Thursday, July 30, 2015

There's a scattering of yellow and brown tulip poplar leaves in the yard.  Late July seems very early for the trees to begin shedding leaves.  I'd think they'd be in the height of summer photosynthesizing now. Also, the weather hasn't been overly hot and dry.  But we've had some storms, and perhaps that brought some leaves down early.

I watched a storm roll in yesterday from the west.  Dark gray clouds, lightning flashes along the underside of the clouds as well as searing sky to ground bolts.  It swept in, enveloping the building in a blanket of gray.  For a few minutes the rest of the world disappeared as rain gushed from the sky.  Then the rain eased, the buildings, trees and sky gradually reappeared, until there was a break in the clouds and sunlight streamed through.

There's a very large crapemytle tree on my usual route home.  Crapemyrtles have long, flexible trunks and branches.  When they're in bloom, and it rains, the flowers are heavy with water and the branches bend over the sidewalk, below waist height.  I ducked under the outer fringe into the space within, surrounded by blooms and scent.  I almost didn't stop, getting home was in the forefront of mind.  But I did stop, and stood in the space, breathing and taking in the sensations.  Then movement caught my attention, as a mockingbird flew in, flaring its brown and white patterned feathers as it landed on a branch a few feet away.  I think I was an unexpected sight, and after a few moments watching me, it flew away.

I continued on down the street, into a landscape teeming with birds.  Catbirds, pairs of doves, small flocks of robins and starlings, were all around in the yards, trees and shrubs.  Perhaps it was the time of day - a little later in the evening than usual.  Perhaps the storm front had brought some birds with it that are beginning to move with the seasons.  Whatever the cause, it was a very lively scene.

Flutter By, Butterfly

Afternoon light, after the rain.
A butterfly flits and flutters
 in a chaotic seeming path.
Then lands precisely on the purple flowers
 and probes for nectar.

The Wind

Today brought wind.  Shifting wind. Strong wind.  Wind that seemed to be in my face as I cycled, pushing me back, no matter which direction I rode.  Cooling wind, pouring around the side of the building on the warm, humid day.  I stood, arms outstretched, enjoying the freshness as the river of air streamed past.

Wind.  It's the feeling of touch that senses wind most directly.  Eyes detect the wind's effects, as it transports clouds, flutters leaves, swirls dust.  Vibrations set into the air by the wind come to the ear, and sometimes scents to the nose.  But most consistently and directly, the wind touches us - warming or cooling, rushing past skin, pressing, sometimes buffeting.

I lay under a tree, looking up through the leafy branches, and watched the branches bend and leaves flutter, energized by the swirling gusts that came from one direction, then another.  Leaves glow with light streaming in from above, and dance in the pulses of air, making lively patterns of light and shadow.

Wind.  It circulates air around the planet - bringing to me the air I breathe next, and carrying my exhale away, swirling and mixing into the atmosphere.

Awareness. Breath. Enough.

My life touches on the present, more and more.
Lingering longer in focused awareness.
Dropping another level down, into detail and complexity of incomprehensible richness.

Expanding, a little at a time, my awareness of all that is.
Around me, light and sound and touch and smell, the ways I sense the things I can know.
A flood of data available to my senses from all around, most filtered out, ignored.

To become conscious of just a little more is cracking a door open to a world of wonders.
Too compelling to turn away from.
Hidden in plain sight, until seen.
Then impossible to ignore.

The sky, this morning - so often it is the sky - that draws me in.
Clouds - light reflecting and refracting
From tiny drops of water formed around tinier particles of dust.

Ten breaths to watch the clouds.
I'm always amazed at how much they change in the space of a breath.
If I'm watching - truly watching.

One moment, the most beautiful thing imaginable.
The next moment different, and just as beautiful.
This moment is enough.

If life ended now, I would be full.
And yet, I yearn for more moments - like this, yet utterly unique.
Full and rich - enough.

I walked home in early evening.
Warm afternoon sun lighting high cumulus clouds - again, the sky.
Then the rich greens of trees, shrubs and lawns.
A pair of goldfinches serenaded while a bumblebee worked scented purple blossoms.

I reached the front steps and took one more glance to the left.
There, in a beam of golden light, a cardinal sat in profile.
Brilliant crimson crest, yellow beak and dark eye.
I watched for seven breaths.  Then he flew up to a shadowed branch.

Enough.

Finding More Space

I stayed home this morning instead of going to Natalie's yoga class.  I felt that some time to be more relaxed, to have a little more space in the day, would be good.

Things come up to fill the space.  I cooked for breakfast rather than brunch, worked a bit on my website, and looked through some yoga notes from last week to organize the ideas and prepare for this week.

A little more space to "be," rather than "do," although there was plenty of "doing" in the end.

As night falls, I'm getting drowsy.  Outside, fireflies flash out over the yard, and the dark shapes of birds flash to and fro.  I watch them as I count ten slow, even, breaths.  Finding more space.

Bigger and Bigger

I watched a construction crane go up today at a building site across the street.   Erecting it took most of the day.  What was most interesting to me was the leveraging of the tools.  Each section of the crane tower arrived on a flatbed semi.  It's hard to tell the scale from a distance, but they must each be 40-50 feet tall.

First, a normal size mobile crane would unload the section from the trailer and stand it upright.  Then the task was passed off to a much larger mobile crane that rose perhaps 20 stories into the air.  This machine was able to lift the section over to the ever-growing crane tower.  Then the section was lowered into place and quickly fastened to the section below.

The two workers on the tower would then climb the ladders of the new section and await the next.

Flight of the Ladybug

This afternoon I found a ladybug - or ladybird beetle - on the wall of the 13th floor restroom in my office building.  I suspect that he/she rode in after lunch on someone's clothes.  Leaving it there didn't seem right, so I went back to my office and got a paper cup and an index card.   Back in the restroom, the ladybug hadn't moved.  I covered it with the cup and slowly slid the card across.

I had a little less than an hour before leaving, so I taped the card on and set the cup on my desk, making sure there was a little air gap.  When I left for the day, I thought about releasing the bug in the plantings right outside the door, but then thought the larger park space up the block would be better.  I'm glad I did.

When I let the ladybug out on the ledge, it quickly ran over toward a fallen leaf and climbed on top.  This action was startling in contrast to the immobility expressed on the restroom wall - the bug clearly was responding to being in its natural environment.

It paused for a few seconds on the leaf - I guess to survey the surroundings.  I was expecting it to crawl off onto one of the overhanging plants, but it suddenly unfurled it's wings and flew away, rising up out of sight toward the tree canopy.  Whatever fate befalls it, I'm glad it didn't remain stranded on the 13th floor restroom wall.

Fledglings

Walking home late last evening from a meditation class, I crossed Colesville Road and started up the hill on Spring Street.  To the left is a parking garage with a strip of grass, shrubs, and some landscaping trees.  A little patch of habitat, where Wednesday morning I had noticed a mockingbird and thought it seemed an unlikely place to make a home.

Last night a plump, fluffy bird in a tree branch over the sidewalk caught my attention.  I didn't recognize it right away, and then I saw, a few feet away, an adult mockingbird.  I had a little rush of the cute baby emotion as I realized this was a baby mockingbird enduring a little helicopter parenting.

This morning I walked into the front room and thought I'd go to the window and look out at the day, before settling in to meditate.  A rustle in the shrub beneath the window - the same shrubs with the now-abandoned cardinal nest - caught my attention.  A dark backed bird perched in the top twigs of the shrub.  A robin was on the lawn in front of the shrubs, and both birds were cheeping.

The bird in the shrub, smaller than the other, fluttered its wings awkwardly and disappeared down into the leaves. More cheeping.  Then it fluttered up again into the top layer and sat.  The parent, down on the grass, waited - patiently, or impatiently, I couldn't tell.  Then the little one powered up its wings and launched off in a low flight - arcing down to almost touch the ground before disappearing behind the dogwood over in the hastas.

I wish both these little ones success in their launch into life.

Sense of Time

I woke up this morning, ready to get up for the early yoga class I teach before work - woke up, probably 12-15 times.

Usually, my sense of time is reliable.  I'll wake up right about the time I expect to - 6am is typical.  Even if I set an alarm I rarely reach it, as I'll wake up 15 minutes or so before it goes off.

Sometimes I'll wake up very early in the morning - midnight or 1am - thinking I've slept all night, but then I'm back to sleep for the duration.

Not every night is like that, though, and last night was exceptional.  I remember waking at 1am from a sound sleep, and being surprised that the night still had 5 hours left.  After that, though, I kept waking up thinking hours had passed to find it was 15 or 20 minutes.

In spite of my messed up sense of time, the world kept spinning and the clock kept ticking, and the right time to get up finally arrived.

Keeping Cool

I went for a run up the Sligo Creek trail this afternoon.  It was pleasant in the shade, and hot in the mid-afternoon sun.   Quite a few people were out on the trail, enjoying a nice, temperate mid-July day.  After the warmest May on record, and June in the top 5, we've seen some welcome, cooler weather in July.

I stopped running as I came out of the park and walked up the street toward the house.  I paused to stretch in the cool shade of a tree, enhanced by a breeze blowing on my sweat-beaded skin.

A catbird swooped in from across the street, landing in a low branch of the tree, then hopping to another.  Agile in flight, it moved from one perch to another with just a few flaps of wings and a glide, maneuvering deftly with tail and cupped wings.

Empty Nest

I peered into the cardinals' nest this morning as I left for work, and found it empty.  I'm sure I had checked just the day before, and the two little ones were still there.

I'm sure they were too little to have left on their own.  What might have happened?  Did some predator raid the nest?  If so, what was it?  Another bird?  A rat, or snake, or squirrel?  It likely will remain a mystery.

I was looking forward to seeing the hatchlings grow up and fledge, and was sad to see the nest empty - so abruptly.

Planets and Lightning

I taught an extra yoga class tonight, so was walking home later than normal - right at that transition between dusk and night.  The sun was long set, but there was just a little light left in the sky.  Off in the west, Venus and Jupiter  floated in the slowly darkening sky. In the north, a large cloud hung in the sky, full of energy.  Lightning bursts inside the cloud gave it a strange glow.  As I walked down the street, it flashed periodically like a giant firefly.

Some Outdoor Work

I enjoyed getting outside this afternoon for a little while.  The sun was out, but the temperature was moderate, in the low 80s.  I added to and circulated the compost, pulled a few more weeds from the strawberry patch, and checked out the afternoon sunshine pattern with an eye to locating a raised garden bed for next year.

The fig tree is growing back nicely.  The fence I erected will protect it from the deer through the rest of this season, I think.

I took down a branch from the tree by the front corner of the garage that was shading the lilac and Rose of Sharon bushes.  I cut the branch up and bundled it for curbside pickup next week.

Some clouds moved in, and the mosquitos came out.   They seem late this year, but perhaps that is just poor memory on my part.  I must say, they bother me when I'm outside - enough that I'll stay in to avoid them.  So if I'm going to enjoy working outside, I'll have to become a bit more tolerant of the buzzing creatures.

A Path Taken

The afternoon dried out the roads after heavy morning rains, and I set out for an easy run.  My turnaround point was the bridge over a tributary that joins the main creek from the west.

For eleven years I've been running, walking, and biking up the Sligo Creek Trail.  When I approached the bridge, I noticed a dirt path that came down along the side of the tributary.  Something about it, perhaps that it seemed quite well used, caught my attention, and I decided to follow it.

Often the little side trails take you quickly up to street, or dead-end behind a house, but this one meandered along the stream.  I was surprised at how much water was running in the tributary - almost as much, it seemed, as in the main branch - and at the extent of the park land, particularly on the far side of the creek.  Houses lined the hill on the left, but across the stream, I could see nothing but forest.

Eventually the path led me out to a street, in an area I hadn't been before, and I turned around and headed home, happy to have followed my instinct - the day made richer by a little exploration.

Little Ones

Monday I wrote about seeing the young rabbits playing in a yard.  Yesterday, as I walked home, I saw young sparrows in two different places.  Slightly smaller than the adults, lighter in color, and a bit less secure in their flying - but, as they would have to be to survive, very alert and capable of flight.  They seemed to be out with an adult, learning to forage.

As I left the house this afternoon for a short run, I noticed a shallow nest in the shrub by the front door.  I heard a short, sharp bird call and spotted a female cardinal farther down the line of shrubs.  Peering into the nest, I could see the downy shape of a baby bird, and a little movement.  I hope the parents are successful in rearing their little one.

Lilies and Rose of Sharon are blooming, and some crepe myrtles. The hydrangeas are holding on but starting to brown around the edges.  Yesterday I watched a bumblebee, covered in pollen, working the Rose of Sharon blossoms.

The summer energy gathering part of the annual cycle of life is in full swing.  Moderate temperatures - only a couple of days in the next 10 forecast to touch 90 - and plenty of rain are making this a good year for the local creatures.