Ephemera #phenology

We think we noticed trillium in bloom this morning. We were going around a curve at the time, and also were going faster than ideal for a good look, but we're pretty sure we saw a scattering of white dots amongst the dappled understory on a hillside where we've seen trillium other years. As more nectar-yielding blooms appear, the local butterfly population increases. We watched a tiger swallowtail barely avoid a collision with the jeep today.

hillside trillium in May

Photo by J. Harrington

More and more lilacs have come into bloom, including the "feral" bushes North of us in the Wildlife Management Area. We take great visual and  this time of year. Watching flowers bloom and leaves develop is, for us, much more pleasant than observing fruit develop over the Summer. One of many reasons we probably never would have made a good farmer. If there weren't the sequential relationship between flowers and fruit, would we want to see flowers blooming year round? Possibly, but we suspect that, after awhile, we'd get tired of the flowers and the scents and they'd simply fade into the background.

local lilacs in bloom

Photo by J. Harrington

We don't think we're unique in our enjoyment of change and our ability to take for granted any constant exposure to beauty or other pleasures in life. If you enjoyed vanilla ice cream, would you want to eat some at every meal, every day? That's what we thought!

Perhaps, instead of being named "Homo sapiens," our species should have been named "Homo varietas," or something similar. How do you suppose our enjoyment of at least some kinds of change relates to having a linear, rather than a cyclical sense of time? Is it genetic, cultural, both? When was the last time you thought you might have stepped into the same river? Hadn't both you and the river changed?

The Trees

by Philip Larkin

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

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