“Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, 

We fell them down and turn them into paper,

That we may record our emptiness.” 

Kahlil Gibran

Sand and Foam?

We have been alternating here between the hopeful signs 

of spring and the return of winter. Helen and I have managed

to finish a long delayed project and converted one room in 

the basement into a library for some mysteries, science fiction,

my Darwin/biology books and the bulk of my poetry collection.

two more libraries and a wood working shop to go.

 

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"

from The Summer Day

by Mary Oliver

 

“Seeing, in the finest and broadest sense, means using

your senses, your intellect, and your emotions. It means

encountering your subject matter with your whole being.

It means looking beyond the labels of things and discovering

the remarkable world around you.” 

 

                                                    Freeman Patterson

 

Lunch time Friday at the Research Park

 

 

“A human being is a part of the whole called

by us universe, a part limited in time and space.

He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling

as something separated from the rest,

a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.

This delusion is a kind of prison for us,

restricting us to our personal desires and to affection

for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to

free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle

of compassion to embrace all living creatures

and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

 

Albert Einstein

 

These pictures are from Tuesday we had a bit

of snow so I took my camera to work and walked

around the Research Park to see what I could see.

My camera has been acting up recently it is a  

Canon Rebel T2i and I normally use a zoom lens

(ef-s 55-250 mm) but it seems to have a problem

with the auto focus if I point it at the sky or a distant

landscape with nothing in the foreground it whirs

in and out but never allows me to take a picture,

then if I point it down it will take a picture. You will

be relieved to know I do not intend to blog my photos

of my feet. Maybe a sensor problem?

The park was nice a very blue sky and

plants bejeweled with ice crystals.

This magpie was hiding from his friends

in the bushes and strangely quiet.

I guess it did not want to share.

I heard chickadees everywhere but could not get a

photo until I was going home. I did not see any

jackrabbits despite looking, very rare for the park.

Not much to see, nothing very dramatic going on

but a lovely day for a walk.

"Where stars past the spruce copse mingle with fireflies
Or the dayscape flings a thousand tones of light back at the
     sun—
Be any one of the colours of an Earth lover;
Walk with me and sometimes cover your shadow with mine. "

Live With Me On Earth Under the Invisible Daylight Moon

Milton Acorn

At the farm the feeders are close to the windows and the view

is great if I did this at home I would have a window full of

House Sparrows, on the farm you are rewarded with visits from

that charming little favorite the Black-capped Chickadee.

I found a lovely old collection of poems

about Chickadees at

http://home.comcast.net/~peter_oehlkers/The_Chickadee_Vol1_Verse.pdf

“Were it not for me”,
Said a chickadee,
“Not a single flower on earth would be;
For under the ground they soundly sleep,
And never venture an upward peep,
Till they hear from me,
Chickadee—dee—dee!”

SIDNEY DAYRE

"Going to Walden is not so easy a thing

 As a green visit. It is the slow and difficult

Trick of living and finding it where you are."

                                                     Going to Walden

                                                     Mary Oliver

Last week before our weekend snow, when it was fairly spring like

I went to the nearby park at lunch. I took pictures of a number

of chickadees before I found one working away high up in a poplar.

I assumed it was caching something but it kept working away 

twisting it's body like a little drill it's head completely disappearing

and I kept taking photos. I vaguely thought they inhabited spruce trees

or woodpecker holes in the winter and never gave summer much

thought. Despite having lots of bird books I tend to read up

on less "common"  birds. At some point I began to realize the

chickadee was actually excavating a hole. Of course when

I got back to my office I checked on that Canadian institution

the Hinterland Who's Who.

It was not until I got home I was able to really check the photos.

"Together, they dig out a hole in the rotting wood of a dead stump,

usually about 1 to 3 m above ground. They may also nest 9 to 12 m up

in the dead parts of live trees, or in hollows abandoned by

other hole-nesting birds. "

                          Bird Fact Sheets: Black-capped Chickadee

                                Hinterland Who's Who

"Everywhere

the stream

of life goes on,

and I try to

go with it,

non-swimmer,

paddler in a leaky 

canoe."

                              Notes to My Mother

                                         Linda Pastin

When I first started taking photos I wondered a bit about

spending so much time looking at the world through a lens. 

But the longer I used it the more I realized I was seeing either,

a world I had forgotten to stop and look at or a world

I could not process well enough with my naked eye

to actually see. So I thought that would be the theme

of this post.

I have posted this photo before but I love it.

After days of freezing temperatures and cloudy skies we had a

cold but clear blue sky. I saw two crows in the distance

but could not make out anything else. At home I saw one crow

was upside down. The sheer joy and exuberance was clear to see.

I can not believe this serves any purpose but celebration.

If we had wings wouldn't we do the same?

I am not sure what the chickadee is up to,

a friend suggested showing off. However

I know I would only see a blur without

the camera and I love the little spray of snow,

the sense of forward motion.

And for some reason the sight of water droplets flying

is always a big hit with me.

 

And there is the beauty in small seemly insignificant things.

                                           "We have been here so short a time

       and we pretend we have invented memory"

                               To The Insects

                           Elders

                                             

                                                    W.S. Merwin

"Winter came early this year,

that's why, under my duvet,

I'm wondering about feathers,

the way some things so insubstantial

so hardly there, can make all the difference."

Full Moon That Strikes The Earth Cold

                    

                                       Plains Cree