asakiyume | Entries tagged with seasons

I started mentioning what microseason we were in for my classes at the jail, and the students are really into it. On Tuesday we entered "First Cherry Blossoms" (... we're not quite in sync, here in New England), and on Thursday they wanted to know what the new one was. "We're still in 'First Cherry Blossoms,'" I had to tell them, "But we'll be in a new one on Monday." (I teach Mon-Thurs).

Students in class know bits of different languages, and it's fun to have them share--Spanish, of course, but one woman has French-Canadian grandparents and speaks Quebecois French, and another student went to a high school that offered Chinese--so yeah, it's fun having people get excited about what they know and can share.

Crossposts: https://asakiyume.livejournal.com/921444.html

In Japan, today through January 24 is the microseason called "butterburs bud"

One fond memory I have of living in Japan as a family was the 60-plus-year-old director of the daycare where my kids went teaching me how to prepare fuki. In spring you could buy it in markets, but it's also a wild herb that you can forage. I remember where we foraged ours: there was this cut-through with a little bridge, and then you came up behind/beside the Watanabes' shop, which was a sort of convenience store in their house. We bought our kerosine there. I think I still have the director's hard-to-read instructions somewhere--maybe stuck inside a Japanese cookbook. I hope so, anyway.

I've seen butterbur here and thought of picking it, but I've never done it because I'm afraid it might not be exactly the same plant. It also gets translated into English as "coltsfoot."

Here it is--not a bud, but vigorous leaves:

(source)

And here it is, prepared:

(source)

Wow, I guess when you cultivate it, it can get quite large! The stuff we picked is much, much smaller.

(source)

Wikipedia tells me that the plant known as butterbur in Massachusetts, Petasites hybridus, is also called "bog rhubarb, Devil's hat, and pestilence wort." Gotta love folk names.

Crossposts: https://asakiyume.livejournal.com/916990.html

I was looking at some of my earliest journal entries, trying to see what had me hopping with inspiration back almost thirteen years ago, and I discovered this:

Little Springtime, the Peaceful One, had to list things that happen with regularity in nature--just a few examples. She said, "I've already got things like 'Bears eat skunk cabbage in the spring...'--as if THAT'S the first regular seasonal thing you'd think of! I only just learned that about bears last week. It made me think, it would be fun to have a list of things that happen very regularly that people rarely think of (like the bears and skunk cabbages, frankly).

I thought, that idea dovetails nicely with Japanese microseasons, which Wakanomori introduced me to a few years ago. There are 72 of them. Right now, for instance, we're in 雉始雊 Kiji hajimete naku--pheasants start to call. (More broadly, we're in the period called 小寒 Shōkan, "small cold," which will be followed, from January 20 through February 3, by "greater cold." Just warning you.)

But it might be fun to get as particularistic about place as for time. If you can divide the year into 72 microseasons, how about microclimates? Of course years can vary so wildly in terms of what happens... it would take lots of observations to have microseasons that would really apply fairly regularly year after year.

These last few days, here, we've been in the microseason of thin wind--the kind that slips between all your layers and curls up right against your skin, trying to warm itself, a hungry ghost of a wind. I haven't heard any pheasants calling.

Crossposts: https://asakiyume.livejournal.com/916427.html

Come away, human child, for the world is more full of leaves than you can ever know.

Come away to where the blackberries grow

Step in, step in deeper, into shadow. There are more fruits there, hidden, sweet, and black.

( Who and what were in this world? )

Current Location: Michael Blake: What Tau Sounds Like

Two gin and tonics, enriched and flavored by sweetfern (spicy, aromatic) and heal-all (can't discern its flavor,but it's in the mint family, and its name tells me it heals all!)

I practiced on a skateboard this morning. I still don't get it at all, but at least I see where and how I must get it. Lean to the left, lean to the right. Balance.

Goldfinches, hardly visible, but audible in the unrelenting blue sky. Sparrows. Mourning doves. Hawks. Also: things that rustle, invisibly, in the greenery. Snakes, chipmunks, squirrels, mice.

In bloom: yarrow, spotted knapweed, birdsfoot trefoil, black-eyed susans, meadowsweet, goatsbeard (mainly to seed), crown vetch, queen anne's lace, chicory, day lilies, purple clover, rabbit's foot clover, hop clover, butter-and-eggs (toadflax), purple toadflax, poke blossoms.

Could it be that the world is made of mathematics, and when we make music, we're reaching for those principles? Here is the number Tau (it's Pi x 2) played as music:

"What Tau Sounds Like" (Watch on YouTube)

canada geese (these stayed; they were on their way further north)
woodcocks (maybe always here?)
killdeer, sandpipers (same?)
wood thrushes
catbirds
wrens
oriole
swifts

just yesterday (May 3), the first oriole, high in an old apple tree not yet in blossom, and the first swifts--maybe these were back sooner, but it was the first I'd seen them, darting up so high, burbling to themselves, splitting cloud from sky.

And the wren, with its song too big and loud to fit in its tiny body.

Meanwhile, the magnolias are dropping their petals, the violets are in drifts across lawns, and in the wetlands, the marsh marigolds are in bloom.

from July

hop clover, so mice and rabbits can make beer
anise hyssop tastes sweet as sugar and like licorice
green heron by the ditch-canal
goldfinch flying like golden stitchery
goldfinches stitch with sunthread or lightning
queen anne's lace, sweetest smell
thistle sharp on leaves
thistle soft flowers
thistle taller than me
queen anne's lace taller than me
catbirds singing in very early morning
a yellow bird in the tree by the window
wind coming in the window, blowing straight in, during rain

from October, but remembering back to September as well

marvelous pepper smell, pepper, but sweet, of--is it the goldenrod? The asters? Something else?
soft velvet lining of chestnut burrs
the very white nuts of the hickory--paleface nuts--and the red brown chestnut foxy color of chestnuts
a clump of the red indian pipe, by the fallen tree on the upper trail.
withered wild grapes
bittersweet with leaves yellowing, berries brightening
windfalls in the brown and yellow leaves
the moss still jewel bright

Leaves have not yet greened the big trees, but some small grasses are already in flower. They are not wasting any time.

Meanwhile, I have been finding skeletons of last year's leaves. I found a perfect one and exclaimed over it, then got distracted by something else and didn't take it with me. Later I remembered and went to look for it and found a different, less perfect one.

It looks like a net. By itself it may catch a number of things; strengthened with a spell, more.

Current Music: Tori Amos: Yes, Anastasia

The new green grass is rising up, like those dragon’s teeth soldiers, spearpoints first:

If the grass is the victor, what is the vanquished?
Easy: last year’s jack o’lantern:

I set it at the edge of the swamp, left it to stare into the swamp, after Halloween was over. And now only its outermost skin remains; it’s reduced from three dimensions to almost two--from sphere to circle. The blue thing is the candle stump, and to the right of that is the remainder of the woody chunk of stem that you use to lift the jack o’lantern lid up.

So, sometimes it seems like a battle, but other times it seems like there’s an alliance between decay and new growth. Behold the alliance fortress:

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Noël Nouvelet

It cannot yet be summer, but the evidence for the remaining seasons is contradictory. This leaf said autumn, autumn-into-winter, colors spent...

and these wild wild ice grapes said winter

and then the lovely moss said spring

The spore cases look like lots of swans' necks and heads:

( also bourbon, also the backs of things )

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: The Decemberists: Margaret in Captivity

Up until today, the air has been cold and sharp enough to cut your airways and lungs when you inhale. Today it's as soft as an old shirt that's been washed a million times--the kind of shirt that small children like rubbing their cheeks against. Being outside is like rubbing your cheek against something that soft.

... Those stones from last entry. Maybe instead of imagining them wandering this way and that, I should imagine the ice and the water and the wind playing a giant, incomprehensible game of checkers or chess or mancala or something with them. (What would the rules be? I can imagine the wind and ice trying to teach me, but geologic logic might be beyond me.) The stones may be the pawns of the wind and the ice, but perhaps now and then one or another rebels and moves about on its own.

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more on microseasons
Butterburs bud
microseasons
more full of leaves
sweetfern, heal-all
the order of returning birds this year
the entry for things, seasonal things
the quick and the dead
the spears of spring, take two
What season? Also bourbon, and also the backs of things
the way the air feels

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Page generated Jun. 27th, 2025 11:25 am

Asakiyume mita

Entries tagged with seasons

more on microseasons

Butterburs bud

microseasons

more full of leaves

sweetfern, heal-all

the order of returning birds this year

the entry for things, seasonal things

the quick and the dead

the spears of spring, take two

What season? Also bourbon, and also the backs of things

the way the air feels