At loose ends

I need to work in the ends on most of these scarves (or, as my mother calls them, yarn necklaces); it won’t take me long.  It’s been, finish knitting one, dive into the next, finish knitting the second, dive into the next, over and over–I was trying to get a lot done before I just couldn’t stand it, I had to finally go start that black cashmere shawl.

The black shawl has now commenced.

Which didn’t stop me from casting on Amanda‘s Huarache yarn today while waiting for the dentist. You can never have enough lace scarves on hand when you’re planning on going back and thanking your nurses; I’ve got a long way to go.

Meantime, a few years ago, I woke up one morning after a night of heavy storms to see a bright blue sky out the clerestory window.  Empty expanse.  It took me a moment to puzzle out what was missing: a tree had blown over, and the green branches I was used to waking up to were simply gone.  (The red berries are on the heavenly bamboo it had been growing next to.)

We had someone cut its carcass up and haul it away for us, but for whatever reason, they left the overturned stump that was still within the long raised flower bed.  Huh.

Having grown up in a house in the woods, I knew that old wood is good for all kinds of wildlife. My folks had had a towering dead tulip poplar that the then-endangered pileated woodpeckers loved.  Bugs would eat the dead wood, and high off the ground, those huge woodpeckers would go after the bugs, spectacularly so: you could see chunks of wood going flying and the whole neighborhood could hear one hammering at work.  Go check out the tree trunk as well as the birds in that link.

You’re not going to get that same effect from a stump on the ground, but you go with what you’ve got.

With our recent rains, these mushrooms on the stump have grown around and through the leaves of the heavenly bamboo, swirling their colors and dancing round and round for sheer joy at being alive.