Loving it?

With all the spring sun we’ve been getting in New England these days, even the trees are thirsty, sneaking surreptitious sips of high fructose corn syrup in the form of McDonald’s sodas. Either that, or “leaf litter” isn’t the only kind of dry detritus you can find in the woods in springtime.

Last week in Keene, we had our first fire warning of the season: a reminder that low humidity and dry leaf litter make for dangerously flammable forests. This weekend in Waban, the “fire” outside is metaphoric, with forsythia blooming like a yellow-hot blaze in suburban yards and gardens.

Although I mentioned Earth Day earlier this week, yesterday I was remiss in remembering Arbor Day. Steve was similarly remiss, mentioning today that he’d forgotten both Earth and Arbor Days, presumably because he was “not watching the calendar closely enough!” For good or ill, neither Earth nor Arbor Day is on my calendar, but I’d like to think that doesn’t matter: wouldn’t it better for us (and the health of the planet) if we spent less time watching our calendars and more time listening to trees?

In New England at least, the trees right now will tell you it’s spring, their “words” being unfolding leaves, blooming flowers, and (in the case of pines) a yellow dusting of pollen. Before he died, Thoreau had intended to construct a local “Kalendar” that, according to Bradley Dean, would provide a biological time-line of the natural year, with the blooming and breeding of plant and animal species serving as temporal markers:

Apparently he intended to write a comprehensive history of the natural phenomena that took place in his hometown each year. Although he planned to base his natural history of Concord upon field observations recorded in his journal over a period of several years, he would synthesize those observations so that he could construct a single “archetypal” year, a technique he had used to wonderful effect in Walden.

In my neck of the woods, I’ve learned, trout lilies bloom at the end of April, and forsythias flame not long after. I don’t need a calendar to remind me of that fact, just my blog (the 21st-century, high-tech equivalent of Thoreau’s journal) and photo archives. Next week, I’m hoping the wake-robin (Trillium erectum, also known as purple or red trillium) will be blooming since I have an unofficial ritual of blogging them on May 1st, whether at Goose Pond or Beech Hill. After May 1st, I’ve learned from years of New Hampshire living, the black flies will emerge, and my days in the woods around Keene will be numbered, at least until blood-sucking insects die off.

It might be true that the trees of the greater Boston area are fond of McDonald’s soda, but I’d prefer that instead of “loving it,” they simply leaf it. Steve rightfully notes that every day should be both Earth and Arbor day, for “When should we not be thinking about trees, about the health of the planet?” Between you and me, I think the trees in New England and elsewhere would be healthier if they just said no to soda.

This post is a roundabout excuse to mention two tree-related things. First, the Nature Conservancy is spearheading an effort called Plant a Billion Trees which is attempting to re-forest a richly bio-diverse (and unfortunately endangered) area in Brazil. If you, like Steve, can’t plant a tree in your urban backyard, you might consider donating to the cause of “One dollar - One tree - One planet.”

Second, don’t forget to submit your tree-related links and pictures to next month’s Festival of the Trees. You can send permalinks to mike (at) 10000birds (dot) com, submit them via the Contact page at 10,000 Bird’s, or use the Festival’s online submission form. The deadline is April 29, so get moving!

 

Found objects

Today’s Photo Friday theme, Found Objects, has my name written all over it. Not only have I previously blogged found objects like a child’s stuffed octopus, a rain-soaked pair of glasses, and a dirty pacifier, I have an entire blog category devoted to the subject. In a world where it’s so incredibly easy to get lost, it gives me a sense of hope to think that sometimes, precious things like stuffed toys, blankets, and binkies are found.

It seems similarly optimistic to think that someone stumbling upon a wallet in the woods would simply brace it on a branch, allowing its rightful owner to re-trace steps to re-claim it. Have I any way of knowing whether the various keys, watches, and cell phones (!!!) I’ve found in the woods over the years have ever found their way back to their rightful homes? No. But still, I hold out hope that somewhere and someday, possessors and possessions will be reunited, this wallet staying in precisely the same spot on a heavily traveled trail for several days before someone, rightful owner or otherwise, claimed it. Only a philosopher will dare ponder whether this wallet was finally found or merely lost again.

There’s something sad about a single lost glove bereft of both home and mate…but a matched but nevertheless lost pair is a real rarity. If you’re lost with a companion, are you truly lost? Or is a matched pair of gloves merely wandering, seeking adventure apart from any interfering appendage?

But if found objects like cast-off pacifiers give me hope, posters advertising the lost tug at my heart, pointing as they do to the way loved ones sometimes disappear and ultimately pass. It’s one thing to believe (on Good Friday of all days) in the God of Lost Things…but who but the most optimistic holds out hope for a kitten lost right before a massive snowfall? Whether one lost kitten makes it through another storm, shouldn’t we all find comfort knowing that someone, somewhere, believes, hopes, and prays she can?

Love is akin to hope, so those who love truly hope deeply as well. The posters J and I spotted earlier this month for “missing Max” looked brand new, but Max hasn’t been seen since August. Is an entire season or more too long to hold out hope for a returned friend? At what point do you stop putting up posters or take down the weathered ones that remain, reminders that the lost aren’t always found? Or does a faithful friend ever stop looking, wondering, and hoping, believing in his heart of hearts that Max is out there somewhere, and okay?

If faith were enough to bring lost cats and kittens home, return wallets to their rightful owners, reconcile mis-matched mittens, and return toys, blankets, and binkies to the little ones who love them, we’d have nothing in the way of Lost and Found in this world. Instead, we live in a messy and dangerous place where we sometimes lose, forget, or misplace the things we value the most, and people who don’t know or care about the true value of our sentimental things find them as if by mistake, not knowing the love, hope, and disappointment they hold. These aren’t just lost animals and objects, you see: they’re forlorn wanderers looking for home.

 

At your service

Apparently my alter-ego works at Market Basket…and she left her name-tag at the laundromat just like Jared from Pizza Hut left his name-tag somewhere along Main Street last May.

Today’s been a meteorological mess of a day, with classes at Keene State being canceled due to a whole night then day of rain, sleet, snow, and freezing rain. Right now, the rain is still falling onto saturated snow, so we’re under a flood warning: not a pleasant place to be given vivid memories of the last time Keene flooded. Still, it was momentarily cheering today to realize one of Keene’s other laundromats–my usual one being closed due to the weather–has an official lost and found board for all those stray keys and name-tags that get laundered out of customers’ pockets.

On a dismal, wintry-mix New Hampshire day, a girl’s best friends are her Anchor Drop rain boots and anyone who helps her find lost keys. At your service indeed!

 

Lend a hand

When I shot this photo of an odd glove found on the Cochituate Aqueduct trail in Newton, MA this morning, I hadn’t read the news item about a grad student in Pittsburgh who started a website to reunite lost gloves with their owners. Instead, this odd glove made me think about Blue Octie and the other lost objects I’ve blogged over the past year or so.

Although the odds of any odd glove being reunited with any given hand are low, we cling to hope when it’s our glove that’s lost or a glove we ourselves have found. Maybe what we find along with any odd glove is our own capacity to hold out hope?

You don’t need gloves–odd, matching, or otherwise–to click over to Riverside Rambles for this month’s Festival of Trees. Enjoy!

 

Real life

In real life, pranksters arm themselves with label-makers. It’s often difficult to find chalk in Keene State classrooms, which makes this label humorously apt. What makes it even funnier is the fact that there was a piece of chalk sitting exactly where you see it, a chance juxtaposition I couldn’t have asked for.

In real life, I’m deep in the throes of the semester right now, somehow managing to be behind in my grading for every one of the six classes I’m currently teaching. In real life, I have bills to pay, and grading papers is how I earn my keep; in real life, I know I’ll finish these present papers, eventually, but only in time to collect more papers. In real life, when work inevitably piles up, it’s a relief to encounter an occasional prankster with a label-maker and a sense of humor. I bring my own chalk when I teach, but I’m always happy to accept chalk-charity, bad grammar be damned.

This is my contribution to this week’s Photo Friday theme, Real Life.

 

Found a friend

The stuffed dog I spotted at the laundromat earlier this month is back…and he’s found a friend. Here’s hoping Blue Octie has had a similarly happy ending to his tale of lost and found.

 

Found

I find something endearingly hopeful about the found objects that strangers leave for their rightful owners, whether they be a pair of glasses, a toy crab, or a grimy pacifier. We’ve all had the experience of losing something dear to us, and some of us, no doubt, have tried to calm a screaming toddler who will not be comforted by anything other than her or his favorite stuffed toy or blanket.

While I was in Ohio last weekend, I lost my Boston Red Sox cap after having put it on top of my car while I was loading Reggie into “his” backseat for a nearby outing. My parents’ Columbus neighborhood is highly urban, so I knew someone would find and pick up a nice, nearly-new ball cap…but still, I re-traced my route just in case someone who wasn’t particularly attached to the Sox might have found my cap and then stuck it atop a fire hydrant or bus-stop bench. Unfortunately, “finders keepers” applies in the case of nearly-new ball caps.

On a walk through Brookline, Massachusetts this afternoon, it was cheering to think that some distraught toddler with a tired parent in tow might re-trace her or his steps to find a beloved but lost stuffed animal lovingly set out for them by a stranger. How much more perfect, I thought, that Blue Octie is faithfully waiting, hopeful, outside a house of worship. Isn’t a lost toy set out by a kind stranger an apt metaphor for the God of All Things Lost who patiently waits to be found by any passerby?

 

Hot not-quite-dog

Now that it’s August and officially Too Hot to leave a live dog in a parked car, today at the laundromat I saw this stuffed dog posed in the driver’s seat of a nearby minivan, looking just like this dog did last December. I guess stuffed animals imitate life?

Be sure to check out this month’s installment of the Festival of the Trees, hosted by Via Negativa and narrated for the first time ever by an invertebrate. If that last statement intrigues you, click on over to “meet” Pterry the blogging (and supremely photogenic) katydid. Enjoy!

 

Take a dip

What do you do while waiting in line at the bank’s drive-up window? Since I never know when I’ll spot something interesting, unusual, or simply odd, I carry my camera with me everywhere, which allows me to snap a quick shot of someone’s abandoned chewing tobacco can on a painted pole. I guess while other folks wait at the bank, they listen to the radio or chat on their cell phones?

Today is hot and humid here in New Hampshire, so I tackled today’s list of to-do’s (two loads of laundry, trips to the post office and bank, and the usual dog-walk) before noon, while the heat was still bearable. Now I’m holed away in my apartment with the shades drawn and window fans off: on days when it’s hotter outside than in, I find it’s better to keep the cool air in than trying to circulate hot air from outside. Today’s the kind of day when taking an illicit swim at Goose Pond is completely justified, as is having popsicles for lunch or ice cream for dinner. Whatever keeps you cool is cool, I say. Maybe after the sun goes down, Reggie and I will venture back outside for some fresh air, but in the meantime, we’re lying low here at home. In lieu of taking a dip, taking it easy will have to suffice.

 

An equal opportunity employer?

If your name is Jared and you work at Pizza Hut, I know where you can find your missing name-tag. Either that, or Pizza Hut has taken to hiring trees as waitstaff.