Hydrangea

Post 8

Sunday, March 31, 2013
3:58 pm

I don't know when my love of hydrangeas became so pervasive. I knew they were common, flowering late in the summer like clockwork. I knew that whenever I walked around the perimeter of our house, I could check on their progress, the coloring and the expression of their blues vibrant at any given time of day. I know I am now militant about watering them, prodding my mom to make sure to keep them wet, check to see if deer have been chewing their bright leaves when their foraging in the woods produces nothing quite as green.

I love hydrangea for their flexibility. Don't love pink petals? No problem--add acidiy to change them from bright pinks to blues. I’ve never liked the pink variety. The shade always seemed slightly unimpressive and suburban; someone might mistake my favorite flowers for nameless landscaping shrubs. A pink hydrangea plant seem ready for that most virulent of adjectives—common. Realistically, are the blue variety that much more unique? Could they actually be called risqué, fabulous, rum raisin to someone’s expectation of vanilla? Probably not. But the blue hydrangeas that have their roots next to the twin chimneys on the side of my house could never be mistaken for the choice of a landscaper who needed filler. They produce the kind of shocking, spectacular blue blooms that artists would squat before in plein air exercises, the blue claimed by men of royalty who wanted a color that spoke of majesty and power from which they could exclude all others. These hydrangea are shocking.

The ability to change is perhaps my favorite aspect of the flower. They can be manipulated while remaining true to their nature. They grow more beautiful in the eyes of the beholder but neither lose nor gain anything from their own selves. They are hardy and love the shade. They droop in direct sun but deep watering will perk up their large leaves. They bloom graciously in the day, unlike petulant tigerlillies, and their flowers can last for weeks. They are almost as beautiful dead as alive; dried, they are a bouquet that can last winter after winter, preserved in delicate bunches. They grow in groups on a single plant, but they do not compete with each other as roses seem to. They share and worship the sun together, exultant in each abundant head. Hydrangea seem common, but they are in deep demand at weddings and garden parties, easy to gather into thick arrangements that seem expensive even as they shun the precociousness of orchids and peonies. 

In the beds and perimeters of the house I grew up in, our hydrangea have thrived and flowered for nearly twenty years. The oldest of the two bushes are on the northwest side of the house, where they thrive in the moist soil that a leaky spigot provides for their deep roots. On occasional days in the summer, my mother will cut a few of the mopheads and gather them on the worn kitchen island, the most beautiful of blooms never cut for a simple bouquet, but left to dry naturally on their stems outside. Besides their beauty and the common sense of their growth, hydrangea are consistent with one specific word that, when I look at them, makes their beautiful flowers all the more precious. Hydrangeas mean home. 

Sentinel

Post 7

Saturday, March 23, 2013
8:47 am

The pond was meant for grander landscaping. At one time, when we were a complete family and we dreamed of additions, in-ground pools, and another dog, we imagined a better version of what I sit next to today. By better, we meant changed. A gazebo perhaps. Cattails and decorative (ie non-native) grasses. In that perspective, we would walk down to the pond and spend the soft August evening listening to tiny summer frogs and casting a line or two into the depths with a delicate plop. The ground is still hard from our latest March freeze and the dried grass crunched under my feet as I walked out the front door and down to the decrepit concrete bench. It's beautiful in its own way, as resignation can be to a woman who has outgrown the girlhood dreams for her family. I put my hand down on the bench before I sat down, even though I knew the lichen-speckled concrete would be frigid and unwelcoming. I still sit down because its cold reality is not terrible enough to change.

Supposedly spring fed, this pond has a few issues with algae. (I read later that this is often called "Pea Soup Algae" and that the lack of vegetation around the pond could be hurting the PH level in the water. The quantity of geese droppings is not helping either.) Right now, it looks better than it did in the summer when I would hook up the hose to our outside pump and force running water into the pond, trying to get oxygen to the fish. I've never really thought of our pond as an "ecosystem," a true scientific term that necessitates scientific evaluation. It's just been our pond, high when we've had a wet spring and low when it's a hot summer and there's not been much rain. I know that in the next few weeks, the Canadian geese will sit on the same knoll overlooking the water that they've nested on for over ten years, that the male will be the picture of fidelity as he watches over his brooding mate. On the first day of spring, my mother emailed a video of a solitary goose honking from the top of our roof. "Happy first day of spring!" my mother exclaimed over its loud calls.

Know Your Geese

The pond is where we watch all sorts of wildlife come and go, the smallest of insects darting over its smooth water at dusk, the fish that burp the water as they rise up for the bugs. Some years ago, my mother and I escorted a gigantic snapping turtle from our back door to the edge of the pond because he did not seem to understand that he would have to go around and not through the house in order to reach the water. Using a combinatin of a green recycling can and a horse manure cart, we carried him to the edge and let him slowly trudge into the water, hissing his thanks until the water covered his scaly tale. I renewed my vow not to swim in that water. And just last week, I watched two young bucks dance and chase two does near the water's edge. They would charge and feint, face each other and then turn and change partners. I thought it must be some sort of mating ritual, but they playfully nipped back and forth for a long while, never stopping to actually consummate the relationship, choosing instead to race across the nearby pasture, white-tipped tails in the air. It was a beautiful day. I think they just wanted to celebrate.

This has been my non-scientific study of pond life and grateful as I am for those writers who can put a name to Pea Soup Pond Algae (cyanobacteria) and Canadian Geese (branta canadensis), I think there's a place for those of us who can sit on a cold bench in March and see the murky green water of a pond and hear the call of a goose as a different kind of sentinel, just as true to the glory of the natural world as any loyal, dark-necked mate.

Sentimental Trees

Post 6

Saturday, March 9, 2013
2:34 pm


I've been preoccupied with downed trees. They've caught my eye this past week, as I'm driving or being driven. I've noticed them on this property, I've noticed them on other's. Maybe it's because I know that spring will soon cover most of these patches of forest with green boughs and they won't be as noticeable. If you think about it, how often do we notice a cracked trunk or the splintered branch? I have always focused on the limbs that are reaching upward and guiltily, I notice the leaves more often than the leaf-holders. Once I noticed one fallen tree this week, I started to keep my eye out for others which is perhaps easier after the affects of Sandy and other storms. We didn't have as much damage, but it's possible I just didn't notice what had fallen, so concerned by what had not.

I originally thought this blog should be more impersonal. Why, I'm not sure. Maybe because my association with my place is so personal, that to let the tone be too close is to risk the apathy of something I hold dear. This is the dialogue I have whenever I write and poetry tends to be the most impersonal while seeming intimate. I'm growing out of this as I become more sure of myself. Rejection of my subject by others is not as debilitating as it once was; I know it's not personal, it's just a call for improvement. So now I feel like I need to let this blog be a bit more personal, at least for this entry.

Last week, at the spot where I'm now sitting, my boyfriend asked me to marry him. I knew it was coming; since I work as a wedding photographer with my sister, we have weekends booked from now until next summer so the date was planned well before the ring appeared. I knew I wanted to be asked here, somewhere at my mom's house, somewhere on this wonderful property that has been home for most of my life. On Sunday, he brought me to this place and reminded me that some time ago, we had been clearing some trees, knocking down dead and nearly dead saplings to let the others grow stronger and make a wider path for my mother and her horses. He had stopped when a small speck of bark found its way into the corner of his eye. Still just friends, I had stood close enough to breathe in his skin and softly look for it in his lashes. Just before sunset last week, he brought me again to that spot. "Do you remember that day? Do you remember that as the time when things between us started to change?" 

Sitting now in the midst of these orange and tan pine needles on the path where he knelt down, I think of the class discussion on anthropomorphism and that the practice of associating human characteristics with nature is frowned upon, a no-no. I wonder if the scientific community would also look down on attaching sentimental value to place, to recalling a moment most vividly in the context of what color the leaves were and was the wind cold or stilled. I am not sure I could ever refrain from giving a fall day or a swim in the ocean something more than just photosynthesis and tidal movement. When I put my hand down and pick up a maple leaf, or put my hand on a slim branch that could very well be on the ground because two friends went outside on a bright autumn afternoon to clear a path of trees, I know I'll want to say more about what the moment meant than how it scientifically came to be.