Friday, July 07, 2006
Garden Rapture
Each year, in July when the garden is at its peak, one day the wood thrush takes a bow and begins his elegant song; a true lullaby of summer. This year, today was that day, and I always marvel that the singing of this brown thrush (which has the sweetest call of all our birds in the upper midwest), seems each year to be as fresh, and as thrilling to me as it was the first time I heard it as a boy on a warm Iowa summer evening long ago. The thrush today was obviously setting up his territory, as he made a continual counterclockwise rotation, flitting from tree to tree, in a large circle, encompassing most of our woods. From each perch he broadcast his message: Lee-Oh-Lay... Oh Day Is Done... Lee-Oh-Lay. It is a bittersweet call, like the finest woodwind; seeming to both celebrate the beauty of the day, and lament its ending... a reminder that even as we are in the ultimacy of summer, with all it's rapturous loveliness, that summers, and years are, after all, transient. As the sun westerns in the sky, and long shafts of light filter through the woods, the wood thrush sings more persistently, and as twilight spreads across our valley, and brings a time of utter peace to our woods, the other birds become quiet, as if they too, are listening. It is in this last fading of the day then, that the wood thrush truly takes center stage, continuing to sing his haunting song in the fading light, so that you bend closer to hear it better... Lee-Oh-Lay... Oh Day Is Done... Lee-Oh Lay. 
// posted by IBOY @ 2:33 PM 
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Janet,
Thank you... I'm happy you enjoyed it. The wood thrush is SO special, words seem inadequate to describe the beauty of listening to it in a quiet wood, as the light fades, and coolness rises from the pond.
Don
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Thank you... I'm happy you enjoyed it. The wood thrush is SO special, words seem inadequate to describe the beauty of listening to it in a quiet wood, as the light fades, and coolness rises from the pond.
Don
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