What I Noticed First Were The Peonies.

What I noticed first were the Peonies....

 
....a row of them – twenty or more – along the edge of the curved portion of the path that led off into the woods from the “West House” of the Warwick Conference and Retreat Center in the eponymous New York town.   Mars and I were staying there for the “Historic Mansions on the Hudson” Road Scholar program – eight stately homes in half as many days – plus food (lots), beverage (likewise), a few lectures, and a morning of music from the Gilded Age.  (Road Scholar is “the not-for-profit leader in educational travel since 1975, offers 5,500 educational tours in all 50 states and 150 countries.”)

             

The Conference Center was built in the 1920s by ATT as a training facility-vacation spot for their switchboard operators. Now it is owned and operated by the Reformed Church (aka Dutch Reformed Church), which our Coordinator (and semi-retired Reverend) Ken said is the oldest denomination in the U.S.A. having come with the Hollanders when they colonized the New World in the 1600s.  And, based upon the number of DRC places of worship that we passed by on our trip, it is at least one of the dominant denominations in that part of New York state.

             

 Mars and I live in Wethersfield CT – the oldest incorporated town in our state – established in 1634 by “Ten Adventurers” (and British businessmen) from the Massachusetts Colony.  We were however preceded, less formally, by the town of Windsor, which had an encampment of British soldiers (1633) set up in a slow response to a Dutch trading post in nearby Hartford which was established ten years earlier – “on the north side of Little River, now known as the Park River (theancientburyingground.org)

             

Then in 1636, the Rev. Thomas Hooker, arrived overland from Cambridge to establish an English colony in Hartford, and, according to local historian Ellsworth Grant, “the Dutch were too few and English multiplied too fast for the struggle to be equal, and the Hollanders finally sailed downriver for good in 1654.”

             

That section of Hartford is still known as “Dutch Point” and street names such as Huyshope Avenue, Van Dyke Avenue, Van Block Avenue, Hendrixsen Avenue and Vredendale Avenue coexist with other more English names in the town’s south end.  And the focal point of the city’s Riverfront – “Adriaen’s Landing” – is named after Adriaen Block who sailed 15 miles up the Connecticut River in 1614 aboard the Onrust, the first ship built in America.

             

According to my research however the Reformed Church, although likely to have accompanied the Hartford Hollanders, seems to have left not a trace in Central Connecticut.  This is personally disappointing since I am working to capture histories of churches in the Wethersfield area for the Wethersfield Historical Society website and was hoping that this denomination (non-standard by Colonial Congregational standards) had left a nearby footprint.

             

One of the best parts of our Road Scholar trips is always our fellow travelers – and this one was no exception.  In a group of 37 – the largest we have experienced – Mars and I were the most local with the others coming from Texas, Kentucky, Colorado, Tennessee, Michigan, Florida, Oregon, Maryland, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Massachusetts, New Jersey, California, Ohio, Virginia, Oregon and Ontario.

             

Every day before breakfast several of us gathered to communally read through the morning papers (WSJ, NY Times, USA Today, and New Jersey Ledger) and share friendly pop-culture and political commentary.  The meal seating (6 to a table) also encouraged mingling.  As a result of these opportunities, Mars and I were able to spend time with just about all of our fellow scholars.

             

Most of the mansions in the Hudson Valley area were built during the so-called “Gilded Age” – the time of “Social Darwinism” and laissez-faire economics, and the “Robber Barons” – who were the subject of our opening lecture by a history Professor from nearby Marist College.

             

Robber Baron was“…a derogatory term applied to some wealthy and powerful 19th-century American businessmen… who used what were considered to be exploitative practices to amass their wealth. These practices included exerting control over national resources, accruing high levels of government influence, paying extremely low wages, squashing competition by acquiring competitors in order to create monopolies and eventually raise prices, and schemes to sell stock at inflated prices.” (Wikipedia)

             

Or from a different perspective Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, et al. were hardworking, entrepreneurial geniuses who used initiative, determination, and a lack of rules and regulations to overcame the unfamiliar and unexpected and create America’s Industrial Dynasty – with perhaps the help of a bribe or two and lots of intimidation.   In other words, good Social Darwinists.

             

We also had two photo presentations by Tom – a semi-professional photographer who has been taking pictures of the area’s mansions and historic houses for over fifty years. He has donated thousands of these images to local historical society’s and preservation groups and allowed them to be published in several books about the area. If every town had a Tom the historical world would be a much better place.

             

We were bused each day to the mansions.  And we toured, in chronological order: Boscobel (moved from Albany to Garrison NY, and rebuilt on this site with funding by Reader’s Digest heiress Lila Wallace); LocustGrove, Samuel Morse’s Italianate summer retreat in Poughkeepsie designed by A.J. Davis (remember that name); Wilderstein in Rhinebeck, NY (Italianate transformed into Queen Anne by three generations of the Suckley family – one of the daughters a “close friend” of FDR and gifter of his famous Scotty dog Fala); Mills Mansion in Staatsburg NY, the 79-room Gilded Age mansion of financier and philanthropist Ogden Mills and his socially ambitious wife Ruth; the VanderbiltMansion in Hyde park, NY (the spring and fall “get away” home of Frederic and Louise Vanderbilt); Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Springwood Mansion and Presidential Library in Hyde park, NY – actually his mother’s place – where the former president and Eleanor are buried; Lyndhurst in Tarrytown, NY (the Gothic Revival mansion of railroad magnate Jay Gould); and Kykuit in Tarrytown (the estate of Rockefellers from John D. through Nelson with a museum-sized, museum-quality modern art collection and a nine hole reversible golf course).

             

The story of each site was presented clearly and entertainingly by knowledgeable guides, and the details made perfect sense to me at the time.  But now in my mind they are an overlapping collage of Italian marble, indoor plaster walls painstakingly painted to emulate that limestone exterior, Black Forest furniture, Tiffany windows installed by “the glassmaker” who happened to live next door, Gothic architecture, Beaux Arts, faux this and faux that – which probably makes the overall effect even more impressive.

  
Mars’ favorite mansion was Lyndhurst because of its unusual Gothic Revival design.  The architect  (A.J. Davis – Samuel Morse’s draftsman) also designed the furniture in the same Gothic style for the family of the original builder, New York City Mayor William Paulding, and it was passed on to and used by the subsequent owners (merchant George Merritt, and railroad tycoon Jay Gould.)  The furnishings were, by the nature of the design and the wishes of the owners, unconventionally shaped – for example the dining room table is an octagon so that no one was the “head” of the table.  Lyndhurst's rooms are fewer and more modest in size than those of the other mansions we visited.  The hallways are narrow with small and sharply arched windows, which along with the vaulted and ornamented ceilings create a mood that Wikipedia describes as “gloomy, somber, and highly romantic”. The house, its belongings, and its ambience were donated to the National Trust for Historic Preservation Gould's daughter Anna in 1961. 

             

Lyndhurst has been the set for several movies including House of Dark Shadows (1970) and Night of Dark Shadows (1971), both based on the famous gothic television soap opera Dark Shadows.

             

My top choice was Rockefeller’s Kykuit because, in spite of the great expanse of its property, terraced gardens, golf course, and 20^th century indoor and outdoor art collection – the place seemed lived in.  This feeling of familiarity was brought to life by the anecdotes of our guide Laura – the daughter of one of the family’s woodworkers who grew up on the estate and personally knew all of the family from “JDR”, to “Mister Junior”, to Nelson and his children.

             

I also was emotionally moved by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Springwood Mansion and Presidential Library for the memories of history that occurred in that very place just before my time on earth began.  However what impressed me most was the one non-FDR item on the property.  Several rooms of the library are devoted to gifts that President Roosevelt received from “the people” – which he personally liked to display as a means of saying thank you.  At the entry to that section is a display labeled “Gifts to President Obama”.  And under that sign is just one object – a photograph of the 2014 NCAA Champion University of Connecticut Women’s Basketball team visiting the Mr. Obama at the oval office.  It was their ninth national championship.  In 2015 they won their tenth.  Mars and I are both 1965 graduates of UConn.  At that time UConn women’s basketball didn’t exist.  Now they are the preeminent team in an ever-growing sport.  Talent, good coaching, practice and Title 9 work.  The state of Connecticut loves our UConn Women, and we all are proud to bathe in their reflected glory.  “Go Huskies!” 

             

But the one thing that remains clearest in my mind is the Peonies.

             

Every mansion garden had them – beds and beds of them. They outline the large area within which FDR’s and Eleanor’s burial plots lie. And Mars and I have them at home – well one anyway.

When we purchased our house in 1977 there were three well-established bushes – each in its own little Peony bed spaced about six feet apart along our northern border.  Having been raised in rented apartments with no incidents of yard work or garden care in my personal history, these three shrubs were the biggest surprise of my virgin spring of landscaping.

             

I tend only to notice things that I am familiar with, when I am expecting to see them, and when they are in the place that I assume they will be.  Take away any one of these three variables and my odds of recognition decrease proportionally.  Remove all three and I am somewhat south of zero percent probability.

             

Such was the case with the Peonies.  I can still recall that “WTF!” moment when, totally unaware of its existence, I passed my brand-new Sears Craftsman mower next to the showy pink flower – and, for the first time, saw it.  Then a few moments later an equally flamboyant white one appeared, followed, several minutes more, by another one.  I restrained myself from shutting off the cutting machine and rushing in to tell Mars.  But as soon as I finished I ran in to the house and excitedly announced my discovery.  She did not seem to be surprised – neither by my revelation nor by my near state of shock. Apparently she had noticed them in their very early, pre-flowering state shortly after we saw the property and for some reason failed to explicitly point them out to me.

             

Since then I have always been in awe of them – the flowers that is.  I had been in awe of Mars long before then.

             

For years thereafter I took great pride in my newfound horticultural treasures – even though I had nothing to do with their success other than not running them over when I cut the lawn.  And during that time I also became an actual gardener – with a landscape design style that I would call Lightly Regulated Laissez Faire.  We let no garden space go unfilled but we actively manage all of that space to ensure that each plant has enough room to do its own thing.  It is kind of a horticultural version of what used to be called Rockefeller Republicans.

             

Several annums ago all three of the Peonies began to look bedraggled and pretty much had stopped blooming.  With great regret I dug them up.  Then, in spite of the fact that I had read these plants do not like to be put in a new place, but in accord with my LRLF gardening philosophy I transplanted a pink one to another flowerbed following directions that I found online.   There, in spite some pretty intense competition for food, space and light from neighboring sedum and daisies – it launched a remarkable comeback.  The shrub was having its finest showing ever just before we left for our Hudson Valley junket – and still was when we returned five days later.

            

So what did I learn on this educational travel trip?

As F Scott Fitzgerald should have observed,  "Let me tell you about the very rich.  They are different from you and me.  For one thing they have more Peonies

 

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Paeonia Paranoia

Sudden thunderstorms;

sodden, sagging Peonies;

saddened gardeners.

CCD or Bee ED

Okay, so why do we hate dandelions so much?  (I say we because I think there are at least a few others that share my hostility.)  Mars suggested that perhaps if I understood the “Taraxacum officinal’s” role in the ecology of our planet I might find a reason to feel less bitter towards these malevolent yellow monsters that keep desecrating my lawn.  Maybe, for example, they are like bees.  Bees pollinate plants – everybody loves bees, except when we are under attack by a swarm of them.

             

Or, more similarly, perhaps clover.

             

Google-search for the purpose of clover and you will be overrun with adulatory articles about this low-growing herbaceous plant.  It sucks nitrogen from the atmosphere and “fixes’ it on its roots from where it is transferred to the soil; improves soil tilth and creates root channels; provides better forage quality and increased yield (if you like tilth you’ve gotta love forage); and (everybody’s favorite) furnishes pollen and nectar for honeybees and tends to increase the population of beneficial predatory insects.

             

Plus clover does all these things modestly without calling hardly any attention to itself.

             

So what about dandelions?  Since they announce their presence so loudly you would think they must have much, much more to contribute.

             

Here is what I found in online in the google.com “backyard-nature” group:

“The plant can be used to make wine, as a diuretic, and a source of vitamins and minerals. The root can be ground to make dandelion coffee. The head can be battered and fried, and the leaves can be blanched and eaten fresh or cooked. Apparently they're not just useless weeds!”

             

To which I say, “Meh”.

             

But (drum roll please) “dandelion nectar and pollen is important to bees, and the nectar is food for the Pearl-bordered Fritillary.”  The what??  (It’s a tiny butterfly, orange with black spots.)

             

Apparently “honey bees flock to dandelions both in the early spring and in times of dearth when little else is in bloom.”  But, like we Irish and our potatoes, bees cannot live on dandelions alone.  Dandelions do not have some of the amino acids that are needed to produce protein – and all you exercisers know the importance of your post workout protein shakes.  And, even worse, there is what I would call the “Viagra effect”.

             

“Researchers have found that honey bees fed dandelion pollen alone have low success at raising brood. In fact, some researchers found that that honey bees fail to raise any brood when fed dandelion pollen alone.”

             

Maybe apian colony collapse disorder (CCD) is really just bee ED.

             

So, having tasted both dandelion leaves and dandelion wine somewhere back in my past when I most likely didn’t have any choice, and having too much respect for honey bees to give them false hope, or worse – I am now opting to permanently exclude these flamboyant intruders from my property.

             

Dandelions didn’t bother me that much back when I was working and had less time to deal with such things.  Actually before she went back into the workforce Marsha quietly dispensed of these noxious weeds with a device called a “Killer Cane” – also remembered on the “straight dope” website as “a green tube with a cap at one end and a push pump at the other. You filled it with weed killer and went around the yard pushing the pump down on the crowns of weeds. Great product, you could do the yard in a few minutes, but since it probably used Paraquat or Agent Orange you can't find it anymore.”

            

 Then we both began working all week and the dandelions fell off of our radar.

             

In retirement however I now have time for Daily Dandelion Patrol with my trusty fork-tongued weed tool – thirty minutes a day of fresh air, sunshine, and a modicum of exercise.   And my yard is yellow-free for at least twelve hours. 

             

If I happen to spot a Pearl-bordered Fritillary in search of protein-free nectar I gently carry it to the open field across the street.  It gives me an ecological purpose.

ABC

I can tell that spring is here because my lawn and gardens are too wet to do anything with – even though what needs to be done is not really stuff that “NEEDS” to be done but rather (a) things that I could have (perhaps should have) done last October, or (b) work that Jason the spring-cleaning landscaper will do in a week or two (when he can walk without sinking) or (c) stuff I just totally invent to give me an excuse to do stuff.

             

I have talked about (a) before.  It is all of the cutting back of perennial plants that I don’t do pre-winter because the sterile-standing-stems provide shelter for the birds and “add visual interest” to the otherwise barren coldest season.  But mainly it is because not clearing the landscape seems to be sending a message to Mother Nature, but mostly to myself, that in the garden it is never really over – there is always more work to be done.

            

 Jason (b) really will be here soon.  And some of what I would like to be doing right now is admittedly labor that he could be doing when he arrives on the scene with his industrial strength leaf blowers and big-bed pickup truck – that is to say the removal of last year’s leaves from our various perennial beds.  I rationalize however – perhaps wrongly but who cares – that the little incipient buds, which have lain dormant under this bed of intrusive mulch for the past several months, would burst forth in flower much sooner and more healthy if they were exposed to as much spring sunlight is available as soon as possible.  Hence my diligent and gentle wisk-raking – some of which goes into my backyard compost bin, and some onto the lawn to be removed by Jason.

             

This past weekend a portion of our yard was dry enough to do both (a) and (b) in the bed that was formerly our shade garden and now – after the unfortunately necessary removal of several trees – is now our blistering hot sun plot. 

            

 When I finished I looked up into the nearby micro-forest of Rose of Sharon ((Hibiscus syriacus) that has spontaneously sprouted in this newly sunlit environment and pretty quickly spotted (c).

            

 One of the pricker bushes, which a previous owner had planted as a border guard against his neighbor on the south, had a death grip on the largest of our newly arrived, non-violent Hibiscus bushes.  This hostile treatment called for an equally hostile response.  I retrieved my trusty Japanese pruning saw and forty-five minutes and an equal number of thorny branches later I was done.

             

Getting into the spring mood really is as easy as (a), (b), (c).

           

Apprentices In A Craft

William Shakespeare once wrote, "Some are born gardeners, some achieve gardener-ness, and some have gardener-ness thrust upon them." – or something like that.

            

 I am definitely of the “thrust upon” class.

             

Neither my mother nor my father had the slightest interest in working in, or even near, a plot of land whose purpose was the growing flowers, fruit, or vegetables.  I had a couple of Aunts and one Uncle who grew mostly tomatoes in small plots in their backyards and my folks and I occasionally enjoyed some of their produce.  One of the Aunts sometimes watched me afternoons during my elementary school days and she would sometimes take me to pick dandelions from an empty lot across the street from her house.  It was kind of fun.

             

Then we would eat them in a salad.   Not fun.

             

We always lived in rental properties, so my home lawn maintenance experience was nil.  My first such experience was working for the New Britain Parks and Rec department during High School when I mowed the grass at one of the town’s public parks.  That lasted one summer.

             

I did zero horticulturing through college, and for the first ten years of marriage during whichMars and I lived in an apartment in Rocky Hill.  Then we bought our first, and to date only, home in Wethersfield.

             

It came, as expected, with a lawn – not a significant one but at least an hour’s worth of walking behind the mower each time.  It also came, unexpectedly to me anyway, with a bevy of bushes and other unidentifiable (some to this day) shrubbery.  When I say unexpectedly I mean I saw them when we looked over the property and liked the look that they gave to the yard within which I saw myself lazing in my lawn chair during warm summer days.  It somehow hadn’t occurred to me that they grew – continuously.

             

And then there was the vegetable garden.  Mars’ father was an inveterate gardener, and a good one.  The backyard garden was just a fact of life for her.  So on our first Memorial Day weekend of home ownership, following my father-in-law’s directions and Mars’ plans, we dug up and planted our first of many vegetable gardens.  Much to my surprise this enterprise turned out to be the easiest of my horticultural challenges.

             

But also there was “Ernest” – the name that I gave to the guy who took care of my neighbor’s yard work because of his physical resemblance to the macho American novelist.  I still remember the first time I saw him.

             

He looked to be of retirement age, about six feet tall, and thin.  He was wearing clean, un-pressed tan chinos, brown work boots, a yellowing Irish knit sweater and a tan chino baseball hat.  The hat was planted firmly on his head, at a slight angle, with the left side up.   

A thin stream of white hair flowed out of the sides of the hat and continued down his cheeks, merging with a short-trimmed beard and moustache.  His neck was unshaven.  When he removed his hat, I could see that the hair on his head was military short.  It was a sunny day, but Ernest didn't wear sunglasses.   

He squinted (even in the shade provided by the long peak of his cap).  As he worked he removed layers.  First he took off his sweater to show a clean plain-white tee shirt.  Then the tee shirt came off to show an upper body, tanned and largely free of fat - but not muscular.

             

He worked continuously, pausing only for three things: to remove a layer of clothing, to take off his hat and wipe his forehead, or to smoke a cigarette.  He sat and smoked between jobs.  Between grass cutting and grass raking.  Between hedge trimming and hedge raking.  And before leaving. 

            

 The tools Ernest used were basic: a small, generic brand push power mower, hand operated pruning shears and a metal rake with several teeth missing.  His cigarettes, I surmised from the size of the pack, were either unfiltered "regular size" Camels (my father's brand) or Lucky Strikes (my former one).  The right hand that held the cigarette was always cupped.  He rested that hand on his left wrist and rested the left wrist on a crossed right leg.  He was very still when he smoked, except for his cupped hand slowly floating up to his mouth and back.

             

When he was done the lawn was uniformly short and clean, and the hedges were squared-off and flat.  He put his tools away and rode off on a blue one-speed bicycle, with his Irish knit sweater stuffed into a rusty handlebar basket.           

For eight years, during the yard-work season, Ernest came at least every other Sunday on that same two-wheeler to do his work. And virtually every time, and most Saturdays too, I was in my own yard trying to do the same. It wasn't in me to give my yard the squared-off look of Ernest's handiwork.  Instead I chose a less symmetrical layout, requiring much more intensive labor. 

             

As I pushed my mower, hand-turned my old and new gardens, or dug out my dandelions, I would stare over to see how I was doing compared to him - frequently at first, then less often. 

             

But I never totally stopped looking. 

             

As the real Hemingway wrote, “We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”

Quién Santa Fe?

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If you went to Santa Fe, New Mexico for the first time you might think that the patron saint, and official icon, of the capitol city of the “Land of Sunshine” is the Virgin of Guadalupe.  And you might wonder, who is this Saint Fe anyway?

            

First the V.O.G.

             

“Official Catholic accounts state that on the morning of December 9, 1531, a native American peasant named Juan Diego saw a vision of a maiden at a place called the Hill of Tepeyac, which would become part of Villa de Guadalupe, a suburb of Mexico City. 

             

“Speaking to him in his native Nahuatl language (the language of the Aztec empire), the maiden asked that a church be built at that site in her honor. From her words, Juan Diego recognized the maiden as the Virgin Mary. He then sought out the archbishop of Mexico City, Fray Juan de Zumárraga, to tell him what had happened. The archbishop instructed him to return to Tepeyac Hill, and ask the lady for a miraculous sign to prove her identity.

             

“The first sign she gave was the healing of Juan's uncle. The Virgin also told Juan to gather flowers from the top of Tepeyac Hill, which was normally barren, especially in December. But Juan followed her instructions and he found Castilian roses, not native to Mexico, blooming there. The Virgin arranged the flowers in his tilma or cloak, and when Juan Diego opened his cloak before archbishop Zumárraga on December 12, the flowers fell to the floor, and on the fabric was the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe.” (Wikipedia)

 In Santa Fe this patron saint of (Old) Mexico appears ubiquitously on T-shirts, watches, bracelets, key chains, paintings, murals and even tattoos.  Mars and I have several such images in our own collection – clothing, pictures and jewelry.

             

“Use of those images ‘is an expression that brings the sacred to everyday life,’ said theologian Nancy Pineda Madrid, a professor at the Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry at Boston College. ‘Having her with us is a way to feel more secure, more confident in life, especially when we have problems or are in danger.’ (http://www.catholic-sf.org)

             

Apparently this is true of both those who have a deeply religious devotion to the Our Lady of Guadalupe, as well as those who venerate the image and its cultural and aesthetic countenance more than the spiritual backstory.

            

 So how come, you ask, is the image of Saint Fe not equally ubiquitous?

            

 Well the short answer is, there is no Saint Fe.  (Some would argue that there also was never a Juan Diego – although the Vatican canonized him as the first Roman Catholic indigenous saint from the Americas in 2002.  Whatever.)

             

There was however a Saint Francis.  And “the city Different” was originally called “the La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asís  ("The Royal Town of the Holy Faith of St. Francis of Assisi")” – way too many letters for a baseball cap, so the town was rechristened to the much shorter Santa Fe.

             

The Roman Catholic cathedral in downtown Santa Fe is “The Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi”.  It was built by Archbishop Jean Baptiste Lamy (the Archbishop to whom death comes in the Willa Cather novel) between 1869 and 1886. An older church, built in 1626 in the same location, was destroyed in the 1680 Pueblo Revolt. 

             

But the Franciscan icon that always draws my interest and attention when Mars and I are in town lies just about diagonally across the plaza in a small, street-corner park.  The statue of Saint Francis and the prairie dog is one of our favorite public art pieces and one spot that must be visited (and photographed) on each and every one of our trips.   

             

(The rodent's red body-wrap is not normally a part of the image.  That’s a Mars-knitted scarf lent briefly by me to the stone-cold burrowing rodent for artistic purposes.  In spite of the snow the weather was such that my scarlet neckwear was more decorative than functional.)

            

 I’ve been finding images of Francis of Assisi floating into my mind frequently during this past winter – the secular, animal-loving one as opposed to the voluntarily impoverished, barefooted, clad in rough cloth mendicant who found the Franciscan order of monks – mostly when I’ve been outside in the unkind elements dispensing food to (presumably) struggling tiny creatures of the wild. 

            

 Most recently for example – I was re-clearing the path across the front lawn to our bird feeder complex after our latest snowstorm when I noticed a winter-green goldfinch hanging tentatively onto our upside-down thistle feeder.  He was the only bird in sight – the other multitudes having scattered to the nearby bushes and trees at the first crunch of ice crystals under my thick-soled hiking boots.

             

I stopped shoveling.  He ceased eating.  We exchanged gazes.  I resumed my shoveling – slowly and quietly.  He continued his staring – turning his neck as I passed him by in a way impossible for us humans to do, while still maintaining his claw-hold on the perforated aluminum feeder tube.  We came within inches.  Finally, moments after I worked my way past him, he flew hesitantly off in that bobbing-in-the-air style of flight unique to those tiny- seed-eating songbirds. 

             

We were that close to having what the philosopher Martin Buber called an “I-Thou connection” - a relationship in which the other is not separated by discrete bounds.  Then poof, he was gone!   It was probably something that I didn’t say.  Or maybe, in the subzero temperatures of that day, he was hoping that I might offer him my cozy, warm, red, woolen muffler.

            

 I did mention that I wasn’t attracted to the physically discomforted aspects of Saint F of A’s demeanor – didn’t I?