Red-Winged Blackbirds and Cattails

On May 14, I attended the Environmental Writing workshop sponsored by the Burke Museum.

I especially enjoyed the workshop taught by Lynda Mapes who writes a column called Natural Wonders for the Seattle Times. She taught us the techniques she uses to prepare for writing these articles, which she calls immersion reporting.

She begins with research, including looking at old maps, current maps and books on the subject. When observing the subject, she suggested: 1) show up and be quiet and be present for at least three minutes 2) take notes and 3) background the subject: look at everything that is happening around it. Then she organizes her notes, outlines her article and walks away from it (usually overnight) before revising for the final publication, which includes fact checking and sentence polishing.

Then she sent us out into reclaimed area south of the Center for Urban Horticulture, which was once a gathering place for local tribes, then a dump for the City of Seattle, and currently a recovering wetlands known as Union Bay.

I was particulary struck by the cattails which lined the ponds and took copious notes about them. The seedheads reminded me of cotton candy, and when I touched them, they felt like spider webs, sticky and capable of being teased apart only with difficulty.

I was also struck by these striking birds with red bars on their wings swooping all over the marshlands. I had only seen a red-winged blackbird once before, in Wisconsin, and had no idea they lived in Seattle. It turns out they love marshland and build their nests, partly with the cotton fluff from the cattails, near the water.

Thanks to Doug Plummer for permission to use his photograph which is one of many beautiful photos featured on his web site in his daily photos.

This Unique Day

The habit of ignoring our present moments in favor of others yet to come leads directly to a pervasive lack of awareness of the web of life in which we are embedded.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are

For the past month I've adopted a new practice of writing down at least one unique moment in every day. I already keep track of my appointments in my calendar, and my accomplishments in my journal. And I record phenological events, year after year, by noting events, like the linden trees that are just beginning to blossom, in a Book of Days.

But I was looking for something different to record in my the weekly planner, Leaves from the Tree of Time, that I created for 2010 and so I decided to start recording unique moments, those moments in each day, never before experienced and not likely to be experienced again.

I'm enjoying the fruits of this practice. It helps me notice what is going on around me in an entirely different way. I know poets who write a haiku every day and photographers who take a photo every day (I love Doug Plummer's daily photos). And I also benefit as a writer from the time spent choosing just the right few words to capture these images as if they were snapshots.

Here are some of my favorites:
April 6: A guy walks into Online Coffee and announces that Jesus blesses all of us
April 7: Pepe (the Chihuahua) licks a cherry blossom fallen in the parkway
May 1: I startle a crow, so close I can feel the wind from his feathers
May 2: A bald guy reading by flashlight behind three umbrellas in the doorway of the shoe shop

My recent trip to the beach was full of unique moments. Here are a few:
May 8: A black swan flies over my car on the Astoria Bridge, going south
May 8: Steam rising from the asphalt, sunshine on rain-soaked pavement, Route 26 between Astoria and Portland
May 8: After the rain shower, a coyote in the bushes shakes water off its fur like a dog, Route 26 between Portland and Astoria
May 8: Crossing the Astoria bridge north, it looks like I am driving into the sky
May 9: Floating on my back in the swimming pool, overhead white clouds float by in a blue sky, four birds fly by, high as the clouds and going the same direction

The photograph is one I took in the pool at the place where I was staying on Long Beach. I have been taking a class on photography called Eyes of the Heart with Christine Valters Paintner of Abbey of the Arts and it is changing the way I see things, a topic for another day.

Listening for Lent

You know how much I love Lent. I love how it resonates with the energy of spring, with its encouragement to shed bad habits, to make room for new growth, to channel the power of change.

This year I thought I was going to give up TV (which is what I gave up last year, though I returned to it fairly quickly afterwards). But then I signed up for Christine Valters Paintner's Lent class at Abbey of the Arts, and realized that instead of giving something up (as I was schooled to do during my Catholic childhood), I was going to acquire a new habit: a daily spiritual practice.

Christine's class focuses on the Benedictine practice of lectio divina,, that is, reading a sacred text each day and allowing it to resonate within (listening with "the ear of the heart," as Benedict wrote). While reading about this concept in Christine's book, Lectio Divina, I realized how seldom I really listen (which is probably why my experience of listening to the plants was so profound). I'm usually preparing an answer or adrift in a sea of my own thoughts. And I thought about how deeply the people around me, particularly my daughter, want to be heard. She's always talking, but probably because no one's listening. I think she would be shocked, and possibly a little terrified, if she realized I was really listening.

Listening doesn't mean responding, so I have to curb my desire to be useful and to give advice. If my desire is to fully hear, to seek to understand, to allow my heart to be touched, that's enough.

So I'm listening for Lent. What are you doing for Lent?

Pussy Willows for Spring

It was a goat willow tree that launched My Year in Flower project back in 2008 when it dropped a spent blossom on my head as I walked past with the dog. At first I thought it was a caterpillar and recoiled in disgust. The sidewalk at my feet was littered with hundreds of little squishy yellow items. And when I looked up, I discovered they came from a spindly tree with bare branches growing close to the sidewalk. And on the lower branches of the tree, I recognized the white fuzzy buds of pussy willows.

Pussy willows had always seemed mythical to me. They didn’t grow wild in Southern California. We only saw them when we went to the Farmers Market in downtown Los Angeles which we only did when relatives came to visit. The pussy willow branches came wrapped in plastic. When brought home and put in vases, they remained frozen in their fuzzy bud stage.

But on this tree, I saw all the stages in their development. First, tender milk-white buds. Bristling green catkins came next, which were gradually frosted with yellow pollen before dropping from the tree to litter the sidewalk in soggy clumps like so many used condoms. And, as I thought about it, I realized this tree was in a constant wave of orgasm as each little flower puffed out its pollen and then collapsed, spent.

It amazed me that I had walked past this tree for years (I’ve lived in my neighborhood for 14 years) and never noticed this miraculous transformation. (To give me credit, this whole cycle is over in one month; for the rest of the year, the tree is rather boring:either bare branches or green leaves.)

The goat willow tree surprised me again this year when I realized there is another stage in its development. Before the milky white buds appear, the ones we think of as pussy willows, they have to push through the brown caps that have protected them through the winter. Right now the sidewalk is covered with those light brown husks, like so many tiny insect shells.

It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair's breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance.... To perceive freshly, with fresh senses is to be inspired. Thoreau.

This entry was also cross-posted at my other blog at Living in Season.

Candlemas Collage

My New Year's practice is to make a collage that represents the experiences I hope to enjoy in the new year. For the past few years, I've been making Soul Collage (R) cards to embody the themes I've chosen for the year. Here you can see my three themes for 2010 as works in progress: Refreshment, Sustainability and Sovereignity.

On the other side of the table you get an upside-down view of the collage my friend Janis made. We love this ritual which we have been sharing for years. We light candles, make wishes, drink tea, nibble on cookies and play with images.

My cards right now are up on the wall in the entry way of my home where they will remind me every time I enter of my themes for the year.

This post is cross-posted at my new blog at Living in Season.

Good Omens

At the end of the week, I went away for a three-week mini-retreat which I created and orchestrated so I could have three friends help me figure out what I am doing with my life during this upcoming year. One was Joanna, my web designer, who inspired me to create the School of the Seasons web site, ten years ago. Another was my friend, Noelle, a talented life coach. And the third was Whitney, who specializes in marketing and development for small businesses.

As I walking to my car, I passed two crows eating a dead rat (or mouse?) that was lying in the road. Seattle was experiencing a sunny spell, with balmy breezes and blue skies. But as I headed north to Bellingham where we met, I watched ribbons of rain streaming down from a dark bank of clouds. I wondered about these omens.

Our three days together were fruitful and nourishing. We stayed at the Fairhaven Village Inn, which was a lovely place to stay. My room had a view of Bellingham Bay and the huge Alaska ferry (in dry dock) and the train going by. We met and talked and went out to eat and talked and made maps and went out to eat and ate chocolate and talked and went out for gelato and talked and made lists and talked and came up with a plan for the year that is both refreshing and sustainable (two of my theme words for this year). I’m not ready to reveal the details (because it’s not completely clear yet) but I should be ready by Spring Equinox.

When I left Bellingham, it was raining. I took a wandering course home, along the coast, and through some lovely farmland. Ahead of me the clouds were dark but I could see golden sun streaming out from behind them. And I passed a field full of white swans (they like to over-winter in the Skagit Valley). That seemed like a good omen.

I found this Youtube video of trumpeter swans in the Skagit Valley. It makes it clear why they are called trumpeters.

Shedding for the New Year

This new year I’ve been feeling really bogged down by all of the clutter in my house. I thought I would get it all cleared out during the week I was off work after Christmas but, of course, that didn’t happen.

I accidentally watched part of an episode of the TV show Hoarders last year. I don’t recommend it for anyone who has any hoarding tendencies--I’ve been horrified ever since at the prospect that I might become one of those old ladies who lives in an apartment with little paths between the stacks of newspapers. But this tendency does run in my family. My Uncle George, who was the family eccentric in my Mom’s family, apparently had an apartment like that (he also had about a quarter of a million dollars in his estate when he died—unfortunately that part of the hoarding gene seems to have passed me by).

It’s hard to launch into the new year when you’re carrying the weight of all that clutter, all those unfinished projects, all those unread magazines, all those unsorted photographs. And I’m noticing this same theme among the participants in my New Year Dreams class.

I’m hoping that this is all due to the backwards influence of Mercury and Mars both being retrograde at the same time. Madeleine Gerwick, the author of the popular Good Timing Guide says not to initiate any new projects until March 20. That might give me enough time to clear and organize my house.

I’m also reading Julie Morganstern’s new book. I’m a big fan of Julie’s work. The four-step system she explains in her Organizing from the Inside Out book has been very helpful to me. The first step is sorting, and the second step is purging. The third step is containing (finding the right space for the stuff) and the fourth step is maintaining the system you’ve developed. You can use this with clothes, with papers, etc. Over the summer, I used it with my books (and actually got rid of some--a first!).

Her new book, Shed Your Stuff, Change Your Life, is more about how to get rid of stuff you’re holding onto, and she extends it from clutter in your house to clutter in your schedule to bad habits in your personal life. Again, she has come up with a simple system and an Acronym to remind you of it in SHED. First you Separate the treasures from the trash in your life, then you Heave the trash. The final two steps are Embrace your Identity and Drive Yourself Forward.

What I especially like is her focus on the end result. What are the values you are trying to manifest in your life? And do the items in your house (or schedule or life) serve your purpose/help you achieve your goals?

Once you identify the arena in which you want to work, you create a list of entry points, for instance, the pile of unread magazines, the box of unsorted photographs or the box full of old Christmas cards. Then you choose the point which will cause you the minimum amount of difficulty and get you the maximum amount of effect. This is about where I am in the book so I don't know yet how it will work out. But I have until March 20 to carry out all the steps.

Do you have a system that works for you?

The Scent of Spring

The first sign of spring for me is always a delightful flowery fragrance that I call the Scent of Spring.

This year I smelled it for the first time on January 8, just outside the front door of an apartment building in my neighborhood.

The next earliest smelling (can't call it a sighting) was January 18 in 2004, so this is really early.

When I got home that night, I saw that the sweet box (Sarcocca humilis, also known as Christmas box) outside my apartment building was already in bloom. So that might be the Scent of Spring. Although my friend Janis mentioned that she smelled a daphne odora the other day, so it could have been a dahpne rather than sweet box.

Whatever it was, I know spring is coming soon. What is the first sign of spring where you live?

This blog entry was cross-posted at my new blog

Thanksgiving Grinch Ungrinched

I am not a Christmas Grinch (though it would be easy to be one). Long ago I learned how to deal with the pressures of Yule, which I should write about it another blog entry. But I did not realize how many negative feelings I had about Thanksgiving until this year when it burst out of me in a rant.

I was grateful to learn that others felt the same way, and have developed their own methods of coping. Havi, for instance, replaces the gratitude list with a lentil list of things that don’t stuck, and I was delighted to appear on this year’s list. Other folks, like Cairene, have now adopted this tradition (and I made her list too!).

Several people wrote to tell me how much they do enjoy Thanksgiving, for instance, because it’s the least commercial of all American holidays (so true!) or because they are grateful to be with family and friends. But this only made me feel more Grinchy. Then, this week, I got some insights that helped my Grinchy heart grow several sizes.

It started with a good session with my counselor, in which I clarified my longings around Thanksgiving, and followed up with the serendipitous arrival of a newsletter about NVC (Non-Violent Communication). In the newsletter, Evan Gorsline wrote about his negative reaction to the word “happy.” He experienced it as a judgment, a way that he was expected to feel; it was often used to describe a false optimism that repressed other more complex feelings. What Evan longed for in relationship with others was authenticity and honesty and the felt demand to be “happy” often prevented that. (You should read the whole article here, as I can’t really do it justice in a few sentences.)

What I long for at Thanksgiving (or any dinner party) is meaningful, challenging and playful conversation (something sorely lacking at my family’s Thanksgiving feasts where we were expected to focus on “happy” topics, like being grateful) and delicious food (and I really don’t like turkey). No wonder I had trouble with Thanksgiving.

Having identified what I do want, I can set up about getting it next Thanksgiving. Just like when I took charge of my birthday parties, after years of being disappointed, and they suddenly became fabulous, because, after all, I know what I like. But the good news is that good conversation and good food can be enjoyed all year around.

This post appeared first at my blog at Living in Season.

Healing Waters

After two weeks of reflection, I don’t think the huge headache I developed after the Herbal Conference at Breitenbush was due solely to caffeine withdrawal (maybe I’m in denial here). It might have been part of a healing process sparked by some of the workshops I attended. I’ve come up with this theory because I started dreaming again, within days of returning from the conference, and I haven’t had a really remarkable dream for years.

These dreams have been both vivid and significant. In one, my father (who died over 25 years ago) was being healed. He was lying on a beach and healer was painting his face with reddish pigment. A huge green wave came and washed over his body as I watched. In another dream, I was with my family and we were trying to escape a tidal wave by jumping into and floating around in the large lake in back of our house. The water was warm and green in color.

Both of these dreams emphasized water. Breitenbush is famous for its healing hot springs. And at the conference, I attended a workshop on Spiritual Bathing led by Rosita Arvigo who was trained by a Mayan shaman in Belize. She spoke about some of the conditions that require healing in that culture, conditions we might consider emotionally based, like fright or envy or grief. Then she created a florecida (a floral water) by placing herbs and flowers in a bowl of water and squeezing them with her fingers, while reciting this prayer she learned from Don Elijio Panti, a Mayan shaman with whom she studied:

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, I give thanks to the spirit of this plant and I have faith with all my heart that you will help me to make a healing, purifying bath for [person].

She also called on the Blessed Virgin Mary and Ix Chel, the Mayan goddess of the moon, water and healing, and she told us we could use any deity we wanted, though it was important to recognize the power to heal came through this connection with the divine. We could use any flowers or herbs we liked in creating a bath for ourselves, but we should choose a significant number, for instance, 9 sprigs of each plant, and non-toxic plants or flowers, especially those that evoke certain qualities. She worked the plants with her fingers until they had discharged their qualities into the water—it should be a greenish color, and, since she used some mallow family flowers, it was also slimy.

Normally she would let this sit out in the sun for several hours but since we were doing a one-hour workshop, she walked around the room and asperged us, that is, sprinkled us with this special floral water, using a branch of cedar. I definitely felt the clearing energy of the water as she sprinkled it around my head, and I noticed the atmosphere of the room change as well, as she went around, asperging everyone.

But I don’t think I realized how profoundly this affected me until I began dreaming in the days that followed. After reading through Spiritual Bathing, the book of water rituals compiled by Rosita Arvigo and Nadine Epstein, I noticed that green water was mentioned in descriptions of certain rituals, including the preparation of agua de florida, used in Ayauasca ceremonies. Rosita also mentions the green color of the florecidas prepared by Julia Riveras during a workshop on the Amazon.

If you are looking for an overview of spiritual bathing traditions from all over the world, Spiritual Bathing is a good place to start. The book is beautiful, full of wonderful photographs but the coverage is a bit shallow. We get only the most general discussion, a page or two for each culture from Rome to India, Russia to Turkey, Japan to Peru. And the suggested rituals, though intriguing (I will try several of them), don’t seem traditional but rather adapted for modern American readers. I think this probably the nature of any glossy coffee-table book. One of the aspects of the book I enjoyed most were personal accounts of spiritual bath experiences from the two authors.

But if you want a really engaging, personal account of baths all over the world, I recommend Alexia Brue’s travel memoir: Cathedrals of the Flesh: My Search for the Perfect Bath, which details her trips around the world, searching for the perfect bath. However, she is more interested in the culture of the bath than the spiritual aspects of it.

Herbal Conference at Breitenbush

These blog posts are now being cross-posted at my new magazine, Living in Season. Check there for more feature articles.


Just got back from attending the Herbal Conference at Breitenbush Hot Springs. I haven't been to Breitenbush for 17 years, yet it felt so familiar that I wondered if I had simply forgotten a previous visit. Five years ago, I would have called this feeling deja vu. Now I simply wonder if I am losing my memory.

Perhaps it felt familiar, because it was so comfortable. I could sit down besides anyone and immediately fall into a meaningful conversation. And I had friends there--my herb teachers, Eaglesong and Sally King--and I met a School of the Seasons reader: Carmen, who won the Sniffathon (I only placed third). (The Sniffathon involved correctly identifying drops of essential oils dripped onto index cards.)

I always have a hard time at group meals, after I've filled up my tray and have to find a place to sit (bad memories from my year at Reed College). But on Friday night, I was lucky enough to sit at a table with two women who became my new Best Friends: Mary Lou and Amber. Amber was a green-haired, tattooed, 21-year-old from Dallas who had driven to the conference on her own and was camping for the first time in her life in a tent borrowed from her grandfather. I loved her energy and excitement and enthusiasm about everything. She also had that great Texas twang and Southern generosity. When I wandered late into my first class, she made sure I got a handout. Mary Lou was closer to my age but like Amber, she was also at a crossroads, since she had just quit her job as a dietitian for a nursing home and was searching for something meaningful to do with her passion for healthy foods and herbs. She was in every class I took and probably ended up taking the one class I missed, after I developed a bad headache.

It was ironic that I left a conference full of healers because I was sick but I'm one of those folks who when sick, wants to crawl off into the bushes, rather than admit I need help. And I'm a bit embarrassed to admit it was probably mostly caused by caffeine withdrawal (no caffeine served at Breitenbush--just vegetarian food and herbal teas). The headache started to ebb after I stopped at the first rest stop with free coffee.

So did I learn anything new about herbs? Not as much as I expected. Mostly I learned about nutritional anthropology and metabolic types and intuitive eating (that's Paul Bergner's term--I loved it--it means asking your body to inform you of what it wants for your highest good). I also learned about stress and susto (as it's called by healers in Belize where Rosita Arvigo lives and works, fright in English) and how the production of adrenaline and subsequent crash (the body's response to trauma) can create imbalances that can later be treated by herbs, vitamins and nutritional supplements (Leslie Korn's methods) and spiritual practices (Rosita taught a great class on spiritual bathing). I also went on a great plant walk with Paul Bergner where he taught us to draw plants by memory. More about this later.

Plant Birthday

These entries are now being posted both here and at my new web site, Living in Season.

Tell me of what plant birthday a man takes notice, and I shall tell you a good deal about his vocation, his hobbies, his hay fever, and the general level of his ecological education.
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

For Leopold it’s the cutleaf Silphium, blooming in the corner of an old cemetery. For me, it’s the autumn crocus, blooming on my birthday.

It always catches my by surprise, even though I watch for it as my birthday approaches. I didn’t see a trace of it in its usual habitat but coming home from a BBQ on Sunday night, I spotted the autumn croci (above) springing up from the dirt outside an apartment building.

Then on my way to work today, I found them in the place I’ve grown accustomed to seeing them. With the sunlight shining on them, they truly resembled “the lamps of the ghoul,” the name the Arabs give this plant (according to Wilfrid Blunt) because they are so poisonous. Other common names: naked nannies and bare-bottoms.

So what does that say of me, that this is the plant birthday I notice?

Rose Desserts

As part of my experiment with edible flowers, I made two desserts out of rose petals this past weekend and to my surprise, both of them produced wonderful results.

Rose Sorbet
I used the delightfully spicy-smelling petals from my favorite vacant lot rose to make a rose sorbet. The recipe I was using called for petals from 16 roses, but I only had four so I cut the recipe by one fourth.

1-1/4 cups castor (superfine) sugar (I used powdered sugar--I think regular sugar would work fine too)
2 cups cold water
4 oz scented unsprayed rose petals (about 16 roses)
6 tbsp rosewater
2 tsp glycerin
juice of 1 lemon [optional]

1) Put the sugar and 1 cup of water in a saucepan and heat until the sugar dissolves. Put the rose petals in the syrup and allow them to wilt, then add the second cup of cold water and the rosewater. Let cool for 20 to 30 minutes. Then add the glycerin (this preserves the wonderful bright color of the roses; without it the sorbet will be muddy looking and not so appetizing).
2) Let this mixture steep for 5 hours or overnight.
3) Add the lemon juice (I didn't) and push the mixture through a sieve, to get all the juice out of the rose petals. Discard them.
4) Churn using an ice cream machine. I don't have one so I made the sorbet using instructions for making ice cream by hand from David Lebovitz, author of The Perfect Scoop.

Basically, you cool the mixture over an ice bath (I didn't do this since it was already cool since I put it in the refrigerator overnight). Then you put it in a plastic dish in the freezer and set a timer for 45 minutes. At 45 minutes you stir it up with a whisk or a spoon, breaking up all the ice crystals that are forming. You set the timer for 30 minutes and do that again. And then another 30 minutes. And then another. And so forth for about two to three hours or until it seems done.

I have to confess I stopped stirring my sorbet after two hours. It stayed rather icy, more like a granita than a sorbet. That wasn't a problem for me as I enjoyed the texture, the flavor and the color. I had much better success with this method of making ice cream when I made the recipe below.

Rose Ice Cream
I was so happy with the sorbet I wanted to make ice cream but I didn't have any fresh rose petals. So I made this recipe, which requires fresh flowers, with the dried flowers from my pink rosa rugosa. They are much sweeter and pinker than the red rose.

1 cup heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
1 cup sugar
5 large egg yolks
1 1/2 cups loosely packed, very fragrant rose petals, washed and spun dry

1) Prepare an ice bath by placing ice cubes in a large flat-bottomed container that will hold the bowl where the ice cream will be chilled
2) Combine the rose petals and sugar in a food processor with the metal blade and make into a paste. (Since I used dried flowers, it was more like rose sugar than paste).
3) Combine the cream, milk and sugar paste in a saucepan over medium heat and stir until the sugar dissolves. Bring to a simmer and then take off the heat.
4) Place the egg yolks in a bowl and whisk until light. Then add the hot liquid slowly, whisking until thoroughly mixed. Return to the saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon until it reaches 180 degrees on a candy thermometer or coats the back of the spoon.
5) Strain the mixture into a clean container (I didn't do this since I didn't mind the faint texture of the petals) and place in the ice bath.
Then you would proceed to make ice cream either as above or with your ice cream machine.

This recipe did not call for glycerin, but I think I would add that to the rose and sugar mixture to bring up the color. I added red food color instead and the end result was a muddy pink. It looks a bit like Play Doh and the texture is somewhat chewy as well but the flavor is like nothing I've ever tasted. I dream about it all day long. Luckily I still have some in the freezer.

Let me know if you have any success with these recipes or if you have another recipe you like.

Many Moon Names

I'm a total fan of Havi Brooks of the Fluent Self, so it was totally amazing to be a featured guest at her Kitchen Table, and now she's mentioned my book on her delightful blog and suggested her readers play with one of the exercises, the one where you get to make up your own names for the moons. I'm reveling in all the creative names people posted as comments. Check it out!

I'm illustrating this blog entry with one of Catherine Kerr's magnificent moon photos. She has been taking these every full moon for years. This one, like the one featured on the Celebrations article at my new online magazine, is the August full moon. Cate always provides a long list of traditional names for each full moon as she did in the blog entry that accompanied the photograph.

Summer Slowly

I've decided to keep both blogs running, though I will encourage you to sign up at my new blog at my new magazine, Living in Season in case I ever do abandon my beloved Blogger blog.

A long-time School of the Seasons reader and contributor, Taffy Hill, sent me a link to a blog entry by Beth Dargis of My Simpler Life about things that should be savored and done slowly.

I loved Beth’s list and was even more delighted to see the thread was started by my friend and colleague, Christine Valters Paintner, at her blog, Abbey of the Arts.

Let’s expand this idea here. I'd love to entertain your ideas about things that should be done slowly.

My favorite is walking slowly. I find this easiest to do while walking the dog. Right now my walking companion is Pepe, my daughter's Chihuahua. He likes to go slow, especially in the summer. He often plops down on the grass and refuses to move

New Blog

I've just created a beautiful magazine, and it includes a blog column. So look for new entries there.

Sillage

I'm finishing up my blogging about trying to capture the scent of flowers, as I prepare for my new adventure: eating flowers. Thought I would do a last blog on sillage. Such an interesting word and one you will add to your vocabulary if you haunt perfume blogs, as I do.

Sillage is used in the perfume world to describe the trail of scent you leave behind when you pass through a room. It is a French word, pronounced see-yazh, for the wake of the ship, from the same root as a word that also means furrow. In that sense it is an impression, but a transient one, one that will dissolve or resolve.

Michelle Krell Kydd at Glass Petal Smoke has a good story about stealing mojo from a man with her sillage. Patty White at Perfume Posse wrote this lovely essay on the sillage of her mother-in-law's life. An interesting concept. At Bois de Jasmin, another one of my favorite perfume blogs, a reader mentions that when people ask her about the scent she's wearing, she worries that she put on too much. She ends with the comment: "sillage is almost illegal in the U.S."

I have been feeling very self-conscious in fragrance-free Seattle about wearing scent. My current favorite is Mimosa Pour Moi by L'Artisan. It is a soft, powdery scent with a honey undertone, and so far no one has noticed my sillage.

The amazing photograph was taken by Rennett Stowe and I found it at Flickr.com

Waverly Time

In my last newsletter, I wrote about showing up late for a BBQ with the excuse that I was late because I was working in my garden, and later realizing that I was living in "plant time," an entirely different kind of time than clock time.

Well, this weekend, the same friend invited me to yet another BBQ (his apartment building is famous for their long, hospitable BBQs) and this time, when he left the message he said: "It starts at 3 PM people time, not Waverly time." And that got me started thinking about a whole new kind of time: Waverly time.

I didn't make it to the BBQ but that's because I was living in Waverly time. In Waverly time, you are never rushed and you do things when you feel like doing them. That's all I know so far about Waverly time. But I find the whole concept delightful.

Red Valerian: Fragrant or Stinky?

This plant (centhrantus rubra) blooms all over my neighborhood and I like its common name: Jupiter's Beard. I hoped there was some mythological association between the plant and Jupiter, but after checking extensive Googling and checking my primary source for mythology of plants on the web, Paghat, I couldn't find any. I suspect the name comes from the belief that Jupiter's beard was red.

I haven't paid much attention to it because it doesn't do much, except spring up exuberantly as early as April and continue blooming far into November. The bees love it but it's not edible, medicinal or fragrant.

Or so I thought until last month when I was walking by a large patch in bloom and I smelled a most heavenly odor. Knowing that I sometimes assume flowers don't have fragrance when they do (I was totally shocked by my first fragrant rhododendron), I bent down and inhaled. Quite a nice fragrance--it reminded me a bit of grape jelly.

But on a later walk, when I decided to validate my findings, I couldn't discern any scent at all. I wondered if this was one of those flowers that is fragrant only before it's pollinated and then loses its scent.

And during a quick search of the web today, before posting this entry, I found various descriptions of its smell, all contradictory. There are many entries which claim its fragrant, without describing the fragrance. One post said it smelled like vanilla. Another just said it smelled "divine." That was it for the positive associations.

Plants for the Future has a reference to it as smelling like perspiration. One gardener at Dave's garden complained that the cut flowers smelled like "cat pee." Web sites describing the flowers blooming wild in England said the smell was "doggy," as in "stale dog dung" or "catty."

I know that true valerian (the one that does have herbal properties) has such an unpleasant odor that early herbalists, Discorides and Galen, named it Phu. At least that's what Mrs. Grieves reports in her herbal. And the two valerians are in the same family.

What's going on? What does red valerian really smell like? I'm going out to smell some right now. If you have some in your neighborhood, please check it out and let me know what you think?

The photo came from the Washington State University site.

Flower Child

When I first decided to tackle the topic of flowers, I actually thought of flowers as a separate species, as in there are trees, plants and flowers.
It took a while before I realized that flowers are simply a stage in the life cycle of every plant, at least, all of the angiosperms. Trees have flowers. Right now in Seattle, the lindens are about to burst into bloom. The horse chestnuts are sporting the delightful red and white blossoms known as candles. And the laburnums have shed their petals, as have the locusts. Grasses also have flowers, although we rarely see them because they’re so small and fine. The fuzzy pussy willow buds that I wrote about in March are flowers, as are the catkins dangling from the birches and the alders.
All flowers exist to flirt, to lure the pollinators that will fertilize the ovules and swell into fruit and disperse the seed. And all flowers are transitory, existing only for a brief interval in the life of the plant. Lucky for me there is a far wider time range for blossoming than I imagined when I started my flower project. Now I know that I can find blossoms year round, like the curving yellow threads of the witch hazel in January.
The photo of a wisteria blossom was taken by my friend Michael McIntosh at Schreiner's Iris Farm in May 2008.