Saturna Weekend

Last weekend I was sitting on the porch at Saturna, feet up, and reading one of the many old New Yorkers that had collected in the post office during all the months we’d been away.  What bliss! (Hey, you can take the girl away from NY, but you can’t NY away from the girl!)

The sun was strong, and the breeze from the ocean was cool. The ocean itself was unruffled by the breeze, with only a large patterned swirl on its glossy surface showing any movement at all. Spots of darker color here and there where the clouds cast shadows. 

Feeling good despite all the work to do here: the massively overgrown garden, the roses that had made it without me, grown taller and more spindly than they’d ever been, strangled by the high grasses and weeds. The kiwi branches reaching their amazingly long and curling tentacles onto anything for attachment, grasping indiscriminately at wooden gate and roses, not bothering to have any preference.

I’d decided to let the garden go this year. Too late and the weeds are too strong for me to pull. I’ll wait until the colder weather comes and the rains. The hardy flowers will all be gone, but many of the weeds will be too. Then I’ll do what I can to rid the garden of them. That’s my strategy. I feel like Napoleon planning his march on Moscow. I know it’ll get the better of me.

You should see my garden. Rather, you should have seen my garden before it went stark-raving-lunatic wild. I’d planted every bit of it,even laying by hand the little brick path that weaves through it. Not all at once, but each year bringing something new. And it became a work of art. Like Monet’s at Giverney, but of course not at all like Monet’s. Like a garden a city girl would grow who knew nothing about gardening until she planted this one right out of her head. It’s really a lovely place. Or it will be, again.

When I lifted my eyes from the New Yorker to look up, I was stunned. There on the top branches of a tree sat three bald-headed eagles, looking out to sea. I ran to get the binoculars to make sure. Yes, indeed, three of them, silent and still, the air charged around them. 

I took these photos to  show the views I saw without and with binoculars. Trouble is, because it’s not a video, you can’t see the eagles turning their heads, so you can’t see their white caps. The one at left is about to fly off the branch.

What a wonderful moment to be home again. What a magical place this is.

Today's Thought

It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.
-- Sitting Bull  

When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.

 --Winston Churchill

A FIND in Spain: ELCHE and the Phoenix

En route back southward we stopped at the small city of Elche, only because it was convenient and we wanted to avoid the traffic in Valencia. But what a find! It’s a lovely, small city with one of the best hotels we’ve stayed in, set in a park-like area of palms and greenery.

Today's Painting (1 of 3 in this post)

This one just happened to fit my mood while writing about the garden in Elche:

watercolor by Janet Strayer

This is absolutely the place to go when weary of the road and wanting comfort. The Hotel Huerta del Cura  (don’t know if it gets crowded later in the season) is surprisingly reasonably priced. It comprises an elegant, well equipped set of bungalows strewn along garden paths leading in different directions from an attractive and welcoming reception area with good restaurant (buffet breakfasts were great) and a friendly staff. A lovely swimming pool rests in this tropical setting and is bordered by a patio with tables for drinks or whatever. There’s an area for kids and a playground in back, making it family-friendly , and it has a closed garage for the luggage-challenged. 

Yikes, I sound like an agent for the hotel!Nope, we’ve just been there twice during our travels in Spain because we so enjoyed the privacy and calm of it. In fact, we’ve arranged to stop at Elche again on our goodbye to Spain when we head for our next home in Italy.

We liked the city, too, with its fine public garden and very good restaurant in the middle of that, too. And there were nice little tapas restaurants and ice cream shops in nearby squares. I liked it so much I had the fantasy of opening an art studio there  …. as if. But maybe, as in most places you love for the respite they give you (travelers do get frayed!), it may not be so wonderful on a fulltime basis. Can’t see what’s not to like, though.

Even the main industry of Elche is terrific: they are a major center in Europe for  footwear. I am a shoe-addict, and even the fear of becoming Imelda Marcos does not deter me. Did I buy boots of Spanish leather? Not this time. Only because I’m wearing only ortho-shoes these days. But I sure had the urge!

Today's Painting (boots figure prominently in this one)

mixed media painting-assemblage by Janet Strayer

Nearby the hotel is a famous garden, also named Huerta del Cura,with very, very, old palm-trees, some originally planted by the Phoenicians and growing still. The garden is entered for a small fee. Inside is a green and golden place of luxuriant forgetfulness of time and worry. 

Tame peacocks roam and graze in the garden area  (gated along its perimeter) and goldfish swim in its ponds. What I mean by calling peacocks ‘tame’ is that they allowed me to approach them close enough to get some nice photos. I didn’t try feeding them, remembering my lessons not to feed the animals from way back at the Bronx Zoo.

Peacocks are odd, don’t you think?  Among an assortment of odd birds, like ostritches or flamingoes, they win the beauty pageant. I suppose it’s just for their beauty that they’ve been prized for millennia. Having them roam around at your  feet is quite a luxuriant experience: an impromptu dance of shifting iridescent color. They prompt me to make an imaginary leap to another bird with magnificent tail, the phoenix or firebird. So I’ll wander in that direction for a bit.

one of several peacocks strolling the Huerta del Cura in Elche (JS photo)

Found in various mythologies, the phoenix was identified by the Egyptians as a stork/heron-like bird, one of the sacred symbols of worship of the sun-god Ra.The Greeks, from whom the name phoenix derives (meaning purple-red or crimson), pictured the bird more as a eagle-like peacock. According to the Greek mythology the phoenix lived in Phoenicia next to a well… making it well-placed among these Phoenician palms and ponds in the Huerta. At dawn, it bathed in the water of the well, and the Greek sun-god Helios stopped his chariot (the sun) in order to listen to its song  (actually I’m told it’s rather croaky). Herodotus mentioned (though he cautioned he had not seen) the unique capability of the phoenix to be consumed by and then reborn of its own flames. At the end of its legendary 500-100 year life-cycle the phoenix burns fiercely and from its ashes a new phoenix or phoenix egg arise to live anew.

Today’s Painting: The Phoenix Egg

artwork by Janet Strayer: www.janetstrayerart.com

Today's Thought

Being in the Huerta made me reflect on the timeless importance of tree-filled gardens to us: places of quiet celebration, contemplation, and appreciation. The subtle play of light and color, the breeze and song. Different from the forest with its dark interior, a garden invites us to share in its gentle pleasure a little piece of earth adorned with pleasure.

It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanates from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.

-       Robert Louis Stevenson

God almighty first planted a garden: and, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasure.

-       Francis Bacon

Sitting and strolling around the Huerta garden is a delight, pure and simple. Casually placed among the palm fronds and greenery is La Dama de Elche, a reproduction in this setting of a dame who made Elche famous … to art historians, anyway. (The original is displayed in the National Museum of Archaeology in Madrid, with protests from Elche for its return.) The Lady of Elche or Lady of Elx (if you speak the Valencian dialect) is so named because this beautifully sculpted limestone was found near Elche at the close of the 19^th C.

La Dama de Elche

She hit the world stage at once. You’ll notice the strong resemblance to Princess Leah in Star Wars? But her fame rests on being one of the most stunning and best surviving examples of Iberian sculpture (with Hellenistic influences) from the 4^th C C.E. Traces of polychrome have been found of that period, suggesting she was once in full color. Pundits claim the enigmatic Lady may have been an Iberian goddess or priestess. Lovely, if remote, isn’t she?

So I tried to remember, after all my years of Spanish history: Who were the Iberians? The history of Iberian Peninsula is so marked by different cultures, one might well wonder. The Greeks were among the first to name the land Iberia in their records, a word that seems connected to the Ebro (river in Spain).

The Iberians are the oldest historically recognized inhabitants of the region. Their origin is unknown, supposedly of Indo-European stock. An agricultural and herding people, they lived mostly in the southern and eastern regions of the Peninsula, choosing the tops of hills beside rivers, building defensive stone walls round their settlements. They were also known to be warlike with skilled riders and cavalry, with Rome adopting the Iberian style sword and shield.

 Rome annexed “Hispania” or Iberia” under Augustus Caesar, and units of Iberian chivalry became part of Roman army.From ancient times, the small tribal states of Iberia were colonized by more culturally  advanced Phoenicians, Greeks and Carthaginians, their intermingling enabling the creation of works like the Dama de Elche.

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