The Trash Heap and the Nest

Weary, I wheel a barrowful of weeds toward the trash heap.

“I’m discouraged,” I tell Marlo as I trudge past the six-foot fence that keeps deer from his vegetables.

“Why?” he asks, without looking up from patting in lettuce and carrot seeds.

“I’ve spent all morning on just one corner."

I apparently skipped that back corner during my April weeks of rake-and-burn.

So this morning I gathered up both old and new.

I lopped brown stalks of ornamental grass and hibiscus, cracked off black mum twigs, and raked limp leaves.

Then I dug dandelions as big as bowling balls.

While clicking to a new section of the Moby Dick recording was listening to, I saw that, instead of five more chapters left, I had thirty-five. Ishmael would not be done talking in time my Saturday plant sale after all.

Then, in the middle of Chapter 107, the recording lost its cyberspace signal and went dead.

A bird scolds overhead as I dump this fifth barrowful upon the heap. I sigh and decide to quit.

I wheel away from the heap. She swoops, raises her volume, and scolds again.

I look skyward, and spot her nest.

Not any ordinary nest.

An oriole nest.

Orioles don’t pile their gatherings of twigs and grass and straw helter-skelter above the joining of two twigs. They weave a nest that hangs below, then perch upon the twigs to feed their young.

I’ve been luring orioles to my deck with halves of oranges and leftover jam for several years now, but never seen their nest.

I last saw an oriole nest when I was ten. I sat in silence under the backyard clothes line and watched as they transported nesting stuff and wove. I was still and knew. . .

At ten, I had no words for the spacious stillness that nest opened in me.

I have no words now.

I have tried borrowing words from others—the ineffable, the numinous, sehnsucht. . .

But naming it remains always just beyond my grasp.

I look from the nest to the trash heap—the same stuff, both of them.

I know not the why or how, but I wheel the barrow beneath the deck, trailing clouds of glory.

I have seen the nest of an oriole.

And that has made all the difference.

Sacred Rhythm

I woke this morning with a nature deficit disorder. After four days deprived, I was restless for my gardens.

Thursday through Saturday, at Pella’s downtown Molengracht, I sat in a white vendor tent under a slice of sky with bricks beside and below. Our tent perched among others along the sides of an artificial canal with bright blue cement beside and below its water.

A sign warned not wade in the water. It was chemically treated.

For three days, I greeted passing tourists with a winsome smile, hoping to increase the percentage of them who would browse—and then purchase—handmade ceramics and jewelry.  I believed in our nonprofit project to support Nicaraguan artisans, but by Saturday night, my smile was weary and hollow.

Sunday, I slept.

Once awake, this morning, I start the first chapter of Ruth Haley Barton’s Invitation to Solitude and Silence—and I feel deeply her invitation.

Next, a giant azure bowl of sky and the green garden call me. Over the weekend the perennial geraniums have blossomed in lavender, fuschsia, and pink. On the poppies red flowers are opening.

The soil is too soggy for footfalls, so I dig as many bald dandelions and tall grasses as I can reach from the curb. Then, a cool breeze on my face and arms, I hoe the infant weeds I can reach from the lawn side of the beds.

This Monday morning, I am also hungry for words. So Moby Dick keeps me company. The Pequot crew captures a right whale, then competes with a German ship Jungfrau for a more valuable sperm whale. The Pequot triumphs; then the whale sinks before the crew can harvest its oil.

Adroitly weaving narration and fact, its narrator Ishmael also teaches me about a whale’s eyes astride its giant head, about its tiny ears and brain, and its nonexistent nose.

Lawnside weeding complete, I notice the ragged garden borders. Marlo coaxes the gas-powered weed eater to life for me. I stop Ishmael, and with a roaring motor and whirling string, I crisp the garden edges.

Then I whir down the weeds around the compost pile.

By noon my nature deficit disorder has stilled.  And my word-hunger has been fed.

After lunch I head for town to craft words of my own.

With scone, coffee, and computer on the glass table in front of me, I reflect.

This morning, my eyes and ears were filled by a double dose of beauty.

But with weed eater and  Moby Dick in my ears, my garden was not silent. And with Ishmael for company, I was not alone.

Breathing deeply, I hold guilt at bay.

For everything a season, I think.

However, when Ishmael concludes his epilogue three days from now, in silence and solitude, perhaps I shall go to the garden alone.