It seems an eternity since last smelling rain falling on warm earth, while visiting this sea of humanity. The latter platitude is more appropriately applied to Tokyo than any place on this earth, at least of those I have visited. I walked around the lake inUeno tonight after dinner, rain be damned, listening to the background buzz of a city overlaid by emotive cries of night herons and the swallowing, hollow gathump of bull frogs. While savoring the fine petrichor, I marveled in the fact that other life forms have successfully jived with such kinesis and infinite lay of (mostly) uninspired but seismically stable architecture and imponderable sprawl of concrete.
It is my sweet 16th visit to this country, the archipelago I fearlessly continue to negotiate by cutting wide and vulgar swaths through its language and etiquette. Yesterday I became imprisoned on the wrong bus that, after a gruesomely long haul, ended up where I had started instead of where I was going. [Read more…]
There was something horribly unsettling about the beautiful weather we had thus far experienced in the mountains of Taiwan. It was like finding a child’s room completely and utterly organized or our ill behaved dogs sitting when commanded, as if they had done something very bad or were about to. This was not the Taiwan that I knew from the past, the country whose atmospheric marinade permanently saturates your clothing and prunes your skin before you even set outside. During my last visit in 1999, seeds collected were 4 parts water, 2 parts misery and 1 part embryo.
So, looking ahead briefly. At last, I will be spending this autumn at Heronswood. The original Heronswood, that is. I’ve been there before and anticipate my return. But more of that later.
Once again, I recognize my timidity through the discovery of an unexpected survivor within the expanse of safe and boring plants growing in my garden at Windcliff, pondering why I do not more often engage in attempted murder for the sake of luminosity. It is generally through these premeditated crimes and misdemeanors that I have been rewarded by the most amazing new plants. This year, I attempted a serial murder of a genus of terrestrial bromeliads called Dyckia and found myself mesmerized instead.
La Niña, that burly girl that refuses to let go her muscular thigh grip on our winter/spring/winter in the PNW, continues her stronghold in our climate. Robert and I, avec chiens, will retreat to the redoubt of eastern Washington this weekend to wait her out, with some botanizing, biking, enological illumination and political conversation (as they say, a good whine needs no bush). Interestingly, however, it is day length, not temperature, that rules the roost here and things push forward unperturbed.
Hello good friends and fine gardeners, or those who I do not personally know at this moment with whom I might someday ultimately become good friends. I am easy.
Yesterday, March 10th, was the first day of 2007 that I sensed spring. It is curious how it happens so suddenly and irrepressibly. I listened to music on my Radio Shack headphones during my early morning six miles through the surroundings of Indianola. While still in the tall wood not far from our house, the unmistakable song of a robin forced its way into my headset. I paused for a moment and pretended to tie my shoe strings while contemplating the degree of emotion that this fetching song has carried. 