210425 Sci If Rousseau's Lion Spring 2.0

 Apr. 25

The red trillium I seldom saw in Ontario, was more familiar with the white. Here, I have seen no white ones yet, though there are more and more reds in bloom.

I was writing to someone about science fiction and my autocorrect changed Sci fi to Sci if. Poetic. The wind is blowing through the forest up the mountain, sounding just like the 427, west of our Etobicoke house in the early morning. (Six or eight lanes of highway.) It doesn't matter where you are. There are wildflowers coming up in the hydro field where we walked the dog, and along the Mimico Creek. As the path from Echo Valley Park turns along the creek to West Deane Park you can find trout lilies and in the hydro field under the border-trees violet leaves are thick and the raspberry canes are red with new life. By now the first dandelions are in flower, of course, and in the neighbourhood lawns the tiny, early violets are doubtless flowering.

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Fig being Rousseau's lion from The Sleeping Gypsy:

Every time I see Fig now, I think of this painting!

From Wikipedia, The Sleeping Gypsy, Henri Rousseau, 1897. Fig says, "I might bite that gypsy!" *

      

I tied a bell-rattle from a small baby toy to Fig's dog in an old sock, so that he can hear it land when I throw it. He still loves to play fetch and seems happy with my innovation.  Here he is sitting, nose in the air, smelling and listening to the wind.

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After the snow, Spring picked right up where it left off. Saturday it was 15 degrees. Sunday was warm again but it rained a small rain most of the day. With evening it came on heavier and the mountains of Vermont, misty through the day, were obscured. It was not too rainy to walk up the camp road and later across to the ridge stream. So many new waking-up plants to see and the woken-up ones begin to flower in earnest - the trout lily and the trillium, even a few strawberry blossoms on the lawn. I don't expect to enjoy many strawberries: I'm sure they are food to numerous creatures of the dusk and dawn and will vanish as soon as they ripen.

Trout lilies, more are in flower and there are hundreds still to come. Below, a clump of trilliums.

    

This is a bellwort, not quite open. (Thank you to my friend, GM, for the identification.) On the right, the first tiny violet I've seen!

Ferns: I thought these eerily resembled triffids! **

As they open, they look as suspicious as before! On the right another fern, much more appealing in its dainty unfolding.

  

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The west meadow has scraggles of small hawthorn bushes (they are young trees actually) but beside and between them grows another bush, which at a glance is also a hawthorn. But then you notice that the colour is wrong - the hawthorn are grey through the winter, while these bushes are black-brown, and there are little branchlets that resemble thorns but are not sharp, nor are they thorns, just little branches that end at the right length. I can't help wondering if they are evolved to mimic the hawthorn to deter foragers. The fact that they seem to coexist almost in pairs across the meadow seems so purposeful. It took me weeks (it was winter...) to ascertain that they were indeed a different bush. Now I will see how they both leaf and flower. Hawthorn on the left, mimic on the right.

 

On the lawn in front of the chalet: First strawberry blossoms. On the right, our first dandelion!

 

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I have begun working on the barn "studio", placing boards along the wall tops for shelves and beginning to clean the walls of cobwebs and dust. I am so excited to see the beginnings of my very own real studio. I haven't even tried the power yet. Cross fingers! It is cold again, it was trying to snow overnight, so I won't get anything done today, but soon. I need a serious broom for the floor and walls and there is a wet patch where water comes in which, hopefully, will dry up as the weather warms. 

I have several mosaic projects accumulating around the window ledges of the chalet. Bases and brokens are encroaching like sand dunes along the shore! All this from local friperies, donations and purchases. The bread bowl is more than half grouted, coming along well. The other projects tantalize me with their gradual evolutions. This must all be moved to the studio soon! I have no space to work here.

  

  

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The bridge of my guitar came off the box yesterday when I was tuning it. The box was warping already but I didn't know the guitar was so close to death. It was a lovely-sounding small-size guitar. I guess I will mosaic it now. Beer mugs and shot glasses? Gordon Lightfoot's coffee mugs? Country-western theme? New strings on an old guitar... new wine: old skins. That, next to it, is my Washburn Rover, a darling little travel guitar. (A Christmas present to myself a few years ago - the only new guitar I have owned.)

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The moon last night: it will be full tonight. It is the Pink Moon, so-called because it reaches fullness about the time that moss pink, also called creeping phlox, flowers. The Cree name is Frog Moon, very apt: the ridge-pond frogs were chirping again last night, as if celebrating spring anew! *** (It is also a "Super Moon" because it is closer to the earth than normal, although it doesn't actually look much closer! ****)

Keep well. Thank you for visiting.

Mumma Yaga

*I "copied" this picture from the Wikipedia article titled, "The Sleeping Gypsy". I don't know if I'm allowed to! However I assign credit here, to that source. 

**John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, 1951. One of my favorite post-apocalypse novels. 

*** https://www.almanac.com/content/full-moon-april : The Old Farmer's Almanac, Article: Full Moon For April 2021.

Here is an excerpt from the Almanac, with more names:

"ALTERNATIVE APRIL MOON NAMES

In April Moon names, references to spring abound! Breaking Ice Moon (Algonquin) and Moon When the Streams Are Again Navigable (Dakota) reference the melting ice and increased mobility of the early spring season, while Budding Moon of Plants and Shrubs(Tlingit) and Moon of the Red Grass Appearing (Oglala) speak to the plant growth that will soon kick into high gear.

Other names refer to the reappearance of certain animals, including Moon When the Ducks Come Back (Lakota), Moon When the Geese Lay Eggs (Dakota), and Frog Moon (Cree). Along the same vein, Sucker Moon (Anishinaabe) notes the time to harvest sucker fish, which return to streams or lake shallows to spawn. According to legend, now is the time when this fish comes back from the spirit world to purify bodies of water and the creatures living in them."

**** https://www.space.com/super-pink-moon-supermoon-rises-april-2021