June

 

Sesachacha Pond 

How can a place widely known as a summer place for billionaires be a sacred place? It is for me and many others when we walk its trails and beaches.  The rhythm of nature is a liturgy of sorts, with well understood processions of flowering wild plants.  Now the white multiflora roses are climbing everywhere, and the ox-eye daisies fill the verges and the meadows. Next up will be the arrowhead viburnum and then St. Johnswort.

The sacred chorus is the music of the red-eyed vireo, great crested flycatcher, common yellowthroats and eastern towhees.. with a bit of robin and blue jay thrown in. it enables the forgetting of self and merging into something bigger.  I can experience it alone, on a hike with Josh, or communally with the Sunday morning birding group.

Rosa Rugosa

Rosa Multiflora

The change we experience  in the world around us may seem more unpredictable.  Here the acceleration of growth in the spring is expected  and savored.  in May, the  yellow greens were mixed with the red of grapevines expanding  and new  red leaves.  Now we have full Green.  The ponds which were dry in December are refilled. The baby birds are fledging.

But nature is not precious bulwark against the world of human beings.  Predators are preying.  The power of the sea is devouring our humble coir bags at the bottom of the bluff.  But that herring gull eating a crab does seem less threatening than a demagogue.

In the gardens, irises and ladies mantle (alchemilla). Daisies and anemones are crowding out others. Grasses swaying and blooming which were only inches a month ago.  Spring makes it seem like time is speeding up.

The longest day approaches, today Sunrise at 5:07 and sunset at 8:15.  Time can widen as well as speed up.

Sunrise, June 17

Piping Plover

Herring Gull eats a crab

American Oystercatchers from afar

Eel Point