Let’s go To where the magic waits for us Where our hopes, our dreams Our wishes. Come true. Athey Thompson
Yesterday was a magical day full of miracles.
In the garden, I looked up in a tree and saw two hawks mating! (I didn’t take any photos to protect their privacy.) Last night one of the wild baby bunnies was on the deck and scratched at the screen door like it wanted to come in the house (I didn’t open the door, but I was tempted), and the third miracle is that my adorable little vireos are once again nesting in a brand new bird house!
Vireo
“And as to me, I know nothing else but miracles” — Walt Whitman
The full moon and lunar eclipse again wreaked havoc with my sleep – I woke up several times seemingly for no reason, but I looked out the window and said “goodnight, moon“, as if I were in Margaret Wise Brown’s classic book where the bunny says goodnight to various objects and creatures before drifting off to sleep.
I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees. All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me, the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness. All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with a luminous doom. By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better. –Mary Oliver
This is an indication of how much rain we’ve had in Southern California and just how soggy the garden is…and more rain is on the way.
Unidentified fungi appeared in the crevice of a split ficus trunk that was cut down a couple years ago because the roots were starting to come too close to the foundation.
I wanted to keep the stump instead of grinding it because I thought it was architecturally beautiful and now it’s decomposing exactly like I hoped it would.
These mushrooms are definitely not edible, right? They’re most likely poisonous and I’m certainly not going to find out one way or another. I’m not THAT curious or adventurous. Or dumb.
A day later, here’s how they morphed and darkened, plus it’s raining:
Fascinating!
I found a poem by Emily Dickinson about mushrooms…
The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants
The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants – At Evening, it is not At Morning, in a Truffled Hut It stop opon a Spot
As if it tarried always And yet it’s whole Career Is shorter than a Snake’s Delay – And fleeter than a Tare –
’Tis Vegetation’s Juggler – The Germ of Alibi – Doth like a Bubble antedate And like a Bubble, hie –
I feel as if the Grass was pleased To have it intermit – This surreptitious Scion Of Summer’s circumspect.
Had Nature any supple Face Or could she one contemn – Had Nature an Apostate – That Mushroom – it is Him!
A hot blue day had budded into something. I wasn’t ready. The white clouds rearing Aside were dragging me in four directions. I wasn’t ready. I had no reverence. I thought I could deny the consequence– But it was too late for that. Sylvia Plath
Sunday sky. I looked up as jets flew by overhead, so I’m not sure what they are.
I heard a whisper Coming from the trees And, in that moment I was gone Gone away To return, to where I’d come from.
A little Poem by Athey Thompson Taken from A Little Pocket Book of Poems by Athey Thompson Photo credit to Enchanted Seashells of magical tree at Big Sur
Some people might think a solitary swing is the epitome of loneliness; forlorn, swaying empty in the breeze.
Instead, I like to remember this poem by Robert Louis Stevenson and think of the joy it brings to the Angels; well, except when they’re fighting over whose turn it is to swing.
The Swing
How do you like to go up in a swing, Up in the air so blue Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing Ever a child can do!
Up in the air and over the wall, Till I can see so wide, Rivers and trees and cattle and all Over the countryside
Till I look down on the garden green, Down on the roof so brown– Up in the air I go flying again, Up in the air and down!
Enchanted Seashells by Princess Rosebud 