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Author: Anne Cassidy

Horizontal Tree

Horizontal Tree

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Trees are lovely and I enjoy writing about them. But they have a design deficit when it comes to blog post illustration. They are, for the most part, relentlessly vertical.

This is, of course, one of their chief attributes.  They stand up straight and tall. They aim themselves heavenward and take our thoughts with them.

But in a blog layout such as this, a horizontal picture suits better than a vertical one. Enter the banyan, a tree that is born of air, that grows not from the ground but from another banyan. A tree that grows not just up but out.

Banyans provide cool gathering places. Whole villages can assemble under their canopies. One of the largest spans eight acres!

And then, there is the banyan’s pictorial properties. When you need a horizontal tree, the banyan fits the bill. It is not just shade but shelter.

(Photo: Wikimedia)

Indolence

Indolence

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The afternoon was too warm for a walk, but I pressed on anyway. By the time I’d finished, thunder was rumbling in the distance.

The weather here follows its own tropical rhythm. Bright blue mornings and dark blue afternoons. It’s the perfect excuse for indolence.

There’s only so much you can do when it’s this hot. And there’s only so much you can do when rain is pounding the beach and wind is bending the palms.

And so, you do very little. Or try to.

It works pretty well most of the time.

(This lazy canal says it all.)

The Bismarckia

The Bismarckia

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I only learned its name today, this plant that I’ve seen for the last four years I’ve been coming to this Gulf Coast beach town.

It’s a palm that stood out for its blue-gray color, the hue of Nordic seas, a subtle note among the tropical oranges and yellows.

At first it was little more than a tall frond, a shrub. But as the years  have passed it has added to its heft and hue and now stands  quite proudly, as befits its rather hefty name.

I looked it up online. Named for the first chancellor of the German Empire Otto von Bismarck and native only to Madagascar (an odd combination!), this plant is grown throughout the tropics and subtropics.

Which is why I’ve found it here in subtropical Florida, where a brief rain shower drove me inside to finish the post.

Bird Feet

Bird Feet

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Here at the beach the snowy plovers have hatched but are not yet able to fly. They skitter around on the sand like so many tiny tumbleweeds. A sign warns beachcombers to beware. They camouflage themselves so well that it would be easy to step on them.

I spotted a couple of these cuties on a beach walk. A small crowd had gathered to watch the newly hatched chicks. Seeing them at their crazy ballet got me thinking about bird feet in general.

Though it’s a bird’s wings not its feet that most singularly propels it, shore birds are an exception — from gulls hopping up to beg for sandwich scraps to sandpipers running through the surf.

This morning I spied a tern daintily dipping its webbed toe in a tidal pool. I saw a yellow-footed snowy egret with a long white mane like an aging conductor. And I saw a pelican land nose first in the water, its feet flapping behind.

Bird feet were central in all of these tableaux. And I’ll think about them long after the beach walk is over.

(A bird on the wing instead of on foot.)

Longer Than Planned

Longer Than Planned

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Yesterday’s walk was a lunchtime getaway, and a longer one than planned. I took off down 23rd Street to Arlington Ridge Road, a thoroughfare I’d read about and wanted to explore. It is indeed a ridge road, and getting to it was a bit of a hike.

But it was winding and green and as I glanced up the hills at the rambling mansions, I thought about the history of it all, going all the way back to the Custis family.

As my thoughts were wandering, my feet were flying, and before I knew it I was at Four Mile Run, a full mile or more away from where I meant to end up.

It was 90+ degrees, my feet were tired and my face was flushed, but there was nothing to do but push on in that way that’s all too familiar, the way known to all walkers who’ve been so enthralled going in one direction that they fail to think about how long it will take them to get back.

Twenty minutes later, I was glad to see the Crystal City high rises swing into view. And the super-chilled office air was for once just right.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Old School

Old School

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Another morning walk, this time noticing who has those little plastic-wrapped packages at the end of their driveways every morning. Neighbors on either side and across the street. Not the quorum it used to be but a small and mighty band.

It’s our daily delivery of dead tree pulp, finely ground and rolled and imprinted with the latest follies of humankind.

Yes, we could scan the news on our iPads, iPhones or laptops. We could flip on the car radio and hear about the scandals and theories in the secure bubble of our automobiles. We could curl up in an easy chair with a cup of milky sweet Earl Gray and watch CNN. Or we could get the news (or what algorithms have deigned would delight us) from a Facebook feed.

On the other hand … we could unwrap the newspaper from its protective sheath, take it on the bus with us. We could dive into it as if into a cool, slow-moving stream. Could let the information and opinions it offers take us in directions we never could have imagined. Could wind up informed and inspired and enraged and smeared with ink.

But that’s only if we’re old school. Which so few of us are anymore. Hard copy? Dead trees? You betcha. I’m old school and proud. You’ll have to pry my print paper out of my cold, dead hands.

(Jon S. Creative Commons, from WNPR)

Sunflowers

Sunflowers

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On my walk this morning I noticed, as I often do, the flagpole on the corner. There are several flagpoles on our street, but this is the most prominent, the most well lit.

What I noticed today is not just that the flag is once again at half mast. It’s been half mast most of the summer. But it’s that the sunflowers planted around the pole are now almost as tall as the flag.

I’m not sure what this says about patriotism, the world’s madness and the healing power of nature. But I am sure that the flowers will grow taller, perhaps overtaking the flag. And I’m sure that they will turn their faces toward the sun, will seek the light.

And those aren’t such bad lessons for the rest of us.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Before the Gloaming

Before the Gloaming

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It was almost 7 p.m. when I parked the car on Soapstone Drive. There are pull-outs there for trail access, for bluebell viewing in April and sultry strolls in July.

This was for the latter. It was impromptu and it was divine.

I slipped off my jacket, laced up the pair of spare running shoes I keep in the back and took off on an almost empty Reston trail.

I walked east, and the air sung around me. Crickets were tuning up for their evening chorus and the swamp radiated with heat and insect buzz.

Fifteen minutes in I joined the Cross-County Trail, my first time on it in months. I walked across a bridge that smells of creosote, spotted a stand of Black-eyed Susans in the meadow.

It was Thursday. Light was golden before the gloaming. I was almost home.

Watch the Midwives

Watch the Midwives

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When I was expecting each of my babies, especially the first, I was physiologically incapable of watching any scene of childbirth in a movie or television show without shedding a tear or two. I was not an especially weepy pregnant woman, but there was something about the magic of it all that moved me every time. Matter of fact, there still is.

So imagine a TV program that features at least one and maybe more scenes of childbirth in each episode. It’s a “two hanky” affair if ever there was one.

But there’s more to the British drama “Call the Midwife” than a good cry. Set in the East End of London during the postwar baby boom, the show (based on the memoir of real life midwife Jenny Worth) follows the adventures of a team of nurse midwives (some of them nuns) based in the convent Nonatus House. It’s a cast of lovable characters serving poor women who have more children than they know what to do with but who are treated tenderly and with great compassion.

There is no malpractice insurance, no planned Caesarians. The midwives take it all as it comes, encouraging the mothers through difficult labors that would be treated in an operating room these days. And there are plenty of historical back stories, too  — polio makes an appearance, as do thalidomide babies.

But what makes the show so special is its big heart, its voice-overs at start and finish (done by Vanessa Redgrave), its frequent insistence that it’s really all about love.

There is something so old-fashioned and inspiring and true about the show that watching it makes me feel like a slightly different (enlarged? more tolerant?) person.  Call the Midwife? For me, it’s Watch the Midwives.

(Historic dockyard Chatham where “Midwives” is filmed. Courtesy Flickriver)

Happy Jeweleye

Happy Jeweleye

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A jewel of a day to many would be one with pleasant temps and low humidity, a puffy-cloud, blue-sky day. Today is not like that. It is muggy and hot. The insects are singing their fevered chorus and the birds are chirping listlessly in the background.

But to me it’s a jewel of a July day. Perfect in its very July-ness. Yes, there are heat warnings. But this is summer: It’s supposed to be hot.  And yes, we move more slowly now, but isn’t that one of summer’s great gifts, that it’s andante instead of allegro?

So here’s to summer, to the heat and humidity, even the torpor. Happy Jeweleye!