amsterdam, and many place in between. Along the way she interviews growers, workers, florists, horticulturalists and explains some new trends in flowers, including the push towards more organic flowers. One thing you learn is that the flower growing business (for the most part) treats flowers like products: they are altered for maximum size and long life, dipped in fungicide, dyed different colors. Stewart also shares some startling statistics: Americans buy most of their flowers in grocery stores. We also spend significantly less per year on flowers than Europeans: about $25.90 average a year compared to $70 in Norway and $100 in Switzerland. If you’re depressed after reading this book, you might want to read Heirloom Flowers by Tovah Martin which talks about the efforts of gardeners and nursery owners to preserve the incredible variety of local and old flowers.

Memoir

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

I’m not alone in loving this book. It tops many best-selling lists. I especially appreciate the casual, conversational tone of the narrator and the way she infuses spirituality into her life.

A Strong West Wind by Gail Campbell

Gail Campbell grew up in Texas in the Fifties and became estranged from her parents, especially her authoritarian and conservative father, during the tumultuous decades of the Sixties. In sophisticated and supple language, with an instinct for honesty and directness, Gail Campbell writes an extraordinary memoir about this alienation and how she was able to reconcile with both the severe landscape of her childhood and her father. I was amazed that someone who had previously written only book reviews could produce a first book so beautifully crafted. It reads like it was written by a poet.

East Wind Melts Ice by Liza Dalby

[this review comes from my July newsletter at School of the Seasons]

I originally got this book from the library because it sounded like the author was trying to achieve much the same thing I was trying to do in my blog. I totally fell in love with it and have now ordered a copy of my own. This is not only a well written book but a well published book. It feels good to hold and it’s beautiful to look at.

Taking the Chinese almanac with its division of the year into 72 five-day segments, each with a poetic title, like East Wind Melts Ice or Rice Ripens, as her structure, Liza Dalby writes lovely poetic essays on the changes the seasons bring in Japan, China and her garden in Berkeley, California. An anthropologist by training, Dalby has a deep knowledge of Japanese culture as a result of studying in Japan for years (she has also written about kimonos and her training as a geisha as well as a novel based n the life of Lady Murasaki). Her essays are rich with haikus, folklore, etymological snippets, small personal disclosures, plant recommendations, even recipes. Where else would you learn about the colors of the robes worn by noble women of the eleventh century (Pink Maples wore a top kimono of bright pink, over robes of gold, pale yellow, aquamarine, rose and pale pink). Or that the original Japanese word for the color orange: daidai-iro (daidai color), comes from a citrus fruit like a Seville orange (now the English loanword orenji is more common).

Dog Years by Mark Doty

I read this during the Midwinter holidays and it was magical read. The language is gorgeous as might be expected from Mark Doty, a marvelous poet. He writes intelligently, even philosophically about a sentimental subject—the love of dogs—and yet never slides into sentiment or cliché. I didn’t cry while reading about the deaths of his two dogs (though they died in ways surprisingly similar to my dog Chester) but I feel like crying now every time I see the dogs (Mark’s dogs) on the cover of the book, because I have come to love them as well and know what their loss means. Yet overall this is not a sad book, but an uplifting one.

What I noticed after compiling this list is that it seems 2007 was the year of books about animals. Dog Years. Crow Stories. Horse Heaven. I also read a wonderful YA novel called Strays by Ron Koertge about a young boy in foster care who spends most of his time talking to animals and The Tao of Equus by Linda Kohanov, an amazing book about new ways of working with horses, including using them to assist in the therapy and healing of traumatized kids and abused women. Kohanov manages to weave all of this together with dreamwork and shamanism and feminist history.

I have another whole list of books I read and loved this year about plants. If I find the time in the next few days, I might post that.

Stones and a Spa for Winter

I've just come back from looking at the proofs of my French Republican calendar (you can order it from me at my website store) and I'm thrilled by its beauty. I had a lot of fun creating the calendar grids and embellishing them with colors and fonts. Plus the photographs taken by my friend, Christine Valters Paintner, are incredible.

One of the things I love about the calendar are the seasonal items associated with each day of the year. Usually these are plants, trees, vegetables and fruits, but in Nivose (the month which covers December/January) the items are mostly all minerals, and I was wondering how I was going to honor these items. Then my friend, Elizabeth, suggested a trip to the Korean spa in Lynnwood for the day after Christmas and lo and behold, they have various mineral rooms as part of their offerings.

Hanging out in hot water is one of my very favorite things, and doing that in a luxurious atmosphere, where I could dip in and out of various bubbling pools, and alternate that with visits to a steam room and a sauna was a perfect indulgence for the day after Christmas. The Korean spa also has a cafe, a lounge, body scrubs, massages, pedicures and manicures and other delights I didn't sample.

But we did try the various rooms: a sand room, a charcoal room and a meditation room lined with elvan stone (which is apparently harvested from the bottom of the ocean surrounding Korea). Each of these minerals is supposed to have a different effect on the body and it was interesting to compare the results. I loved the sand room; it reminded me of happy afternoons spent on Southern California beaches and it made me feel sparkly and alive. Neither of us liked the charcoal room much; it felt rather dull and lifeless to me. Elizabeth loved the meditation room and so did the other women who were in it (they had all fallen asleep as far as I could tell). It amplified my (dehydration?) headache and actually gave me a backache which persisted for a day afterwards. I wonder if it magnifies physical symptoms that are already present.

I like knowing that I can go back to the spa when I want to experience certain minerals that will show up in the December calendar. We went on the day associated with lava. I think a hot tub and a stone room are as close as I will get to lava on December 26.

Christmas this year was the day of the dog, and I finished reading Mark Doty's beautiful and brilliant memoir about his life with dogs, Dog Years, on that day. It's exquisite. Sad, profound, uplifting. It will without doubt make my top ten list for the year. It might even be the best book I've read all year.

The photograph above was taken by Mylene Bressan and can be found at
http://18229.openphoto.net

Shopping and Solstice

For years I've been rather critical of the emphasis on shopping at this time of the year. This disdain serves me well as I hate shopping. I put it on a par with going to the dentist, something one must do but let's get it over with as quickly as possible. Armed with a list of what I want, choosing a time when the store is least crowded, I'll dart in, grab what I want, pay for it and leave. (I used to feel guilty because I felt I had deprived my daughter of the pleasure of happy mother-daughter shopping expeditions, browsing lazily through choices, wandering the mall, but it turns out she hates shopping as much as I do. It's her boyfriend who's the leisurely shopper.)

So it came as a total surprise on the Winter Solstice when I usually observe a day of quiet and rest that I longed to go shopping. I must admit this wasn't a desire to go shopping in general: I wanted to go to Lush. Now if you know Lush, you'll understand (especially if I add that I had just run out of their violet scented soap) and if you don't know Lush, you should check out their website and you'll understand. Still it didn't seem like a good idea to go downtown to the mall and the Lush store three shopping days before Christmas. Especially when I was committed to spending a quiet day with no electricity, no telephone, nothing but silence and candlelight.

But in the quiet of my apartment, with the rain pattering on the windows, just me and the dog who was sleeping, I started thinking maybe shopping at this time of year is a natural activity not an artificial one. Our natural response to darkness is to light lights, whether they're candles on the Advent wreath or the bright lights of the nearest store. And our natural response to loneliness is to gather with others, whether that's at a feast on Christmas eve or in a shopping mall. It also occurred to me that bright lights and parties are a great way to push away the thoughts of death and feelings of loneliness that imbue the season.

So what did I do?I went to Lush. And it was sweet. I had an eggnog latte while waiting for the bus. When we got downtown we passed a group of young black men singing doowop songs a cappella outside one of the big department stores. One of them stopped to help an old lady into her cab. People were holding open the doors to the mall so shoppers laden with bags could pass through. There was a carousel and and a long line of kids bundled in jackets waiting to ride on it. There was another long line at the hot dog stand and inside the Sees candy store. Lush was crowded but no lines. I got the last bit of violet soap (and a few other presents) and jumped back on the bus.

When I got home I went on my solitary, quiet walk through the wintery woods and stood for a long time in the holly grove. And that was just as wonderful.

Slow Cookie Epiphany

Every year I have the intention of making 13 different types of cookies for my solstice party, a tradition adapted from the Southern European custom of serving 13 desserts on Christmas Eve. I've never made it to 13; my highest number is 7.

This year, since my goal for my Solstice party was to be as relaxed as possible, I decided to make just my favorite cookies, one batch a night during the week leading up to the party. I also halved the cookie recipes which helped enormously--no more juggling multiple baking trays and drying racks.

But by Wednesday night, I was cranky. I had to throw away two batches of cookies, one because the sour cream had gone bad, the other because I accidently put in too much baking soda. I started to get a little panicked about getting all the cookeis done. I was in a hurry and impatient. The dough kept sticking to the rolling pin. The cookies fell apart when pried from the cookie cutters or else they stuck to the bread board. The kitchen was hot. It was late. I wanted to go to bed.

That's when I had my cookie epiphany. I realized that when you're just checking off items on your to-do list, even if they're things as fundamentally satisfying as making cookies or writing a novel, they become chores.

I decided to slow down and enjoy the process. Who cares if I didn't make a lot of cookies? I could always buy cookies at the store. And as soon as I slowed down, that magical thing happens which always happens in slow time. Time just flew by while I was savoring the silky feel of the flour, the pliancy of the dough, the scent of the spices. The cookies started behaving, rolling out perfectly on the board, filling the baking sheets, emerging from the oven golden and fragrant.

Over the next few nights, I revelled in the cookie-making process. I was alone and sometimes wondered if it would be more fun if I were sharing the experience, but I also liked the silence which allowed me give the process my full attention. Cookie making became a meditation.

In the end, I only made three of my favorite cookies (Kourabiedes, Advent pretzels and Zimsterne). Since I never got around to making my signature lavender shortbread cookies, I did buy some excellent ginger shortbread cookies at the store, but you know what? No one at the party ate any of the store-bought cookies. Apparently they prefer slow time cookies.