The Ugly Day

I confess, I've always loved lousy weather —

cold gray days when most people are inside doing normal things 

like reading, or cooking, or cleaning out closets.

It's been raining all day, the temperature dropping. I'm stir crazy. 

Time to put on my chicken boots, grab my iPad and head outside with a plan to find beautiful things on an "ugly day."

Neighbors

As it turns out, my neighbors Vonda and Cecil also don't know when to come in out of the rain either! Instead, they're repairing a fence post in Cecil's raised bed out front.

Down to the gardens

I’ve become quite familiar with the gardens since moving into my Elderberry home five months ago. I’m inspired by “common gardener goddesses" Vonda and Karolyn. 

I’m a newbie, mostly pulling weeds. I’m finding a second vocation 

however as mechanical fix-it person — mending fences, 

improving gates, whatever! I find surprising gratification in making 

things beautiful and more functional!

Karolyn’s dog Lucy looks forlorn as I walk past her 

along the pedway on my way to the gardens. 

“Are you going to the garden without me? I’m bored as well!” 

This patch of collards is old, but still lovely with drops of moisture 

collecting light on large, blue green leaves. Not too long ago, 

our gardens were so dry, I’m still very happy to see rain drops everywhere.

I’m a graphic designer by profession, and so a sucker for color! 

Orange was my favorite color as a kid, so I’m still attracted to this riotous combination of orange on the marigolds. Color is more vivid with rain, as the colors brighten and the gray skies flatten contrast, a perfect reason to walk along the flower beds on any rainy day!

I wish you could have quietly walked up with me to this adorned fence! It burst apart with small, forked-tail birds that took flight from their invisible hiding spots as I approached. I’ve always loved silhouettes and these dried vines are lovely, their random pattern contrasting against the rigid pattern of the fence.

Vonda and Karolyn planted “three sisters” this year in the summer garden. Corn stalks grow first to support the beans, and then the broad leaves of squash grow to shade and protect the soil around all three. Native Americans used this technique. I love this spent mass of plant confusion left here, partly for the history behind it.

Down the lane and back

Continue along Elderberry Lane past the community and gardens and you approach Bel Cielo, or beautiful sky, a quiet open meadow edged by forest, and the entrance to the Potluck Luck trails at the woods’ edge.

Today, Bel Cielo is gray and close and intimate with rain clouds. The rain has flattened the view, so the pattern of trees stands in stark contrast along the sky’s edge. In summertime I often walk here in the late evening to watch the sunset, or meet friends for a socially distanced Saturday night wine-down.

Today I’m surprised to find our neighbors chickens foraging through the meadow. I must have spoiled their fun as they headed off back to the woods as I approached. There’s something delightful about their grouping and regrouping, as they move along. I took several images as they made their exit.

This is the view as I turn back towards Elderberry. A gently curving dirt road always pulls on my imagination, and reminds me, “walk slowly, enjoy these woods.” I recall the Mary Oliver poem, When I Am Among the Trees, maybe you know it? My favorite line, “and you too have come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.” Indeed.

Such an abundance all around, I can become blind to the small discoveries. I almost walked by this “window” along Elderberry Lane, until I recognized the late blossoms of honeysuckle. When I walk before dawn brings enough light to see what surrounds me, I instead recognize the blooming honeysuckle by their sweet, heavy scent. Summer has arrived! 

Crooks Corner in Chapel Hill serves honeysuckle sorbet from blossoms painstakingly gathered by hand. This view also reminds me of that beloved May tradition.

Closer to home

There is so much to see walking along the trails and paths, you can be forgiven for not looking up! But looking up across the curve of Elderberry Lane from the gardens presents this spectacular view of the old white oak that shades our central circle. 

Don’t you wish we could hear these lovely old trees tell their histories? What might we hear? Maybe take just a moment of silence...

Closer to home and hive

Under the oak is one of three entrances to our "hive", the community building we built, literally, when Elderberry was just forming. This is a path I take multiple times a day, to the kitchen, our laundry room, maybe the multi-purpose room. It’s much quieter, with Covid restrictions, as are so many parts of our lives right now. 

I’m aware of the change in seasons as one last spot of brilliant yellow remains near this entrance. What you might not see is the tidy black shape of Panthe, Linda’s solid black cat just beyond. We trade turns watching each other. One day while working in the small grove of trees by the parking lot, I turned around to find her under one of the cars watching me, almost invisible except for her yellow eyes.  Much the same color as the mums.

Something as mundane as a car windshield might seem a little out of place here. However, rain has transformed this common object into something worth a second, or third, or multiple look! Each raindrop is a small curved reflection of light and color, repeated again and again. On nicer days I watch the ripples on the pond at Potluck Farm playing the same game as the radiating circles reflect the sky, woods and water around it. In the sun!

Garden eggs are not easy to grow for a beginning gardener. 

As I was packing my posessions, having recently moved out of both my office and home in town, I discovered many small caches of rocks, collected from my travels and hikes. I’ve been slowly returning some of these rocks to the woods as I hike, but some are simply too lovely and full of memory to part with. So, they are now "planted" in my little garden in front of my home.

My weeders’ dilemma. Yes, it’s a weed, but it’s incredibly beautiful to me, especially with water jewels. To pull, or not to pull?

The deeper story

I hope you’ve enjoyed my exploration to find beauty in an ugly day. Before I end this, a little deeper background to this story. 

Earlier in the day, I could feel myself sinking, contemplating and worried about what the future held for all of us. Last summer, I found myself in a similar place, in a more serious way, floundering. Once I pulled through, as we all do at some point, I decided to make a list of what I needed to remember when I found myself starting down this path — ten suggestions to make a positive change in my outlook. I affectionately call this my "personal manifesto". 

Suggestion number eight was good advice from a dear friend, presented to her at a recent workshop. “When I start to feel low, just making an initial effort creates energy for positive change.” 

Thank you, be well, and keep looking for beauty every day.

Lands Capers

Richard is chairperson of the Elderberry Landscaping Committee. Many community members thoroughly enjoy Richard’s skill in beautifying Elderberry, as well as reading his wonderful reports! 

Here is the latest update from the Landscaping chairperson:

Good morning, Neighbors.

This Saturday we have another opportunity to make Elderberry even more beautiful.

It is working! We are keeping ahead of the weeds and adding opportunities, and nature is responding with blooms and flutterbyes.

The Sneezeweed has arrived and is great! Even the South Quad has a volunteer, which in its lone perch is spectacular.

And we are blessed with displays, on our property and all along the roads, of what Mary B calls Ditch Daisies. They are actually Bidens aristosa. If you aren’t politically inclined or if you have a dog who walks through the flowers after they’ve gone to seed, you can also call them Bearded Beggar Ticks. Meg has a stunning bed in the common ground west of her unit.

Soooo slow, but I believe by the next note, that the augustifolia (swamp sunflowers) will be blooming (finally). They are tall this year, drooping over the pedway and nodding in the heat. But they cannot hold out much longer. The shorter days will force them.

And in yet another note we cannot fail to mention the Scarlet Rose Mallow. It just keeps blooming. Some of those plants must be 8’ tall, and not a marsh in site. Now they even have a response from the Pedway Bed. Wait until next year to see who blooms most. I must admit to cheating. More than 10 have been planted from south quad cuttings in the pedway bed this year.

But we do work for it and several small beds do need attention. Nothing is overrun, so pick a buddy and walk around, look at the raised beds beside the walk from the circle to parking lot, at the river oats bed below the south quad, at the tree plantings, or walk the EB Land bed. Only after the first hour are you allowed to get distracted and sit down and weed and seriously talk.

Speaking of seriously, we have a dead and very likely termite infected tree behind the small pack house. It is only a standing trunk, not small yet easy to bring down. The question is, what do we do with it. Logs on the ground are even more attractive to termites. Cecil has made an excellent point when saying that fires are a part of nature, but if we pile up brush and logs in the woods – that is not. It is dangerous to the forest and to our homes. Some time ago, we decided that periodic burns, if scheduled allowing for short term changes due to weather, were what we wanted. The first notice after that decision met an objection. Since then no one has come forward to manage the fires. We have no burns, that is, so far, no controlled burns. So if we cut the log down – where does it go? Do we hire someone to truck it off to the landfill?

Consider coming to the Landscape Committee Meeting, Monday, September 14 at 4PM. We will talk about all this and anything else. And, please, pay attention to our plants. They are new; everything is changing, and we need to respond.

Good compost to you (it’s available),

Richard