chrysalis

Notes from the Week’s Adventures

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Notes on the Adventures of the Week:

My parents came on Tuesday morning when they heard that the tree crew was going to be able to come and take down the old poplar. They brought a friend from their garden: a monarch caterpillar. She wandered around and explored the milkweed all day, but did not eat.

   

   
They took the tree down in stages. By the end of the day Tuesday, a sweltering, humid rain swamp of a day, they had taken it down to the central trunk. The caterpillar had begun hanging from a leaf by her foot, and occasionally swaying or twitching as she began to get comfortable for her transformation.

   
By ten on Wednesday morning, the trunk was down, and the crew commenced to saw it into sections, carting away several dump truck loads. The lawn was completely torn up–they clearly tried very hard to be careful, but it was impossible on that wet ground not to make mud.

I came in the house at about 1 in the afternoon to find the caterpillar’s skin (that black thing on the leaf above the chrysalis–I put it there so I could have both in one picture) on the counter, and the emerald jewel of the chrysalis hanging there. How is that possible, that this oblong jewel was inside that caterpillar skin? And now for complete transformation: Her insides will dissolve into goo while her wings form and she takes her new shape.

 

This is the stump. I haven’t checked the measurement on its diameter, but you could put a little table and a chair up there. I posed the feather.

Notes from the tree guy:
1. He thinks it’s one of the tallest trees they’ve ever taken down.
2. It was still strong, but a couple more years and it would have been too much rot (see that big spot?) and would have been really dangerous in the taking down.
3. He thinks it was about 90 feet tall.

We counted the rings–it’s hard to be sure you’re getting them all–and got somewhere between 67 and 71 years. Some of the rings are really thin and some are really wide. This is the story the tree is telling.

The porch is now a sunny spot in the mornings.

I did not plan to reseed a yard this week, but that’s what I did today. Satisfying work, and it needed to be done before another big rain washes all the exposed topsoil away.

I’m going to miss the shade and the people who lived in the city of its branches, but seeing all that early rot in the middle of every large branch made me realize that it was a really good decision.

Gratitude List:
1. How the work gets done.
2. Painting. I have been loving my morning painting practice, and I am sad to see the time of relaxed morning painting coming soon to an end.
3. Clouds and blue sky.
4. Wind chimes. I bought myself a nice set of metal ones today to replace the clunky old bamboo ones.
5. Ferns and Morning Glories

May we walk in Beauty!

Ducks in the Rain and a Dove with the Fire of the Sunset in Its Eyes

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

It happened to me again this morning.  I woke up with the fragments of dream-world swirling through my brain, but as text, not as image.
“I place it into my bowl full of winter.”

And then there was more, several more surreal, semi-attached bits of cobweb-phrases.  But those I don’t remember.

Something about the key to my grandmother’s house.

I woke up and tried to write it as a poem.  All I could do was to write and re-write the phrase.  Again and again.  So this will be my next poetry prompt.  I’ll try again tomorrow.  Join me, if you like, or pull an image or phrase from your own dreaming to join to mine.  We’ll see what we come up with, eh?

In the meantime, here’s a photo of my goofy son and a blue egg.  And a gratitude list.

2013 April 055

Gratitude List:
1.  Funny Blue Cat: Winky sat on one of Ellis’s pastel drawings last night and now she is blue, providing lots of laughs today.
2.  White ducks in the rain on the green grass.  I’m not trying to channel WCW, but I love this pair of white farm ducks that seem to love sitting on the lawn of the Rutter’s right next to the road.  They could be under the forsythia bushes.  And I love the look of them in the rain.
3.  The lovely people who send me images.  My heart is so warmed and encouraged by the photos, the wonder, the story my cousin Don told me about seeing a white dove with the fire of the sunset in its eyes.
4.  Community-building.  Changing the system together.  I went to see the movie Fresh tonight.  Family First Health, a local medical practice offered the screening free at York Little Theater.  They’re pushing for real health, those folks, eating real food.  I love Joel Salatin and his “Chicken-ness of the chicken, pig-ness of the pig, tomato-ness of the tomato.”  He gets the deep archetypal import of it all.  And Don Ikerd.  I love Don Ikerd–he says we can change, we can wean ourselves from industrial ag and back to real actual food again.  Now, if only the small farmers can make a living in the meantime. . .
5.  Being who I want to be.  I feel like the chrysalis may soon be ready to crack open.

May we walk in beauty.  So much, so much love.