I discovered that there are white variants of Hayfield Tarweed! (I had only seen yellow before.)
And then there was this complete rattlesnake skin. Look at those eyes!
My favorite photo from the day was of this Goldenaster going to seed.
Glen Schneider often half-jokingly calls us, “Cult of the Brown.” To love California native plants is to appreciate them in all seasons, including summer, when most of them go dormant and look dead to our colonized eyes.
Volunteering at Skyline Gardens has enabled me to see the lifecycle of these plants up-close, to observe how alive this place is, even in the dry season. It has reminded me that all living things need rest to flourish and to feel joy when I see them getting what they need.
We have a set of slippers we keep on our back porch so that we can easily go outside without having to grab our shoes. A few weeks ago, I was showing my friend, Aman, our backyard, and when we were coming back inside, he noticed that I turned around, removed my slippers so that they were pointing outwards, and step backwards through the doorway into the house.
“Why do you do that?” he asked.
“So I don’t have to turn my slippers around when I want to go outside again,” I responded.
“You have to turn them around one way or another,” he noted.
I shrugged. “That’s true,” I responded.
He paused for a second, then said, “I guess you’re paying it forward when you do it that way.”
I visited Seattle last week with my sisters and my younger nephew, Benjamin, who lives in Cincinnati. On one of our walks, Benjamin saw an Anna’s Hummingbird, and pointed it out to his mom as excitedly as a chill teenager might. We saw a few over the course of the week and always stopped to watch them flit about.
My friend, Aaron, lives in Michigan and is another hummingbird fan. When he and his family came to visit a few years ago, his enthusiasm made me realize that I take them a bit for granted, as we have them here year-round. We have at least two who live near our backyard. I’m watching one now, out my office window, darting between blossoms on our Meyer Lemon tree as the last remnants of the summer light fades away.
I try not to anthropomorphize animals too much, but it’s hard. Hummingbirds seem adorable, but they have a mean streak. Often, when I’m in the backyard, they will swoop nearby and hover, sometimes just a few feet away. I usually hear them before I see them, a steady stream of clicks and the telltale hum. I used to think they were just being curious or were coming by to say hello. I think it’s more likely that they’re being territorial and are making it clear to me that I’m not wanted.
Last Friday, I saw through my window that one of the hummingbirds had flown through a gap through my enclosed raised bed and was struggling to get out. I immediately went outside and opened the door so that it could escape.
It could be my imagination, but I feel like that hummingbird has made it a point to visit me every day since. This morning, I sat on my bench examining one of my unfinished projects, when the hummingbird flew a foot away from me and hovered. I looked at it and said hello. It looked at me calmly for several seconds, as if it were returning the greeting, silent except for the steady vibration of its wings.
I like to think that it’s decided that I’m its friend and is easing up on its territorial ways. It’s also possible that it’s still irritated that it got trapped in my cage and is making a point of letting me know.
It doesn’t matter. I think it’s wonderful. I feel very lucky.
This year was my 30th college reunion. I didn’t go, but someone on one of our forums noted that, as folks who are 50+ years old, we have all born witness to 20% of the U.S.’s existence.
I found that to be a stunning stat, a visceral reminder of how young this country still is.
Overcoming nature blindness does a strange thing to you when you travel: You start to pay an inordinate amount of attention to the local plants, sometimes to the annoyance of the folks with whom you’re traveling. When I was in upstate New York last month, I couldn’t help but notice the forsythia.
They were everywhere. You couldn’t miss their abundant yellow blossoms amidst the mostly barren branches, as Spring was just starting to emerge there. I saw them by the Finger Lakes, off the sides of the roads, and in just about every garden I passed. Much to my partner’s chagrin, every time I saw one, I would point and exclaim, “Forsythia!”
It turns out that this was no accident. In the early 1950s, the Ithaca Garden Club embarked on a major campaign to plant forsythia all over the region. They planted over 10,000 of these beautiful shrubs, earning the city the nickname, “Forsythia City.”
Last week, I was in Southern California visiting my parents. My Dad asked me how my bonsai dabblings were going. I pulled up photos of some of my projects, including some cuttings I had taken from my parents a few years earlier. My Mom quietly listened to me talk, then asked, “Do you know what 개나리 (gaenari) are?”
I shook my head.
She started telling me about these shrubs that were harbingers of spring in Korea and how her father (who died when she was 11) used to plant them around their garden. As I listened to her stories, I looked them up on my phone, then laughed, “Oh my gosh. They’re forsythia!”
I told her about my adventures in upstate New York and pulled up photos from my trip to show her. Then I asked, “What made you think of them?”
She replied, “Listening to you talk reminded me of my Dad.” Then tears started welling up in her eyes.
Later, I searched for “forsythia” in my photo album to see if it would be smart enough to find my photos. It not only found several, it also pulled up a photo and video of a bouquet I had taken almost exactly nine years earlier with my parents at a coffee shop in Newport Beach.
My Mom had spotted the bouquet and asked me if I knew what they were. Her reaction to the flowers moved me enough that I asked her to let me record them on video. She even sang a Korean children’s song about them.
Apparently, I quickly forgot about this encounter and about forsythia in general. I don’t think I’ll forget this time.
