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A New Season, a Fresh Vision
Category: Uncategorized
February 2: A Day of Renewal and Surprise
Some call it Groundhog Day; in Celtic lands it is known as Imbolc or Saint Brigid’s Day, associated with new life, the birth of lambs and calves. It’s a time of new beginnings for humans, too—whether the ground hog sees his shadow or not—the celestial calendar marking it as the moment Winter turns toward Spring . A hopeful celebratory time!
I’ve been looking for signs of Spring for days now, in preparation and longing. Not that the Winter has been a hard one, but I felt a need of more light, more inspiration and energy. An urge to get out into the garden. A need to see if the Skunk cabbage was sending its bright yellow flag up for my attention. And on walks close by I found plenty of evidence that the plant world was awakening and eager to begin the new season. Come celebrate with me:
Ah, but remember, also, that February can be full of surprises, something new every day. Yes to morning sunrise minutes earlier every day, more and more unfurling of buds and bits of color here and there, but other gifts of the season can catch us unprepared: snow! The first snow of this year greeted me this morning, blanketing the ground, coating the parked cars, capping the fence posts and silvering the tree branches. And all day it has altered, shifting from bright sun and blue sky to a gray pall and sparkling white flakes, sometime pin-sized and sometimes great bloggy wads coming down. And back and forth.
That’s February, looking both forwards and backwards, holding both Winter and Spring in the moment. But Spring will win…those early minutes add up eventually.
The New Year: Are You Reading Something Good?
But first, can you remember the first bird you saw in 2025? Last year my bird-of-2024 was a junco, handsome in his winter feathers of dark and almost russet brown, unassuming and a bit reticent to challenge others in line for the suet feeder, but always there. Steady, working the edges, patient. This new year has been more of a crowd scene, a frantic scrambling and somewhat more quarrelsome setting with the addition of pine siskins to the usual mix of chickadees, juncos, bush-tits, various sparrows and finches, and a few nuthatches. A lone wren skitters through the overhanging bushes but does not participate in the feeder line up.
The moment for picking a “first bird” has been lost, but one does rise to a level of interest for me: again a loner, a tiny, bright-eyed kinglet. My guide book mentions that the ruby-crowned kinglet has “conspicuous broken white eye-ring” while the golden-crowned kinglet sports “a white stripe over the eye.” As my new friend has not yet flashed any crown of either vivid yellow or red, I am leaning toward the eye-ring distinction and calling this one a ruby! He certainly has a presence with that big-eyed look and buzzing wing-flapping attempts to find an opening to the feeder. I haven’t worked out the emblematic significance of choosing my kinglet as bird-of-the-year but seeing him show up always gives me a lift of spirit. And that is enough!
As for the book of the season….I admit to being one of those whose chair-side table would prove lethal during an earthquake. As an historian, of course, a great deal of the pile is devoted to several pursuits of not-quite random questions, most often in search of the development of science as a world view. One fascinating cross-over book has been “The Ecological Plot: How stories Gave Rise to a Science,” which promises to explain Darwin’s success with his connection with the greats of Victorian literature. I’m still reading but can see the line of thought forming. Most of the books are about how science became the measure of everything according to many, provoking thoughts on where Margaret fit herself into that modernist point of view. Stay tuned.
But the most inspiring and uplifting and food-for-thought book is Robin Wall Kimmerer’s “The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World.” This will be the book that gets me through these next years. It’s a slim book but brimming with inspiring art and wisdom, strong heart and deep knowledge. The tag line “All Flourishing is Mutual” is a rock solid reminder of what is, what should be, what must become. I’m sure to be turning to it often. Like lighting a candle in a dark room, like seeing the kinglet making his way to the feeder, like hanging a new calendar on the wall and hoping for good days ahead.
Forecast: Rain, Not a Moment to Lose
Yesterday was actually hot. Today is supposed to be a long soaker; we are four days into the new Autumn season. We could call it the see-saw time. I thought I had better to get out for a walk before it all started. The sky was brilliant with contrasts of darkening clouds and sun-streaks highlighting the blue-blue sky.
The neighborhood was quiet…until the Towhee announced its presence with a loud mew. I couldn’t see it but there was no mistaking that voice. As I tuned into more chirpings, rustling, ticking and full-throated singing, I activated my Merlin app to help decipher all the chatter. Eavesdropping added a lively dimension to my walk. The only birds I actually saw were crows, winging silently towards a large fir tree, the better to survey their domain. I will append the final list at the end of this post. I don’t always believe that all these birds were present—a Cedar Waxwing? But a Brown Creeper is a miracle to spot…so maybe!
As always, my walk takes me by my favorite trees, the majestic cedars, the stalwart oaks, the Douglas-firs….and this time of year, the pop-up aspiring-to-be-trees, the astonishing giant sunflowers! The evergreens are the steady backdrop, but my eyes were drawn to the painterly deciduous trees and bushes that are just beginning their artful scattering of leaves. The compositions are more pointillist still; the impressionistic drifts of leaves will come later. I resisted picking up every pretty leaf but I know soon enough I’ll be coming home with handfuls, overcome with their beauty and momentary glory.
Coming in my own gate my thoughts turn to birdfeeders and water dishes, checking to see if they need attention. My own forest of sunflowers attracted goldfinches briefly this summer, a first! The chickadees claim the bounty now, that is, when the squirrels aren’t ravaging the garden. Some lucky birds discovered the tiny crop of Saskatoon berries before I could get to them and somebody is cleaning off the huckleberries. They are welcome to the tiny bursts of sweetness!
There was a soft pattering as I stood on my porch taking it all in: rain. I’m so glad I stepped out early! Fall, it’s here!
My Merlin app list:
Spotted Towhee
Golden-crowned Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Black-capped Chickadee
Cedar Waxwing
Golden-crowned Kinglet
Chestnut-backed Chickadee
Brown Creeper
Red-winged Blackbird
White-throated Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
California Scrub-Jay
Bewick’s Wren
House Finch
American Robin
Anna’s Hummingbird
High Summer Fields of Flowers
Margaret McKenny famously opened her door to anyone who came with a basket of mushrooms to identify—not for science but for gastronomic reasons! “Will this one or this one be good to eat or will I be poisoned?” Inwardly she would sigh, acknowledging that the stomach ruled instead of some higher faculty which should be marveling over the beauty and variety of forms and colors and textures that mushrooms presented. Less known was her deep knowledge and appreciation for wild flowers. No one came to her with a clutch of blooms in hand; they would have received a stern lecture on not picking flowers but leaving them to grow and cast their seeds for next year’s patch of glory.
From childhood and throughout her long lifetime, Margaret cherished and studied wild flowers. It was her mission to introduce their many colors and forms to everyone, through her vast collection of photographs shared during slide-lectures, her books, Nature Notes, and her own garden. In 1936 she published The Wild Garden, an exploration and handbook of instruction for creating a wild garden within the bounds of preserving and caring for the chosen plants. A few years after that she created a book for children to introduce them to wild flowers to be found in fields and woods—and left there to thrive and propagate more of their kind. And she worked for long years with Roger Tory Peterson on a guidebook of flowers found in the northeastern and north-central states, finally published near the end of her life.
But she never did achieve a study of western wild flowers though she traveled and photographed and amassed a tremendous slide collection of flowers from every habitat found in the west: mountains, prairies, deserts, marshes, fields and byways. She gave talks, wrote magazine articles, and promoted conservation wherever she found a way open. Again, near the end of her life, she was acknowledged as an expert and included in discussions of how to preserve the disappearing glacial prairies that dotted the Puget Sound country and were home to many varieties of wild flowers, butterflies and birds. We can take up the task; it’s still a struggle to be won.
A place to begin to know these precious life forms is just outside of Olympia, in the state protected preserve of the Mima Mounds, those mysterious land formations that are home to waving grasses and a wonderful variety of flowers that support endangered species of insects in turn. I usually visit there in springtime but summer presents a very different experience. On a recent visit there we still found a wealth of blooms going to seed. We were also enchanted by bursts of birdsong, some from the bordering trees, some from hidden depths within the mounded landscape. A soft breeze tossed the grass and scattered the bird notes and scents from the earth and all that grew there. We felt a deep sense of peace and contentment.
Bird list, identified using Merlin app from the Cornell Lab:
Spotted Towhee
Olive-Sided Flycatcher
Brown Creeper
White-crowned Sparrow
Pine Siskin
Western-wood Pewee
Swainson’s Thrush
Red-breasted Nuthatch
Red Cross-bill
Chestnut-backed Chickadee
Tilting From Spring into Summer
The bright and fresh young green of spring foliage is deepening into Summer shades. The maples are dimpled with red seed parachutes ripening in preparation for their fall launching. I still think of summer as “endless” but those red dots remind me to savor each day as much as possible. The seasons hurry onward; it’s good to pause and mark their passage.
On the last day of spring we found ourselves in Concord, Massachusetts. The heat was relentless—ninety-nine degrees and not at all spring-like—but we still longed to feel the spirit of this place so we headed to Author’s Ridge, in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery at the edge of town. The winding trails that led through the gravestones were tree-lined, offering a welcome but fringe kind of shade. Many of the stones were steeped with lichen and blurred with age, adding to the elegiac atmosphere. Though several families and individuals wandered the paths it was quiet and pensive feeling.
I had recently been reading about Ralph Waldo Emerson but was more curious to see the grave of Henry David Thoreau; his writing struck a deeper chord with me. Margaret too admired the integrity of his life and the power of his thought and writing. I felt something like a pilgrim gazing at a sacred site.
His whole family was gathered there, keeping each other company in death as in life. Henry’s grave lay a little to one side, decorated with pencils, a double-meaning tribute to his humble work in the family-run factory that produced them as well as the literary masterworks he produced using them. It seemed fitting.
What would he have said about our climate-ravaged spring day? Would his bean field have prospered under such a blazing sun? I turned my thoughts instead to some of his summer observations plucked from Odell Shepard’s book, The Heart of Thoreau’s Journals, letting him rest in peace:
‘There is a sweet world which lies along the strain of the wood thrush—the rich intervales which border the stream of its song—more thoroughly genial to my nature than any other.”
“…for my afternoon walks I have a garden, larger than any artificial garden I have read of and far more attractive to me—mile after mile of embowered walks, such as no nobleman’s grounds can boast, with animals running free and wild therein as from the first—varied with land and water prospect, and above all, so retired that it is extremely rare that I meet a single wanderer in its mazes.”
“At a distance in the meadow I hear still, at long intervals, the hurried commencement of the bobolink’s song, which is suddenly checked, as it were, by the warder of the seasons, and the strain is left incomplete forever. Like human beings they are inspired to sing only for a short season.”
One more gem, among so many thought-provoking selections, that captures the essence of how to live and what matters:
“I can express adequately only the thought which I love to express. All the faculties in repose but the one you are using, the whole energy concentrated in that. Be ever so little distracted, your thoughts so little confused, your engagements so few, your attention so free, your existence so mundane, that in all places and in all hours you can hear the sound of crickets in those seasons when they are to be heard. It is a mark of serenity and health of mind when a person hears this sound much.”
The sound of crickets. The call of a bird. A gentle wind sowing in the branches of a tree. A bee lumbering from flower to flower. Summer sounds that mark the season, that call us to attend the moment. Celebrate the Summer Solstice in your own best way!
World Ocean Day
I was lucky to be close to salt water for World Ocean Day on June 8th. We joined some eager explorers to learn about the rich life in the inter-tidal zone, that magical area between deeper waters and the sand-and-gravel revealed when the water recedes. When the tide retreats, it is a place of seaweed strands, abandoned shells, and burrowing creatures hunkering down until the next wave comes in. Then, as the Earth turns and the water laps up and up, herons fly in to scoop up some dinner. There is always something to see in this ever-transforming small world.
Though the water is always moving, on calm days like this one, it rolls in long lines of white, cresting and subsiding, then slipping backwards in a whisper. There is something so restful in this blue seascape as it stretches outward. The sky, as blue as the waters, was fleeced with high puffs of cloud touched with the gold of sunshine.
We left that beach and found a different one, a small cove surrounded by giant trees and sandstone carved by time and waves. Same water and same land, but where they met was a new image of what those elements can create together. Though quiet now, there was evidence of past storms with logs tossed ashore and stone worn with the fretting of water. Seaweed forests glistened with lush green life.
We continued our explorations, finding a higher bluff and a view that opened to further distances. Here was sea and sky, blue and white stretching to the far horizon. Somehow this was the most peaceful place of all. Here we celebrated the open ocean and breathed air that felt newly oxygenated by the frothing of waves.
We know the threats from climate change, pollution and over-fishing shadowing this watery world, but for this one day it felt right—and much needed—just to feel the peace and power of the world’s oceans. To feel refreshed and strengthened and grateful for its gifts.
And to pledge, with the World Ocean Day organization: “One Ocean, One Climate, Our Future—Together”
Keeping Earth Day
Yesterday was Earth Day; this Friday is Arbor Day. Days set aside for celebration, awareness, angst and action. I try to image the tiny blue marble floating through space, so alone and fragile looking, so precious and one-of-its-kind. I can’t bear it.
My attention slips to the here-and-now. As everything is connected—it’s One Earth—I can best celebrate our home planet by going outside and immersing myself in the lilac blooms scenting my garden, the leaves unfurling in their individually precise shapes, the jay perched high and watchful above it all.
That Earth Day is held in April feels just right. Spring has advanced enough to fill us with confidence and hope on many days but still backslides enough to remind us not to take our good fortune for granted. Keeping up with all the rapid changes takes dedication—and several guide books. What kind of bee is that busily probing my flowers? What hidden bird is trilling from deep within my cedar tree? What is this plant that just arrived from who-knows but is growing so happily tall and commanding just right here (where it crowds something I did plant)? It’s a high-stepping march of cloud then sun, then quick rain, then back to fleecy clouds racing, like time-lapse photography. I don’t want to miss anything.
Margaret would say that observing and immersing ourselves in the natural world comes first; protecting and conserving our Earth follows. We care for what we love. Yesterday was full of sunshine and a fresh breeze, bird song and the garden fairly leaping into growth. A day of celebration, indeed. I look forward to Arbor Day and all the un-named days full of promise and surprises and opportunities to make a difference, to be present to the parade of wonder!
Watch this annual progression:
Margaret is 139 years old, on April 17th!
Well, at least her memory is alive and well. To celebrate her life and all that she bequeathed to us, we went to see a small neighborhood park named for her, here in Olympia, her old hometown. We were lucky to have a bright sunny day with flowers brightening the walk to the park and new green leaves shining from every bush and tree. I think she would have approved of the park design created by the city.
A path led to a cluster of playground climbing structures, slides, and swings. There were tables and benches for picnics and other gatherings. But first there was a large display board* introducing Margaret to the children and families visiting there. We were so pleased to see how it both told something about who she was but also engaged children in how they might share some of her interests and ways of being active in their community. Margaret was presented as both a possible mentor but a very fun companion, as well. Her spirit welcomed everyone to explore and play!
*A bit difficult to read from the photo, but here is the text of the first panel:
“This park is named after Margaret McKenny. She enjoyed spending time in nature and worked hard to protect it. She was very engaged in her Olympia community and shared her knowledge and creativity through her many interests. What are some things you enjoy about nature? What activities interest you? How can you help improve your community?“
The second panel asked the children to piece together images that might have been part of her life. They even showed a pet cat! As a primary school teacher herself she would have approved on this active invitation to know her and join her in these ways of doing and seeing life:
“Come inside Margaret’s living room and find the objects that help tell the story of her life:
Writing and Art
Nature
Teaching
Gardening
Exploring
Radio Hosting“
Just beyond this display we could see the beginning of a trail leading into some woods. We could almost feel Margaret beckoning us to explore. As the path wound through a mixed forest of Douglas fir—some quite advanced in years, some just getting started, like a metaphor of the park theme—we discovered a whole array of native plants. Again, Margaret would have rejoiced to see so many examples from her own native plant garden! She was an early promoter of using native plants as supports for birds, insects and each other. Here are some we found:
All in all, a very thoughtful and commemorative tribute to a person important in our history and still important now for all she did then and her message alive as ever. Happy Birthday Margaret!
For more information about the park and directions, see:
https://www.olympiawa.gov/services/parks___recreation/parks___trails/margaret_mckenny_park.php
A small bush of snowberry, it will show off waxy white berries as summer progresses
Seeking Spring: Just Look and Listen!
It’s here, it’s now officially Spring! A day early….my guess it’s because of the extra day gifted us courtesy of Leap Year. And speaking of gifts…when I finally found a copy of Margaret’s book “Wildlife of the Pacific Northwest” published in 1954, I opened it to the first page to find her dedication to her friend, the original purchaser, but one I have tried to heed ever since:
I’ve been watching the buds swell on my huckleberry bushes, and the tiny leaves unfolding and reaching for light on the honeysuckle vines, and the daffodils bursting with color even when skies were dark and raining, raining, raining. But then we had a reprieve and the sun broke through at last! Time to get outside and bask!
I’ve recently discovered the joys of “Merlin Bird ID,” the app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology that identifies bird song as you sit—in my case on my front porch—and listen and glance at your phone to see what image pops up in response to a snatch of song or chirp or call. I discovered that the most melodious sound came from a House finch so hidden in my tree that I never saw him. A Berwick’s wren was in full view, however, as well as full-scold, while the plaintiff call of a spotted towhee looking very dashing in his black-and-red courting feathers sadly did not find an answering response. Chickadees—Black-capped and Chestnut-backed both—added their chatter, while somewhere out of sight a Collared-dove added its plaintive voice. Then the local eagle got into the act, screaming from its treetop a block away. No one paid it any mind. My “bird-of-the –year” Junco scratched for seeds and bugs and said very little, a few ticks but enough to register. The bird that made the most sound, though, went unremarked by Merlin: the hummingbirds whirred in and out sipping at their feeder, the buzz of their wings was not officially a “call,” I suppose. Still, using the app made me listen more attentively and helped me connect the songs and calls with birds that were not in view. I could really feel all the vibrant life around me!
If you’re curious here’s the link. It’s free! https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/
So, with that experiment I was eager to try other locations. My friend and I have a tradition to welcome Spring with a visit to a local park to search for Trilliums, Margaret’s signature flower. It’s been cold and we wondered if they would be visible in the swaths of competing green ivy and other early plants. At first we looked in vain but finally we found one, just opening…and then another, also not fully “out.” But then we found a blooming clutch and could relax into assurance that Spring was truly here.
The other unmistakable sign of the season was frog song! We thrilled to their chorus as first one would begin and then other voices would swell and compete for attention. There is a rush-filled swampy low place in this park where the frogs hold their contests, but it’s a muddy, tangled, impenetrable place; we didn’t venture close to find the frog vocalists; in any case they would have instantly silenced. We just grinned and listened and imagined their throats bubbling with song.
Returning to my Merlin studies, a red-winged blackbird announced its presence with its wonderful trilling—another of the great heralds of Spring! And a tiny Kinglet made enough of a twitter to draw our eyes in time to see it dip and flutter through the trees. A rare sight as they are so small!
Margaret’s command to Look and Listen was so rewarding, a proper welcome to Spring!
Afield with Margaret McKenny 