I have eaten of the tree of knowledge

A couple of years ago I went around the corner from my back yard to find a substantial snake coming the opposite way. The snake quickly headed under the forsythia and I decided to go around the other way. I hadn’t seen any snakes in the yard since, though I’d seen snake skins on the sidewalk, and earlier this week a large snake on the side of the road nearby. So I knew they were here. Somewhere.

Today I was doing a bit of yard clean-up. I tidied up my pile of kindling, ready for the first cool night and a fire. I thought I’d deal with a raised bed under the apple tree, and the old tarp that was covering it, weighted down by some bluestone pavers.I stacked the pavers, pulled up the tarp and there was a tiny snake, not even a foot long and no thicker than my little finger, wrapped into the top of an upturned pot. Whoops! 

No picture, alas, by the time I went in and got my phone, it had decamped. Also, alas, my snake identification skills are non-existent. The picture with the post is from an encounter in the Maryland mountains some years back, and this one I could identify. I am certain that the little one I disturbed was not venomous.

I have eaten of the tree of knowledge (even if the apples are long gone), the knowledge of good and evil. Or at least the knowledge of snake habits, and decided that perhaps today was not the day to turn that pot over, particularly with my naked hands.

“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; They will strike at your head, while you strike at their heel.” Genesis 3:15

Little changes: papal flower pots

I am thinking of all the little things that will change in Rome, after this big change. In the papal gardens at Castel Gandolfo the terra cotta pots all bear the coat of arms of the pope who reigned when they were made. New pots are made in house (or in-garden?). When a pot breaks now, the gardeners will replace it with one with Pope Leo XIV’s coat of arms.

I try to spot the oldest one when I walk there. This one is for Pope John Paul II. Looking forward to spotting one for Pope Leo when next I am back!

Dr. Francl's home for lonely poinsettas

 

The email came from a student in my first year writing class. Could I give a temporary home, she wondered, to her poinsettia over winter break? After a brief exchange concerning cats and watering requirements we agreed that I could house her poinsettia. She would drop it off, she said, on the last day of final exams. "Perfect! I'll be on the lookout for it.”

Friday came, and the poinsettia arrived with a note. I took it into my office and put it on my desk and returned to grading quantum mechanics finals. I stepped out for a minute to heat up a cup of tea and when I returned there were two poinsettias outside of my office. I was puzzled for a moment. I was sure I had brought the poinsettia in. Had I imagined it? I picked them up and carried them inside and indeed there was already a poinsettia my desk. Whew!

Still I wondered, why the plenitude of poinsettias? And one looked a little bit the worse for wear. Was it the ghost of poinsettias future? 

An email resolved the mystery, upon hearing that I was giving a home to one poinsettia, friends of my student thought I might give a home to their poinsettias as well. So I find myself a plant parent for break. They do brighten my office. And I feel honored that someone thinks I might be able to restore the sad poinsettia to health (though I fear it may need more of an Easter event). I will do my best to channel my mother who was not only an amazing parent to six kids but also a terrific plant parent as well.

Gardens and saints

Yesterday, on the feast of St. Mary of Magdala, I went for a walk in a nearby public garden with a friend. Because of course a garden is where two women should go to talk about the Gospel.

It was lushly humid. The grounds are full of little delights. I loved the cross hatch pattern in the fountain, and was so enamoured of its symmetry, I didn't notice that the "rocks" in the pool are actually carved heads. And why had I never before noticed there were spikes on day lilies?

This is a garden to listen to, as well as see. The outlet from the pond burbles, the cicadas wail, and the cypress whisper in the breeze. 

We talked about Ignatius and the Exercises and praying with all your senses. It was a walk that tasted of salt, so full of flavor, and of bread, rising in the heat of the day.

I kept wondering if we'd turn a corner and find Monet painting water lilies,  or Jesus in his gardening hat harvesting the squash in the vegetable garden.

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The photograph of the orchids in my blog header is from another botanical garden, in Singapore. I took a taxi after a day's work to walk that garden in the late evening, so much of my experience of that garden was of sound and scent, of footsteps on the path muffled by the humidity.

How do you tell when the pears are ripe?

Yes, that is the one and only apple.

When the squirrels eat them.

We have a huge mature plum tree in the front, along with a small apple tree that just began to bear this year, two pear trees in the back that are in their third year of bearing.  Tonight I made apple-pear sauce from our harvest.

One apple.  One pear.

There are many fat squirrels in the neighborhood.

Podcast: Episode 3/Flight into silence UPDATED

UPDATED: (Reason for the update? Read this post.) The end of the semester chaos threatens to send me crashing to the ground, but memories of a flight into silence last Advent remind me to again seek strength in the stillness, to wait upon the Lord.

Listen here:

Invisible gardens

Stratoz is wondering about gardening blind. This week was the 4th anniversary of my mother's death. Her gardens were always marvels, no less the lush walled garden she created in a postage stamped sized yard in Southern California than the acres she made bloom in the dry central hills further north. She continued to garden once she lost her sight. Though she had a marvelous sense of color -- she could match colors by memory -- she drifted toward more heavily scented garden choices as her sight dimmed. I remember driving her on an expedition to find new plants for a garden outside her bedroom, holding up various specimens for her to smell.

The morning of her funeral I went out into her garden and cut armfuls of richly scented roses and fragrant rosemary and laid them over her in her casket. To this day, both scents instantly bring her to life in my mind.

Years later, I ripped the remains of that garden out for my father and hauled a ton of rocks (literally - I carried 2000 pounds of rocks in wheelbarrows and placed them by hand) down the hill to cover it over. All the while I thought of the scent of those plants on my hands as my mother and I knelt to place each one. The memories can't be buried, even though the plants and my mother are both covered over.