Pond Alchemy

The water at Old frog Pond Farm travels south from the Elizabeth Brook, through a culvert under Eldridge Road, fills the pond, and empties over a waterfall into wetlands that feed the Concord and Assabet Rivers. 

Water Meets Water, Watercolor, 2018, Linda Hoffman

Pond Alchemy

sheets of angled rain

pierce the pond

water meets water

lily pads

host their guests

a frog and beads of water

attentive to water

a blue heron

waits —

the wise say,

‘the way of water

is to flow’

a black cormorant

grasps a snag

winging water droplets

tree swallows

pluck insects

splash of water

the wise teach,

‘water never

harms water’

weaving threads

of iridescent water

dragonflies hover.

Early Morning Pond View, June 2, 2020, Linda Hoffman

An Artist in the Orchard

Usually I carry a spade, loppers, clippers, a weeding tool, a basket with rubber ties, and wire into the orchard. But like a plein air painter who leaves the studio and brings paints and brushes to the subject, I bring a notebook and pen, and sit in a patch of purple violets under a Golden Delicious apple tree.

Along with the violets, two varieties of clover are growing—mammoth red and white Dutch. I love clover under my apple trees—and daffodils and dandelions, mountain mint and comfrey, iron weed, valerian, St. John’s wort, bee balm, even stinging nettles. The more companion plants, the richer the soil.

Notebook page 5/16/20

Most people don’t realize that one apple bud opens to become a cluster of five or six flower buds. The king blossom is in the center; it’s the first to grow and the first to open. It’s surrounded by the harem waiting to take over if anything should happen to the king.

In a stellar pollination year, most of the secondary blossoms will be pollinated and the tree becomes a cloud of delicate wings. The downside is too many children. The apples will be small, with more disease and pest pressure, and less air circulation and sunlight, not beneficial for the crop. 

On this particular Golden Delicious tree, I see only a few blossoms. Golden Delicious have a propensity to be biennial—a riot of blossoms one year, and the next only a scattering. Orchardists can control this tendency by “thinning” the trees, removing a portion of the young fruit. As an organic grower, I don’t have an array of chemical thinners to choose from, but I can hand thin. On our youngest trees, we pluck off all the blossoms, discouraging such precocious behavior; these trees need to focus on growth, not reproduction! On the younger trees, we remove some of the fruitlets, leaving a few inches between apples. But on the mature trees, when the fruit set is crazy-good, our feeble efforts to thin hardly make a difference. One tree alone could occupy an afternoon, and we don't have a month to devote to thinning. I leave the Golden Delicious to do as they are inclined. Other trees, like the newer varieties of Liberty and Honey Crisp, are bred to discourage this trait.

The upside of this off-year is all energy goes into growing large and shiny leaves—optimal photosynthesis. A time of repose, a sabbatical to recharge. As I sit in its shade, I think about what the tree offers other than fruit. Maybe nutritive support to other trees and to the soil around its roots? Maybe sequestering more carbon? Maybe that strange notion, self-care?

This Golden Delicious tree is over 45 years old, and some orchard experts say it should be replaced because it’s old and leaning too far south. But I’m enthralled by its wayward slant, its zig-zag desire to find equipoise. In the photo below you can see the young branch I’m training to become a new central leader if necessary. 

Being both orchardist and artist is at times contradictory. Should I spray a particularly nasty, but approved organic material like lime sulfur to thin the Golden Delicious so they don’t fall into biennial production? After all, we have 28 mature Golden Delicious trees with no fruit, and that’s a lot of real estate in a small orchard. The truth is I appreciate the gnarly old trees and the young slender spindles, the trees with no apples and the trees loaded with fruit.

I finish taking notes and gather violets to put in a jar of olive oil for next fall when we will make salves and balms. A pair of cedar waxwings are courting in one of the Gala trees, and two orioles sing from high in a Summer Sweet. The woodchuck peeks out of a nearby hole, and upon seeing me, ducks back down. The geese hiss. On my walk back to the house, I snap off two fat purple asparagus no doubt planted by some robin scratching for worms near the trunk of a Cortland in the first row. Today I’m an artist in the orchard. Tomorrow I’ll return with other tools.

Apple Tree, Watercolor and Pencil, 2020, Linda Hoffman

Walking the Land: Returning Home

This “Man in a Maze” basket by the Akimei O’odham (Pima) people of Arizona is in the Fruitlands Museum collection in Harvard, Massachusetts. Though baskets like this are called, “Man in a Maze,” the design is actually a labyrinth, a teaching tool. Mazes have false turns and dead ends, and the sojourner must often retrace their steps and start over. A labyrinth is a continuous journey, a winding path with no wrong turns, no wrong decisions. The basket’s fine weave expresses stillness and balance, virtues that walking a labyrinth are said to restore.

In 2006, I installed an outdoor labyrinth for Fruitlands Museum inspired by the design of the Pima basket. I remembered this labyrinth while I was writing about our current situation—each of us isolated, walking our individual paths through the pandemic.

Walking the Labyrinth at Fruitlands Museum, 2005

For the Fruitlands’ labyrinth, I used round New England field stones placing them on a flat and grassy hillside. The measured concentric circles follow the contours of the land. Once the installation was completed, I wondered, what should we put in the center? A plant, a flower, a special stone? Nothing felt right, and I left it empty.

A question many people are asking is what the return to normal will look like. Many have discovered a new attentiveness in their daily lives—cooking special recipes, baking bread, taking long walks. And with this attentiveness, gratitude for what we do have naturally arises. The question is will we be able to carry this mindful pace with us as we re-enter the busy marketplace?

When walking a labyrinth, reaching the center is the goal. Perhaps, however, the return is more important. As we walk back out, we have the opportunity to consider what we have noticed along our journey. Quite possibly, we walk back out of the labyrinth with more confidence. We may feel the freedom of not worrying where we are going.

Some of us don’t want to return to normal; for isn’t normal what has polluted our rivers, clearcut our forests, and created social and economic inequality? We aren’t going to change the way international corporations operate—let alone our own government—in a few months, but we can make personal decisions about how we want to walk our labyrinth. Are we walking with attention and with gratitude, or are we hurrying, trying to get somewhere? Are we fully present to the moment of walking? We each have a path to walk, there is no other. We change our lives by what we bring to our walking, and the only thing we truly bring with us is our heartmind.

I see now why it was right to leave the center of the labyrinth at Fruitlands empty. There is a journey, but there is no goal to achieve, no pot of gold, no rainbow, no anything. We may be spiritual beings, but we are on a human path we each have to navigate. Let’s imagine the joy of walking. The labyrinth is no longer at Fruitlands, but I offer you a walk-through Louise Berliner’s poem inspired by it.

Journey 

Imagine the wind
Midwife to the basket
Seeds delivered to soil
Subversive act of survival

The seeds take root
Cattail willow devil’s claw
Call to the Pima women
Come gather split soak coil

The basket grows
Tells its story in pattern
Elder Brother in the maze
A journey to the center

The seed becomes artifact
Sold or bartered shipped carried
Arizona story going East
Against the traffic

Imagine the glaciers
Midwives to the landscape
Stones delivered from soil
Subversive act of survival

New England’s best crop
Schist granite fieldstone
Call to the hands of an artist
Come gather map place illuminate

The labyrinth grows
Tells its story in pattern
Any stranger may begin
A journey to the center

Imagine the artist
Midwife to the sculpture
What the hand made
The feet now travel

The Mystery of Swallow

Sky above the Medicine Wheel at Old Frog Pond Farm, Night Photo: Robert Hesse

While in our individual quarantines we hear of mysteries revealed across the globe: In India, people can see the glow of the high Himalayas, fish are swimming again in the dank Venice canals, and above in the night sky, the stars in the milky way glow more brightly. Closer to home, I study tree swallows.

 I’ve been watching an iridescent pair who have taken up residence outside my studio window. They perch on the top of a pine nesting box, one of a dozen my husband, Blase, built from scraps in his woodshop. I have yet to see either bird enter the box to lay eggs. Swallows, like most song birds, don’t lay all their clutch at once. The effort is too much; they lay only one egg a day. During this time of egg laying, the parents don’t immediately start incubating, but wait until the clutch is complete. Of course, I thought, how does she know when that last egg is laid? Maybe the way an artist knows when a painting is finished. It’s intuitive, there’s a satisfaction, a completeness. There’s a whisper, it’s done, it’s out of your hands. Release it, and trust.

This swallow pair must be waiting for the last of the eggs to be laid before they start nesting. They sit throughout the day, though occasionally one will fly, leaving the other alone. Rarely, do they both leave.

I have resisted peeking inside the box to see the eggs, I can only assume the eggs are accumulating. Once incubation begins, the parents will take turns sitting on the eggs for a week. Once born, the babies will remain in the nest for 18 to 23 days. Then, they must develop into expert flyers. For their migration from North America to South America will begin in the fall and will travel 200 miles a day at speeds from 17 to 22 miles per hour. However, storms, exhaustion, and starvation are challenges they will face, and it is estimated that only half will survive the journey.

To my surprise, both swallows suddenly take off. I watch for their return when a bluebird lands on their box, perky, though a little uncertain, making me think it is perhaps its first spring to find a partner and mate. The swallows immediately return, flustered at the sight of this interloper. What to do? Cautiously they fly toward the bluebird, wings shaking, approaching, but not getting too close. I think, why aren’t they dive bombing it? They need to protect their nest. The swallows dare to come a little closer, but the bluebird just twitches. The swallows fly out and back, and out and back, but never touch the bluebird. They don’t seem to be aggressive by nature, but they know they have to do something. Meanwhile, the bluebird doesn’t seem to realize it has landed on a box that belongs to others, or it is simply feigning innocence.

I watch more of their wing wagging, and think, this couple is completely ineffective, ridiculously so. Then, amidst more flutters of feathers, the bluebird departs. The swallow couple land on the top of the box, nudge close to each other, feathers touching, sharing the experience they have survived together. Whew! That was difficult! We best just sit here for a while.

Such mysteries of nature belong to us for we belong to nature; we are part of it. How could we be other? We’re made of the same molecules of water, air, and earth’s minerals. When I become demoralized by the problems on the planet, the greed I witness, the suffering brought on by this new pandemic, I remember that I am this earth, not separate from it. I am this morning’s melancholic rain making circles on the pond. I am the swallows anxious flutterings. Argentina may be 10,000 miles away, but the swallows will connect us. They connect me to you. Isn’t that amazing?

First Swallow, LH