Sapling

sporadic visits to this site, though i author posts in my head many times a week.

today is called "earth day", and marks the anniversary of the day last year when so many of the trees in our yard were cut down.

i've come to appreciate the open sky, the perspective from seeing so much horizon, the sense of community i feel in watching my in-laws in their yards behind us.

a dear friend visited today - the same one, coincidentally, having visited last year as the trees were being cut down. the boy delighted in her company, asking her to pick him up, leaning his head against her chest as she held him. behaviors he's only shown to me, his father, and his nana until now he freely offered to her, having met her only a few times.

we walked outside, shared talk of the flowers, the birds. my friend pointed out that the violets under the forsythia are blooming from yesterday's rain (the first in two weeks). i dug up a birch sapling and a small silky dogwood from our vegetable garden, seeded there by the forest that was cut down last year. we set them in the ground beside the new road, in the drainage ditch that replaces our marshy forest.

tonight, a peeper calls from the drainage ditch, or perhaps from the puddle that extends permanently from it out into our yard. it comes to me that the marsh is still there. it's been levelled, much has been covered over, and there has been an attempt to grow grass there, but the water of the marsh remains nonetheless. i will reclaim it by bringing in the plants that were removed: dogwoods, birches, perhaps introducing speckled alders from other swamps, native species who will contribute to the ecosystem. i can bring in plants that will thrive in the water and who will offer to the chickadees, peepers, all of its previous inhabitants the same shelters and nourishment provided by the original swamp.

i heard on the radio today that there is a burgeoning movement in our country to provide rights to nature and ecosystems such that even though one might have ownership of a parcel of land, the ecosytems on that land would be provided some measure of protection. (i wanted to provide a link here to this movement, but haven't been able to find it on the web.)