bloodroot and trillium
I'm back in town.
Our street is being torn up.
It's cool out.
I sense that one of my themes as I continue to write about cleaning up difficult physical areas is now to write about Persephone above ground and back in the world of all living plants. I will start with my musings about the plants that I have printed on linoleum blocks long ago. Themes of nature and the cycle of growth will appear as well as my relationship to our old farmstead out in the country that is now falling down.
I know that out in the Wisconsin woods, not far from where our old house is falling down the bloodroot and trillium remain impervious to that decay as they push up through the leaves to bloom.
The bloodroot sends out its clusters of underground roots to start a new colony of bloodroot plants and just about now the small white flowers can be seen as the lovely lobed leaves wrap around the stem like an elegant cloak.
I have loved the bloodroot plant for a long time. Once upon a time in my eager batiking days I actually dug up the roots in order to use the juice for dying. Yes, the roots are bloody and no it was not a successful venture at all. But I persisted and found a way to incorporate it into my beautiful batik piece.
For the actual linoleum block print that I did of the bloodroot I picked
an actual leaf and traced it onto a linoleum block. Then I carefully cut it and tried to be true to the pattern of veins and leaves on the actual leaf.
I often print it on bright red paper.
Soon the sweet symetrical balanced trilliums will dot the woods with their splendor. Lovely, lively beautiful trilliums. A lovely gathering in the woods. I drew the plant directly onto the linoleum and then carved it in the heat of a summer day.
********
Last night I looked at my old Farm Journal. Time had drifted on. Seasons of bloodroot and trillium had come and gone since I last wrote about the untimely death of one of our friends out there. Leaves had piled up. The snow had fallen down. The bloodroot and trillium had pushed their way up. Seasons have passed. Have passed.
The old house fell down some more.
I pick up the old journal.
I read and remember all of my vows now 12 years ago to pick up the
long forgotten hidden Island memoir and keep on working on it.
There is a silence out at the farm that reminds me of the silence
on the island.
Tides come and go.
Seasons come and go.
Time passes.
And now it is again Spring!
And I have resumed work on my Island memoir.
And I have new vigor and hopeful plans to clean up the old house.
And yes, once more I bend down to my sweet favorite plants
the humble bloodroot and trillium.
And yes, I will bend low in humility and adore them once again.
and now to print them up
on paper the color of pipestone and earth.
These lovely plants teach me humility and quietness.
"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it!
- Mahatma Gandhi
