Tag: Vernal Equinox

  • Vernal Equinox: Barred Owl Sighting

    Vernal Equinox: Barred Owl Sighting

    Welcome to spring! It’s currently 43° at Rosslyn, on target to hit 46° shortly. Sun is out. Snow is melting. Bulbs are bursting. So many remarkable signs and suggestions that the vernal equinox may indeed have marked the transition from winter to spring (daffodils and daylilies perking up, an auspicious sunset cloud formation, a handsome Barred Owl encounter,…)

    Let’s start out with our just-passed solar equinox and then work our way toward the Barred Owl (Strix varia) and some celestial special effects from Susan’s end-of-day walk with Denise.

    Vernal Equinox: Rosslyn Sundown (Photo: Susan Bacot-Davis)
    Vernal Equinox: Rosslyn Sundown (Photo: Susan Bacot-Davis)

    Vernal Equinox-ish

    In 2023, the official first day of spring is Monday, March 20. This date marks the “spring equinox” in the Northern Hemisphere… at 5:24 P.M. EDT. This… is the astronomical beginning of the spring season in the Northern Hemisphere… (Source: The Old Farmer’s Almanac)

    That was yesterday. In fact, this post was intended to be published yesterday. On time. Relevant. But, sometimes searching for poetry preempts timely updates. Sorry.

    Despite the fact that today’s post is slightly out of sync with the astronomical calendar, I couldn’t resist the chance to subtly revise yesterday’s draft and share it anyway. There was simply too much resonance. Yes, I’m biased. But after yesterday’s candid peak into Rosslyn’s artifact-packed carriage barn (and into my mental morass where architectural salvage, historic rehabilitation, poetic introspection, and memoiresque storytelling commingle) it felt, well, almost logical. Bear with me? I find that spring’s arrival rarely follows a predictable schedule. Each year unique. And, in spite of the heathen thrill that comes with romancing celestial and meteorological rituals, it would appear that the vernal equinox is merely a symbolic approximation of springtime.

    An equinox occurs twice a year, around 20 March and 22 September. The word itself has several related definitions. The oldest meaning is the day when daytime and night are of approximately equal duration. (Wikipedia)

    I excerpted the tidy part, eliminating the inevitable diatribe about day and night not really being the same length. A debate for another blogger. I love rituals, even when they’re easily scoffed. Here’s a flip riff by Phil Plait (@BadAstronomer) if you’d like a quick scoff before we romance the vernal equinox.

    Today is the vernal equinox, what a lot of folks think of as the first day of spring (though given the forecast, people on the U.S. East Coast can be forgiven if they’re rolling their eyes at that thought, assuming their eyeballs aren’t frozen to their eyelids). (Slate)

    The omnipresent smell of mud hints at spring’s earth entrance, and that’s good enough for me. No. More. Snow. Please!

    Vernal Equinox: Barred Owl Sighting (Photo: Geo Davis)
    Vernal Equinox: Barred Owl Sighting (Photo: Geo Davis)

    Barred Owl

    Lackluster snapshot, but… Barred Owl. On vernal equinox. Flying, perching, flying again. Broad daylight. Spectacular.

    Tony and I were returning from the forest beyond Library Brook where we’d been blazing the next meander in Rosslyn’s ongoing trail building initiative. The brook was swollen and running wild. The trees were a-chatter with avian neighbors and squirrels riffing raucous against the riparian chorus. It felt like a page out of Dylan Thomas. And then Tony spied the owl.

    “Do you see it?” he hoarse-whispered, pointing up into the trees.

    I didn’t. He guided my gaze. But I couldn’t identify the big blob on a branch. Wrong sunglasses.

    “It’s an owl,” he said

    We walked closer. I fumbled with my phone, launch the camera app, zoomed in as far as I could, snapped a couple of images. We kept walking. The owl swooped away, an immense span of plumage, arcing through trees and branches powerfully, gracefully without brushing a twig.

    Disinclined by temperament to observe overt omens and symbolism in the world around me, I’m nonetheless receptive to the “singing underneath”. Sometimes life rhymes. I try to exercise humility and wonder in these moments. I endeavor to hear and observe and sometimes to record the poetry that presents itself. I’ll leave conclusions to others. For me, for now, questions are plenty.

    Vernal Equinox: Day Lilies Reawakening (Photo: Geo Davis)
    Vernal Equinox: Day Lilies Reawakening (Photo: Geo Davis)

    Daylilies

    With snow, still covering much of the ground, bulbs are bursting up, unwilling or unable to wait. The earthy array above are day lilies, among the thousands of green shoots reaching skyward below the stonewall that divides our lower lawn from upper lawn.

    Perhaps overly precocious sprouts. I’d venture a guess that some more freezing nights, possibly even some more snow might challenge these daylilies. And yet, as in all previous years, they will flourish, foliage thickening, stout stems reaching somewhere between knee and waist by Independence Day when they’ll explode in joyful orange blooms. They will. And yet I can’t help wondering if they’re premature?

    Vernal Equinox: Cloud Theatre I (Photo: Susan Bacot-Davis)
    Vernal Equinox: Cloud Theatre I (Photo: Susan Bacot-Davis)

    Sundown Skies

    As if conjuring orange blooms is contagious, the day’s spring preview weather concluded with a dash of colorful drama and cloud theatre extraordinaire.

    Taken by Susan while winding down the day with Denise and Carley, ambling Blockhouse Road, likely lost in conversation. Phone photography sure has come a long way!

    Vernal Equinox: Cloud Theatre II (Photo: Susan Bacot-Davis)
    Vernal Equinox: Cloud Theatre II (Photo: Susan Bacot-Davis)

    So beguiling and mysterious is that second cloud theatre image that I’m sharing a tighter, second perspective.

    Vernal Equinox: Cloud Theatre III (Photo: Susan Bacot-Davis)
    Vernal Equinox: Cloud Theatre III (Photo: Susan Bacot-Davis)

    Welcome back, springtime. What wonders do you have in store?

  • Searching for Poetry

    Searching for Poetry

    Searching for Poetry Amidst Architectural Salvage (Photo: Geo Davis)
    Searching for Poetry Amidst Architectural Salvage (Photo: Geo Davis)

    Searching for poetry, questing for questions that need no answers to matter and guide and enrich.

    This might be my epitaph. Some day. But not yet. I hope.

    Today, the vernal equinox, I awoke at 4:00 AM, eager to start cooking a wild boar roast I had thawed. Actually it wasn’t the roast that caffeinated me prior to my first cuppa MUD\WTR, that zero-to-sixtied my green gray matter within seconds.

    If the human brain were a computer, it would be the greenest computer on Earth.

    The basis for the brain’s greenness is its ultra-high computational efficiency; that is, it can generate a tremendous amount of computational output for the very little power it draws. (Source: Is the human brain a biological computer? | Princeton University Press)

    You with me? Caveat emptor: it’s going to be that kind of post!

    It wasn’t anticipation of the pulled wild boar that I enjoyed for lunch (and soon will enjoy for dinner) that prevented me from falling back asleep. (I love variety, but if it ain’t broke… And if you’ve cooked 5.4lbs of wild boar shoulder, then share, eat, share, eat, share,…)

    It was one of those light-switch-on awakenings. Sound asleep one moment, wide awake the next. 100% alert, cylinders thumping away, and focus dialed in. Monday morning’s are often like that for me. And with an ambitious punch list for the icehouse rehab, I needed to hit the ground running. Or jumpstart the week by roasting a wild boar shoulder?

    Both.

    But, after talking through exterior trim and clapboard siding with two contractors, explaining how to prune watersprouts (aka “growth shoots) out of our mature American Linden to another contractor, and various other midmorning miscellanea, I headed into the carriage barn for some, ahem, research.

    I’m still sorting through architectural salvage and surplus building materials, endeavoring to make final decisions for the icehouse. Woulda-coulda-shoulda tackled this many months ago, and I tried, but the process continues to evolve. In some cases, it’s continues to elude me. So my endeavor continues.

    Today I ruled out a couple of ideas I’ve been developing, visions for upcycling deconstructed cabinetry from Sherwood Inn days. The visions have faded, but all is not lost. In the shadowy space they’ve left behind, I stumbled upon something else.

    A poem.

    Searching for Poetry Amidst Architectural Salvage (Photo: Geo Davis)
    Searching for Poetry Amidst Architectural Salvage (Photo: Geo Davis)

    Searching for Poetry

    Wabi-sabi wandering,
    wabi-sabi wondering —
    reimagining relics,
    architectural salvage,
    weather worn detritus,
    offcuts, rusty remainders,
    time textured tatters,
    pre-mosaic fragments,
    and dust mote mirages —
    so much pulling apart,
    so much pushing aside,
    searching for poetry.

    Today I concluded that the vision I’d been pursuing  — a vision of upcycling deconstructed cabinetry and paneling from the Sherwood Inn’s colonial taproom  — had been little more than mirage. However as this mirage vanished, I happened upon a glimmer of clarity, fleeting but encouraging, around an even bigger mystery that I’ve been chasing. Also mirage-like, also elusive, also a problem that persistence might hopefully tame, also a quest for questions that illuminate and instruct even when their answers evanesce.

    This glimmer of clarity (try to imagine a spark that just might benefit from attention, a flickering flame that invites kindling with promises of a roaring bonfire) materialized briefly where moments before a mirage had danced and vanished. And what did I see? Companionship. Kinship. Similarity. Affinity. Between poetry and architectural rehabilitation and adaptive reuse. A glimmer and gone. I exaggerate, but the picture is at once protean, subtle, and elusive.

    Nevertheless, I will continue to strive, risk, and experiment. I will continue essaying to illustrate the intimate overlap between poetry and construction — especially between composing lyric essay and adaptive reuse of existing buildings and building materials — until my wandering and wondering renders an oasis. Or admits a mirage.