SPRING IN THE BLOOD

Here at the end of an overcast day of digging, raking, garden-readying, cleaning after the wind stampede, gathering windfall branches for this Winter's years kindling, amplifying the grunge by handweeding, gathering spinach for dinner, restacking a big pile of wind-and-monkey-toppled shiitake and hiratake logs (a few biggening mushrooms as reward, to go with the spinach), at last comes the rain that has pent up there in the gray all day-- the first real Spring rain of the year, a gentle falling in drops you can barely hear (the bamboos beneath stand quiet as the dusk), all bringing to the Big Soul the same mood that calls blossoms up from the ground, makes already daffodils bounce with brightness in their green corner, sets the plum and cherry branches with tiny opals and rubies, soon to open in glories beyond price, making even spring-busy humans pause in their motions and gaze into the quiet distance in search of what must be there, now and then taking a deep breath of it all, with a look in the eyes that rises from ancient human-Spring relations, an inborn love of calm. Ah, the ancient privilege it is, to savor these moments and the food they are, to the Winter-hungered heart...

LIVING IN ONE TIME

We live in one time, flowers live in another. Ours is mostly artificial, of our own devising: time compartments of the social mind. 

I was out in the garden one morning a few days ago, not cleaning up after the wild pigs for a change (more on that later), but doing one of the autumnal things gardeners do in that absently focused way gardeners do things - not thinking of time at all, just going along with the body on functional autopilot - weeding, raking, hauling - and in the path of my task I noticed the oddness of one slim green flowerstem sticking up out of the ground, just a bright dash of green with but a dab of red at the end - it looked familiar, but incomplete - had I accidentally cut off the tip of it or what? It gave me pause, called me forth, and so the new flower reminded me what date it was. 

It was the Autumnal equinox, or higan in Japanese; yesterday was the higan holiday on the Japanese calendar: September 21 (so that's why the date was in red!). Every year around this is when the higanbana bloom, as though to remind us.

They know something big-- not about time, as all flowers do, but about a specific "date," as we humans term it, a particular timepoint in our particular framework comprising planetary orbits, rotations and suchlike; these flowers, though, know this point in time every year without all that, without our math or astronomy or information recording systems, when their new flowers suddenly sprout up overnight or it can seem right before your eyes if you haven't been watching, as so many of us don't at about this time every year, when we're busy with our own yeartime tasks and can forget for a duration the deep purpose of life, which is to bloom whenever the time is right... as the higanbana have demonstrated for eons.  

Later, from the deck at the end of the day I could see that over in the shady corner, by the stone steps down to the inner road, a cluster of higanbana stood erect on their slender green leafless stems, blossoms open to their full spread, gathered like a misty scarlet cloud, saying in unforgettable red to all who pass by Hey it's the equinox! Not that they "know" this as we know this, although they do-- it's difficult, with only a mind, to get at this aspect of reality and all its permutations that come to pertain every year with higanbana, but they "know" it not in the merely intellectual way that we do: they know it in the fiber of their lives, they rise by it from the earth itself, and stand there; they live it, they proclaim it in unmistakable scarlet for all to see, they are one with it, that is why they are there now in the shade, stating these facts as crimson in the shadows, or like fireworks out in the sun, declaring a truth to one and all in the strongest terms of red, clustered there, seven or eight of them this year beneath the tsubaki trees; next year there will be more, making the same emphatic point about time with the same bright excitement, as what they know grows in an importance we have yet to discover...

THREE FLOWERS

I am not going to complain about the weather, I am not going to complain about the weather, I am not going to complain about the weather, so spins my mental noncomplaint wheel. I must remind myself. It’s a pending hurricane I think, been hanging over the archipelago with its cloudy rainless veil and no sun to speak of for four days now; cool nights, good for planting if this was a month or two ago, but now I use it as ideal cover for my maxosweaty endeavors like pruning and cleaning the culvert beside the inner road, a superb source of upmountain soil and leaf mould, plus it’s free, only a lot of sweat required, which I am able to produce in major volume with little effort, so who could ask for more. Perfect weather for hard labor, but I’m not all that ecstatic. Every cloud has an aluminum lining.

On the brighter side, had the Trio of Brio helping me yesterday at the early part of the culvert etc. task, and with four of us it went way faster than me soloing this last little part. Which reminds me, I forgot to mention that when we went to buy the wheelbarrow together I noticed that the girls just walked along among the big bright swatches of potted flowers on sale display at the gardening center without paying any particular attention to the blossoms, despite all that color and fragrance, so after we’d picked out the wheelbarrow I said they could each choose one kind of flower to take home and plant in a pot. I hadn’t expected such an interesting result. 

So there I was standing by a brand new green wheelbarrow with yellow handles while three little girls went touring around among the thousands of flowers in pots, closely examining each kind to see which one was theirs, the one they wanted. What criteria were they using, I wondered. Looking for something that spoke to them somehow-- that said what? Of course the color and design, maybe the fragrance, but fragrance, design and color were in abundance; what else? That personal something more that each of them was looking for without knowing what it was until they saw it. It took a while; they went all over to see all the flowers and make sure. I waited. I’d already planted my flowers.

Kaya came back first. She had selected what the shop called Kashmir Decoration, a cluster of varicolored flowers that looked like small pointy brushes that had been dipped in special bright paints. Miasa came back after about 5 minutes with her selection, a pot of small round-petaled pink, almost cartoony flowers, called Fairy Stars, beautiful little things with white dots at their centers, that rose on thin stems and danced like pink stars in the eye-sky. We waited. Mitsuki, the fussier twin, was making extra sure. At last she came back holding a pot containing one big round yellowball blossom on a tall stem; it looked like a miniature sun, it was so piercingly yellow. It was called an African Marigold.

The thing that surprised me was how different and how ‘thought-out’ the flower selections were. In my shockingly offbase mindlock I’d expected that all three would just quickpick the same sort of cutesy, babybreathy kind of ittybitty flowerbunch, but their picks were as far apart and as different as one could get. I’d had no idea, I realized, how deeply different the three really are; even the twins! 

During the drive home the girls carried their flowers on their laps. When we arrived they each selected a pot they liked from among the empties stacked around the garden, and I helped them pot and water the plants, asked if they each remembered their flower’s name. We put the flowers in the shade, then the next morning moved them into the sun. The plants are healthy and growing day by day, so each time the girls visit, they run to see their flowers and go aaah! I see them saying the names to themselves.

Three such different flowers!

God, I dig

how that black and white butterfly

loves those pink blossoms

there is no enough

is there

Gotta plant more flowers -

need a lot more

butterfly fuel

REMAINING BEAUTY


Late yesterday, after wheeling back and forth with barrows full of split wood from the chopping stump to the new stack - a routine that gets pretty monospective - I finally noticed that all along I'd been being careful about the cluster of ivory and gold daffodils beside the big rock in the shadow of the old oak. All day I'd been edging carefully between them and the wheelbarrow without really thinking about it, and now that I'd stopped my routine I looked at them with eyes I could use for new things and saw that the blossoms actually glowed in the slanting light from the clouded setting sun.

There were a couple dozen flowers on the cluster, but the stalks of half of them had been crimped and toppled by the strong winds. And though those blossoms themselves were down in the dirt, they glowed just as though they still stood unbowed. I could not but be moved by that kind of character, so I rescued them rather than have the wind keep rubbing them in the dirt until they were rags. I cut the bent stalks just above the crimps so that they could stand, then brought them inside to put in a vase in the kitchen where they could shine in the window. As if in thanks, they filled the room with that fragrance that every spring takes me somewhere I know so well and love so strongly, yet have never visited but by the grace of flowers.

LIFE TO THE DAY

This late September afternoon and evening I'm out running around with one arm plus, sectioning, sorting and stacking a mountain of firewood we got from some landscaper guys who were scaping the grounds of a house for sale down the mountain, we asked if they could bring the firewoody results to our house (they're glad to, rather than drive several loads of wood all the way to a landfill or incinerator), so they dumped logs and long branches of ironwood, oak, beech, locust and black pine in front of the deck on Thursday night, and twice more today.

It always surprises me how heavy ironwood is, just a 30 cm diameter yard-long chunk makes you take an extra breath and then lift again for real-- I'm being careful with the one arm plus, though one could get carried away at the sight of so much free heat to put in the bank, but I have my limits and I listen for them, the arm whispers to me in the edgy lingo of early pain, then I stop.

But I got a lot done today nevertheless, also started another of my patented Brady Cedar-tree firewood holders - have those tall, green sophisticated presences do something more than look beautiful, put those strong slim bodies to work, get some muscle on those grainy bones, thereby freeing up our metal firewood holder for winter use on the deck, which was part of the plan -

In the midst of all these hitherings amidst the rough bark and grain, through the grays and browns and fading greens and crisping leaves, with the right-on-time blossoms of higanbana rising straight up, standing around like squads of cardinals watching a priest do all the work, I couldn't help but notice the extreme oddness of a big beautiful delicate yellow summer flower coming up from the nowhere of tall unkempt grass that's always by the garden faucet, no place for such a flower, out of time too, for when I looked closer with an armful of ironwood I saw that it was a melon flower, a golden mist of a blossom grown from a seed dropped some time during the summer when I was washing the kitchen sink garbage strainer (after dumping the contents on the compost pile over by the cherry tree).

And so an opportune packet of life took advantage of the household situation to show the immediate world what a melon seed can do on its own amidst hard labor and punctilious bloomings, and what a beauty it was, all the more precious for being so out of place and time: a summer melon blossoming in Autumn, a flowery martyrdom up here on the mountain, quiet little facet of the mystery, offering its bright life on the fading day...

THEIR KIND OF LIFE

Last year at around this time, when I was more botanically ruthless (had less ruth?) than I am now - may it ever be so - I mowed down all the dokudami that clustered naturally here and there, with leaves like dark-green ruby-trimmed hearts.

In my hopefully diminishing ignorance I viewed them not as desirable plants, but as noxious weeds, simply because they now grew where they wanted, having spread beyond where they'd been planted.

That evening I regretted what I had done when here and there in the darkening I saw the remotely surviving remnants with white-jade teardrop buds put forth their solo white blossoms with golden hearts, bright even in the dusk, like stars on the ground.

So yesterday and today, when I mowed I mowed around wherever the dokudami were now thriving in their dusky green cloisters, thanks to their hard work of winter now come to fruition.

This evening I am rewarded as those green gatherings of their kind of life unfold their blossoms in the same pure-white, golden-hearted hope of tomorrow that we ourselves bring forth in the darks of our days, that this path be the true one...

Beautiful and countless things we hold in common with the natural world...

DANCE IN RED

Now that we in all our autumn doings tend to turn inward, away from the importances that nourish the roots of our going on - that permit us to be - now that nearly all the rice has been harvested, now that farmers too are busy indoors and their fields lie empty, bleakly shorn, puddles of mud and scattered chaff lying fallow as even the weeds themselves begin to lie down and the flowerless air to chill, on slender green leafless stems rise the elegant gestures of higanbana (Lycoris radiata – Spider Lily), each red blossom part of the bright ballet now dancing across the fields from out of the ground: one morning there they are, rising in the light, you never know where a new scarlet cluster will show up or how the flowers get around (since they make no seeds) but now they are dancing to the wind's music even on our recently reorganized mountainside, where they gesture in their red clouds along the untrammeled streambanks, reminding us that we have reached the turning point, the time of equinox, when the silent skyhinge swings us and all into winter and future: we've made it this far we're reminded by this red dance of velvet gestures, randomly presented about the landscape, though most impressively where the earth has lain untended, for nature dances best where humankind least sets foot…