There is a restaurant in St. Michael's named Gina's. "Restaurant" is a very big word for this tiny space. Jam-packed into an building that might have once served as a corner market, is a handful of tables, a bar that seats a half dozen souls and hundreds of random 'found' things. Saddles and surfboards hang in the rafters along with a life-sized cutout of the "world's most interesting man".  Corks, and broken pieces of glass are glued into the wall. Shelving made of roughly painted 2x4's are full of discarded Frank McCourt and Michener novels. Scrabble pieces are set out at various places- including the bathroom- and random messages greet you each time you visit.  "Sue smokes pot", "I heart iffy",  "Life is liver".   It's a whole new creative spin on graffiti.  A wetsuit hangs up high in one corner and there is an album wedged behind the bar that has photos of patrons who- no doubt with a little liquid courage-  have tried it on. The garden outside holds another half-dozen assorted tables, random flower and a centerpiece of rocks and plants topped by a pair of leather hiking boots which swing from an iron plant stand.  The proprietor, Gina, has a second establishment in Millersville called Gina's Cantina that we decided to check out. Slightly lost and uncertain and approaching via an ambiguous stretch of road- We knew we had found our way when we spotted a child's red flyer trike complete with handlebar tassels suspended over the roadway. (The food, by the way, is great at both places)

Carolina Wren

"There's a wren in a willow wood
Flies so high and sings so good
And he brings to you what he sings to you..."
Kenny Loggins

"Tea-kettle, tea-kettle, tea-kettle". The male Carolina Wren sings out cheerfully in the woods. Camouflaged in cinnamon-brown feathers, he is hard to spot. Despite his plain woodland colors, his upright tail, and white-striped brow give him a cheeky, inquisitive appearance.

The Shadow of the Waxwing Slain

Cedar Waxwings in flurries, not flocks, fly back and forth between the Cherry and the Holly trees.  The Cherry is stripped of all its fall berries, but the Holly still has an abundant supply.  They take turns burying themselves in the deep green branches before returning to the Cherry Tree with a round holly berry held brightly in their beaks.  Sometimes- they pass the berry back and forth and sometimes they toss their heads back and swallow the berry whole. Each Cedar Waxwing has brilliant red markings at the edge of their wings and their tail feathers are tipped in bright yellow. Dark dramatic masks and yellow stomachs that fade upwards into rose-colored breasts are also part of their distinctive markings. They trill quietly to each other in constant conversation and shift and dart in twos or threes in orchestrated flight before taking off all together.

That Subtle Something

It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit. 

 ~Robert Louis Stevenson

Bittersweet

American Bittersweet grows wild in the fields around here. It is a native shrubby vine with small white flowers that bloom in early summer, but it is in autumn when it displays its true beauty. When everything around it is bleak and brown- it’s red berries capped in gold spill out from the vines providing feasts for the songbirds and wreaths for old abandoned tractors left rusting along the hedgerow. I knew it as a word before I ever knew it as a plant. It came home to me in the lingering moments of final farewells and it is within me during times of great joy and celebration. The bitter and the sweet are intertwined, inseparable. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Finding A State of Grace

I was walking through the woods last week, focusing on the camera in my hands when a wicked sticker bush snagged me and left an angry, bloody scratch across my leg. I ‘d like to tell you that I suffered the assault with grace and fortitude… but not so much. What the heck? What did I do to deserve that wound? I started to react in anger to trample the blasted weed, but just as I moved forward, the setting sun illuminated it, making it glow deep red and I could see each individual thorn and the spaces where the ones that were still stuck in my leg had been ripped from the stem and I wondered (Anthropomorphism runs deep in my veins) if perhaps the sticker bush felt undeservedly wounded as well? And isn’t that life, after all? You follow your path- sometimes paying attention, sometimes distracted- when something comes along and interrupts your progress, your thoughts, your dreams and you can rage against the thing or you can pause and look for the wonder in the midst of the thorns. You’re still sidetracked or perhaps wounded, but your fresh start- your healing, happens in a place of acceptance and in that acceptance- a state of grace.

This Blessed Space

An old white house on a big green hill,
the clamor created lingers still.
Ghostly images of rusty trikes
linger on the fading light.
The holly beseeches with prickly arms
its empty view, it’s long lost farm.
Streams that cut through marshy fields
are now in overgrowth concealed.
Yet, bull frogs still raise their bass along
in harmony with peepers song.
This magic ground, this princely place,
this heavenly home, this blessed space.
It courses through with every beat
part of me, my soul complete.