First things first

Here are some pictures from the two weeks we spent in Vermont in early August.

First, a beaver pond not far from where we were staying. The three of us went there on bicycles (Sylvia was in a pull-behind trailer) and found a little side trail leading to this spot. Here we had a great view not only of the entire pond, but also of the beaver lodge and the dam itself (on the left side of this photo)!

Is it just me, or do northeastern forests have a fundamentally different smell from forests in other parts of the country? There’s a cinnamon-y aroma surrounded by a pleasant mustiness. Interestingly, I’ve encountered the same smell in the Pacific Northwest, but not anywhere in the Mid-Atlantic or the Midwest. Hmmm.

And the jewel tones in the green moss…that’s mostly a northern thing, too.

And finally, here’s a photo of the pond next to our cottage. It’s really hard to capture the sense of a place like this in a photo. I took gobs of pictures, but—like attempts to photograph sunsets—the results don’t look quite like the real thing. It’s enough to jog my memory, though…and enough to keep me going until next year’s trip.

Dogwoods are the first trees to flower around here…and the first to start showing fall color.

Remember last spring’s dogwoods? Here’s what they look like now.

Last week we had summer-like temperatures, but now, as the air is cooling, it’s obvious that autumn is truly here. There are a few flowers left in my yard, such as these anemones, which were planted by my Dutch father-in-law, a horticulturalist who knows the Latin names (but not always the English ones) of pretty much every plant in my area (and in lots of other places, too). It’s an autumn-blooming perennial. When I see its stems start to rise from the ground in late summer, I wonder, “Will the flowers arrive before the winter?” And they do–and it’s a joy to see these delicate white blossoms that seem to float in the air.

And then there are the hydrangeas. We have one large plant near the patio and three smaller plants in other places; they all produce blue-green blossoms. I didn’t cut a whole lot of them this year, so the plants are covered with flowers that have been slowly drying out over the past few weeks–fading to pale green and eventually turning into brown paper.

The early days of autumn are always a surprise to me. The river birch along the back fence is one of the first trees to shed its leaves, and it does this even as most of the trees are still quite green. A handful of golden brown leaves scatter themselves across the lawn…and in the blink of an eye, it seems, the grass is obscured by a carpet of leaves (and it’s a thick carpet: last year we composted forty paper lawn bags of shredded leaves) and all the trees are bare.

Today’s Booking through Thursday (and yes, the Marsha suggested therein is me!):

Suggested by Marsha:

Buy a Friend a Book Week is October 1-7 (as well as the first weeks of January, April, and July). During this week, you’re encouraged to buy a friend a book for no good reason. Not for their birthday, not because it’s a holiday, not to cheer them up–just because it’s a book.

What book would you choose to give to a friend and why?

There are three books that I’ve given to people with some regularity. One is The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I’ve read this one in the original French and in English, and I’m pleased to say that this lovely tale about innocence and imagination and love translates remarkably well.

Another is The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster. From the first sentence (”There was once a boy named Milo who didn’t know what to do with himself–not just sometimes, but always”) to the end, it’s filled with clever wordplay, memorable characters, imagination, and humor. I love this book.

Unlike the first two choices, the third is one that most people don’t know, I think, and therefore one that I’m most likely to give these days. (In fact, it’s in the prize package for the blog-birthday contest I’m running right now. My own responses are here, if you’re curious.) It’s The Man Who Planted Trees, by Jean Giono, the tale (some say it’s true, though Giono says it’s not–the public’s insistence that it must be true is, I think, testament to how eagerly people want to believe in something good) of a man in Provence, France, who pretty much singlehandedly reforested the region by planting acorns every day during the first half of the twentieth century.

I love this book because of its optimism about how much good a single person can do and because of its encouragement to fill one’s life with meaning. I also love this book because, well, I love trees. They’re central to my doctoral research (on the so-called timber wars of the U.S. Pacific Northwest), so I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about them intellectually and professionally. And I’m reminded of them every day in my personal life: my husband (also a tree lover) and I named our daughter Sylvia.

Whenever I go for a walk in the woods in the spring after (or during) a rain, I’m always struck by the contrast between the water-dark wood of tree bark and the tiny new fresh-green leaves. The contrast is especially strong with dogwoods, whose just-opened new flowers are a pale green. It’s easier to get a sense of this ethereal quality when in an actual forest and not in the suburbs, surrounded by neighbors’ homes. But the half a dozen dogwoods on our property (a happy legacy of previous owners) are enough to take me a real forest in my own Proustian moment.