Paint the meadows with delight
Apr. 16th, 2009 05:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pameladeanYesterday after Eric got off work, we went to the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden.
Before he moved here, we would go there at least once whenever he visited. When I visited him in the Bay Area, we almost always went to the Native Plants Botanical Garden in Tilden Park. One year when Eric was here for spring break and we had a rental car, we drove to Eloise Butler very early in the morning of his last day. We sat in the clearing outside the Martha Crone Center, looking down into the lower part of the garden, which was filled with sunshine. Eric remarked that the essential structure of the garden, which we were really seeing for the first time, since there were no leaves on the trees yet, was the same as that of the garden in Tilden Park. He said that Eloise Butler and the Native Plants Botanic Garden were, respectively, the Acrivannish and the Liavekan versions of the same idea. If he hadn't already found the way to my heart years before that, this remark would certainly have done it. The Liavek stories are very obscure now, and he was altogether correct about the way in which the two gardens partook of the nature of those two cultures.
So our trip yesterday was celebratory, because I had finished my book; and it was sentimental, because we had not been to the garden since he moved here in December.
I forgot to bring water, but we hoped the garden would have turned its drinking fountains on. We got off the bus by the beach on Wirth Lake and walked over the causeway through the marsh. The water level was a bit low. We heard red-winged blackbirds and chickadees. There were a single Canada goose (I didn't think that was legal), some mallards, and some wood ducks paddling about, pussy willows buzzing with bees, and red-stemmed dogwood still flaunting itself without its leaves. The ground was mostly a deep litter of sun- and snow-faded leaves, already subsiding into mulch and humus.
We went into the garden by the back way. Hemlocks and more monochrome leaves. Eric suggested going through the lower part first, before we lost the light, so we went down into the swampy bit. The needle buds on the tamaracks were tightly shut, without a hint of green yet. A few cattails and flag irises were just putting up flat green points. We saw a fair number of deep red shoots just starting to unfurl into green. I've seen skunk cabbages in that area, but that wasn't really what those looked like. We heard a very loud woodpecker cry, and then saw a huge bird flying in the swoopy woodpecker way through the trees. Eric saw the white wing-patch, and it was really in any case too big a bird to have been anything but the pileated woodpecker. We always hope to see it when we go, but often don't.
We went up the hill towards the shelter, admiring a few fantastical fringy flowers or proto-leaves in red and green, on some anonymous shrubs. There were ferns here and there, but last year's, I think, since they were full-grown and looked a little rusty. No fiddleheads yet.
Once we discovered that the water wasn't turned on, we agreed to make a much quicker tour than planned. We went along the far edge of the garden, above the marsh, and saw trout-lily leaves in their spotted hundreds. They are not full-sized yet, and there was no sign of flowers. We also saw a few patches of false rue anemone, still partly-curled and reddish; again, no flowers yet. There were other green shoots of mysterious origin.
We decided to take the low road to the meadow, rather than toiling up the very steep wooded path, so we started up towards the shelter by the other route. There was a lot of sharp-lobed hepatica blooming all over that slope, which faces west, and great deal of periwinkle, shiny, but not blooming. We also saw three flowers that looked like miniature trillium but were something else that I really ought to have recognized but couldn't. We were delighted with the hepatica. Its pure white and subtle pink and purple flowers showed up well in the sunlight. There were two or three flowers of false rue anemone on the same slope.
As we started towards the shelter again, we saw a stocky brown animal nosing around in the leaves, as leisurely as could be. It was grayish-brown above and reddish below, and the binoculars made clear it was a groundhog, perhaps the same one we had seen one summer, hanging perilously from the chain-link fence surrounding the shelter's wood pile, because it wanted to eat the moon vine growing in a nearby tree. Eric called it the bold rodent, and that term stuck. We watched it trundle and nose around until it disappeared down the slope, and then went on our way. We had admired the mossy logs in other parts of the garden, but they were especially abundant here, and I thought they looked as if they and the trees were floating in a sea of gray leaves. The lengthening light probably made this impression stronger.
The meadow was golden instead of gray, but had the same faded autumnal look. We sat on the bench under the venerable oak tree where we always sit, unless other people with similar tendencies are in the way, and looked at the bus schedule. There was a steady roar of traffic from 394, but I could hear spring peepers, too. The main glory of the garden is still ahead, but we were well satisfied with our first look at it.
We took the bus back downtown and had a celebratory dinner, and then went home to my house.
P.
Before he moved here, we would go there at least once whenever he visited. When I visited him in the Bay Area, we almost always went to the Native Plants Botanical Garden in Tilden Park. One year when Eric was here for spring break and we had a rental car, we drove to Eloise Butler very early in the morning of his last day. We sat in the clearing outside the Martha Crone Center, looking down into the lower part of the garden, which was filled with sunshine. Eric remarked that the essential structure of the garden, which we were really seeing for the first time, since there were no leaves on the trees yet, was the same as that of the garden in Tilden Park. He said that Eloise Butler and the Native Plants Botanic Garden were, respectively, the Acrivannish and the Liavekan versions of the same idea. If he hadn't already found the way to my heart years before that, this remark would certainly have done it. The Liavek stories are very obscure now, and he was altogether correct about the way in which the two gardens partook of the nature of those two cultures.
So our trip yesterday was celebratory, because I had finished my book; and it was sentimental, because we had not been to the garden since he moved here in December.
I forgot to bring water, but we hoped the garden would have turned its drinking fountains on. We got off the bus by the beach on Wirth Lake and walked over the causeway through the marsh. The water level was a bit low. We heard red-winged blackbirds and chickadees. There were a single Canada goose (I didn't think that was legal), some mallards, and some wood ducks paddling about, pussy willows buzzing with bees, and red-stemmed dogwood still flaunting itself without its leaves. The ground was mostly a deep litter of sun- and snow-faded leaves, already subsiding into mulch and humus.
We went into the garden by the back way. Hemlocks and more monochrome leaves. Eric suggested going through the lower part first, before we lost the light, so we went down into the swampy bit. The needle buds on the tamaracks were tightly shut, without a hint of green yet. A few cattails and flag irises were just putting up flat green points. We saw a fair number of deep red shoots just starting to unfurl into green. I've seen skunk cabbages in that area, but that wasn't really what those looked like. We heard a very loud woodpecker cry, and then saw a huge bird flying in the swoopy woodpecker way through the trees. Eric saw the white wing-patch, and it was really in any case too big a bird to have been anything but the pileated woodpecker. We always hope to see it when we go, but often don't.
We went up the hill towards the shelter, admiring a few fantastical fringy flowers or proto-leaves in red and green, on some anonymous shrubs. There were ferns here and there, but last year's, I think, since they were full-grown and looked a little rusty. No fiddleheads yet.
Once we discovered that the water wasn't turned on, we agreed to make a much quicker tour than planned. We went along the far edge of the garden, above the marsh, and saw trout-lily leaves in their spotted hundreds. They are not full-sized yet, and there was no sign of flowers. We also saw a few patches of false rue anemone, still partly-curled and reddish; again, no flowers yet. There were other green shoots of mysterious origin.
We decided to take the low road to the meadow, rather than toiling up the very steep wooded path, so we started up towards the shelter by the other route. There was a lot of sharp-lobed hepatica blooming all over that slope, which faces west, and great deal of periwinkle, shiny, but not blooming. We also saw three flowers that looked like miniature trillium but were something else that I really ought to have recognized but couldn't. We were delighted with the hepatica. Its pure white and subtle pink and purple flowers showed up well in the sunlight. There were two or three flowers of false rue anemone on the same slope.
As we started towards the shelter again, we saw a stocky brown animal nosing around in the leaves, as leisurely as could be. It was grayish-brown above and reddish below, and the binoculars made clear it was a groundhog, perhaps the same one we had seen one summer, hanging perilously from the chain-link fence surrounding the shelter's wood pile, because it wanted to eat the moon vine growing in a nearby tree. Eric called it the bold rodent, and that term stuck. We watched it trundle and nose around until it disappeared down the slope, and then went on our way. We had admired the mossy logs in other parts of the garden, but they were especially abundant here, and I thought they looked as if they and the trees were floating in a sea of gray leaves. The lengthening light probably made this impression stronger.
The meadow was golden instead of gray, but had the same faded autumnal look. We sat on the bench under the venerable oak tree where we always sit, unless other people with similar tendencies are in the way, and looked at the bus schedule. There was a steady roar of traffic from 394, but I could hear spring peepers, too. The main glory of the garden is still ahead, but we were well satisfied with our first look at it.
We took the bus back downtown and had a celebratory dinner, and then went home to my house.
P.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-04-16 10:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-17 04:08 am (UTC)P.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-16 11:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-17 04:08 am (UTC)P.
Eric
Date: 2009-04-16 11:12 pm (UTC)N.
Re: Eric
Date: 2009-04-17 04:07 am (UTC)P.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-16 11:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-17 04:09 am (UTC)They seem a bit confused at the moment whether they are open until dusk or until 10 p.m. I hope it's the latter. Sometimes it's been very hard to leave at dusk.
P.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-17 12:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-17 04:10 am (UTC)P.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-17 12:37 am (UTC)FWIW I've been kicking myself for not taking my copies of Liavek to 4th Street last year. Obscure maybe, but still awfully fun to read.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-17 04:10 am (UTC)I don't know if you are coming to Fourth Street, but I'd certainly be delighted to sign your copies any time we do see one another.
P.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-17 02:16 am (UTC)He said that Eloise Butler and the Native Plants Botanic Garden were, respectively, the Acrivannish and the Liavekan versions of the same idea
Aww, if I didn't already think so I'd say he's a keeper. Hee.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-17 04:11 am (UTC)I'm totally unsurprised that you appreciate his remark.
P.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-17 03:13 am (UTC)K.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-17 04:11 am (UTC)P.
Re: Paint the meadows with delight
Date: 2009-04-17 04:06 am (UTC)it is not! report the slacker to immigration right this minutre.
yay, finished book!!!
and what a lovely walk.
Re: Paint the meadows with delight
Date: 2009-04-17 04:12 am (UTC)Thank you. And I've really loved all your descriptions of walks, so I'm happy to return the favor.
P.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-17 11:10 am (UTC)I got an afternoon in Tilden Park (two months ago already?!) when I was out in the BArea for potlatch.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-17 07:02 pm (UTC)P.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-17 06:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-17 07:05 pm (UTC)When I say it's obscure now, I mean that even quite avid fans of the various authors who did stories may never have heard of it, or may have been unable to find copies.
P.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-17 07:46 pm (UTC)