.....reciprocity

Yogis,
You know how when you notice something, then you suddenly can’t stop noticing it? That has been ivy for me these last couple weeks.

English ivy or common ivy, the kind you picture climbing up the buildings of ivy league schools, was brought to the US as early as 1727 by the European settlers. Everyone loved it because it stays green all year, fills in bare areas and requires no care. But we loved it a bit too much and it is now invasive and threatens our forested areas.

I have plenty of experience with ivy since my old house, this house and our beach house all came with ivy included in the purchase price. Being young and naïve I thought it looked cool as it began covering the foundation and the base of trees, but as I and it matured, I learned the hard way how heavy a hand you have to use to rein it in. Ivy in the yard is not for the weak.

Each spring, I spend time removing ivy and other invasive vines (of which there are several new ones) from my trees. Cutting them back at the ground, pulling up roots when possible and cutting vines as high up as I can reach to make sure they don’t reconnect. I swear when I pulled the last vine off a small holly in my woods yesterday, she stood up straighter and shined. Trees appreciate our care.

Reciprocity.

Trees give to us every single day. Shade on those hottest summer days, warmth from the winter winds, fruit, nuts, wood for our firepits, the couch we sit on…….and the very air we breathe.  They provide shelter for birds, housing for insects and stability to our ground. They give and give and give. And what do we do other than take and take and take. That’s the question of reciprocity.

Lately as I walk through our town or along the river all I see are trees being smothered by ivy. All you have to do is look up!

Ivy starts to climb innocently enough offering greenery against brown bark. Soon it thickens. It continues to rise and engulf the trunk. When it finally reaches the branches it starts covering leaves blocking the process of photosynthesis. You begin to see limbs looking ragged. Branches begin falling. The tree is smothered if it isn’t first blown over by strong wind due to the weight of the ivy. It is a slow drawn out death.

I wasn’t going to write about this today. I know we don’t have the capacity to go in the woods and remove all the ivy and thought this would be like a yell into the dark. Then yesterday we went to visit the grandkids. As I walked in the door my grandson came running and grabbed my hand to show me their old raggedy pear tree in the back yard. It too, along with the ivy it is encased in, came with the house. It was in full bloom!

Then he points at the trunk.  Look what daddy and I did! There I see the lower 4 feet of trunk clear of ivy. He recounted how dad used the big sharp knife and he used the clippers to cut it off at the base and as high as they could reach. I knew then that yes! I was indeed supposed to write this today.

Take a walk around your property and neighborhood and notice. Mention it to neighbors who have ivy on their trees. Most people don’t know. Maybe lend a hand to a tree in the park who is just beginning to be climbed.  They will be most grateful.

Maybe you too won’t be able to stop noticing,
SARAH

.....memory lane

Yogis,
‘What do you think about taking a trip down memory lane today?’

It’s a gray dreary Thursday morning and that’s my mom as she comes down the steps. I had arrived at my parent’s house in NJ on Tuesday to spend a few days with them. I hadn’t seen them since Christmas, and it felt like it was time.

In many ways I already felt like I was on memory lane. Sleeping in my old house, being alone with my mom and dad, being cooked for, watching Jeopardy and laughing over old stories told one more time. No longer the one in charge I could lay back and go with the flow of whatever the new day offered.

‘Sure, I said. What do you have in mind?’

A few hours later we load into dad’s car and head down route 22 (a road I dreaded as a young driver) and turned off onto memory lane in Plainfield NJ. Our first destination……the apartment they moved into with me as a brand-new baby. It took a few times around the block and a couple of guesses to finally land on the big yellow house divided into individual apartments. Next stop…..the apartment we moved into not much later. It was the big front porch that let us know we had arrived in front of the right house. My parents were 25 and 28..

Next on the trip is the small cape cod they bought when I was two. This was the first single family house I ever lived in, the first one my mom ever lived in, and the first one my dad ever lived in. The cost was $17,000 and they had to lie a bit to get the mortgage. It looks even smaller than I imagined, but so cute.

We lived there a few years and I have some fleeting memories…..  Falling off my tricycle and skinning my knee. Getting bit on the nose by the dog next door when I got too close to the fence. Being chased by a squirrel as I tried to walk to the neighbor’s (you all heard that story when I recounted my second squirrel encounter last fall.) Why do we always remember the scariest moments?

We then stopped in front of the old brick house where my dad lived with my grandparents in the top floor apartment with a beautiful wood paneled ceiling and the master bedroom in a turret. I have wonderful memories of being there for family dinners and holiday gatherings. I remember watching Nixon resign on their large stand up B&W tv, my pop pop smoking a pipe in his armchair and my nana cutting up chicken livers for the cat Cleo.

Off we go, heading into downtown Plainfield to find the storefront where my mom and grandmother opened Glad Rags, a mod clothing store in 1965. While mom worked, I would play in the dressing room pretending it was a fort. She would give me money and I would walk down the street  alone to Texas Weiner to buy a Drakes coffee cake (remember them?) and an orange soda in a bottle with a straw. I was four. A different world back then.

We found them both! Glad Rags now empty but Texas Weiner alive and bustling. We went in and spoke with the current owner who has been there 35 years now. We told him stories from 56 years ago. My dad recounted stories from years even before that.

As I listened, standing in the exact same spot in front of the counter where I stood as a shy four-year-old little girl, I tried to remember how it felt. The same me looking through the same eyes but without decades of life layered on top. Memories flooded in.

My parents ordered two Texas weiners and brought them home for late lunch.

Nice to drive memory lane,
SARAH

.....march madness

Yogis,
The nearness of spring filled the air on Friday. A lightness. Mid 60s, blue skies and a gentle breeze. The sun, sitting a little higher in the sky, shone brightly on the newly bloomed daffodils and the puffy pink redbud blossoms. Everything about the day told me it was finally time to get my hands in the dirt……

I headed to the community garden I tend with lawn bag, shovel and scissors in hand dressed in a thin long sleeve shirt and light sweater. Within minutes of pulling the old black eyed susan stems, their dried buds still intact, the sweater comes off and hair goes up in a ponytail. With my hands smelling of rosemary from pulling matted leaves off her needles, if all felt like a new beginning. The start once more of a new life cycle.

The evening’s air was still warm. We sat on the front porch and had a beer. The fox ambled by.

Saturday morning, I wake to sideways rain pelting my window. I get up, brush my teeth, set up my blankets and sit on the bed to meditate. I listen to the rain on the roof. Before long I hear the tapping of ice pellets mixed in with the rain. Soon it is all ice. By the time I open my eyes a half hour later it is snowing and the wind is howling.

March madness.

I bundle up and head out into the world with Phoebe. The garden I had cleared of leaves only hours before now buried in snow. Daffodil heads heavy. The pink buds the trees had been proudly showing off now encased in white.  

A game of tug of war between winter and spring. Spring steps forward and is given a moment in the sun but is then forcefully pushed back by winter. One step forward and two steps back. Unpredictable. Changeable. Reminds me of the state of our world.

Whether its covid, the price at the pump, financial markets, or politics, I feel like we are stuck in an endless March with no clear end in sight. Up and down and all around. Then throw in the storm in Ukraine and the unfathomable images of a war that makes no sense to me, and it becomes hard to get your footing. Grass covered not with snow but pieces of buildings. Bombs falling from the sky. People fleeing their homes. Going to bed thinking the world is one way and waking up to pelting on the window.

One step forward…..two steps back. Is it just me, or does life feel so complicated right now?

I know with confidence that the calendar will turn its page and April will arrive, leaving March as only a memory. But will we as a human race find a way to do the same……

…..did I mention that time does not change but we change our clocks one hour?

March madness,
SARAH

....a feast

Yogis,
This morning I am again woken by the birds. I can sense that it is getting light but that’s where the similarities end.

I am under a sheet and warm blanket with long pajama bottoms. I hear the heat kick on and off. Rolling toward the window I open my eyes. An empty gray sky peers back at me….and a sea of brown. Early March brown. The starkness of the naked trees catches me by surprise. The wind rustles the remaining dried leaves that refuse to drop until spring arrives. I’m home.

Only yesterday the sun woke me in a place so different it’s hard to imagine I could already be back in my own bed. Late last night I returned from a week in a beautiful white clapboard house with sky blue shutters built into a cliff overlooking the Caribbean Sea. St Johns. An island that feeds my soul.

Within hours of arriving there by ferry I felt the shift. Shoulders dropping, face softening, feet finally free from the dark confines of shoes and my curls springing back to life after weeks of dry static. But there is also an inner shift that happens. I begin to feel more like me. More like the me deep within that gets buried at times but longs to be on the surface. The vibrancy of being in this place nourishes my senses. Every time…..

Instead of robin’s voices greeting the day, goats bleat and roosters crow. The sound of gentle waves lapping the shore sets the day’s rhythm and before long I swear my heart beats in time. The screech of gray tree frogs at sunset competes with our dinner music.

And the colors! Every shade of green imaginable carpets the mountains with polka dots of purple and yellow flowers. The water so blue and clear it looks like crystal. The hummingbird. The red of a chicken’s head and the brilliant fuchsia of the orchid on the balcony that watches us drink our morning coffee.  

Instead of watching for other cars, the eyes search for donkeys lazily congregating in the middle of the road right around the next sharp curve. Or the iguanas who hope to safely cross by camouflaging their skin. Being careful not to step on the hermit crab who pulls into his shell as my foot casts a shadow from above. The bearded goat who stands on the cliff overhanging our driveway each afternoon to watch us unload.

A feast……..

  

Life under the water as vibrant as above. I spent hours listening to only my own breath through the snorkel as I floated. Turtles who look me right in the eye.  Rays and needle nosed fish curious but going about their own business. A school of angel fish brush my side. When I’m not quite ready to make landfall, I float effortlessly on my back. Held by this place that offers me what I need.

And for the final course, each night before bed I stepped out onto the patio and gazed up. Millions of stars twinkling back at me through the darkness. Grateful for them. Grateful for this island.

I feel full……
SARAH