Parker Potter is a former archaeologist and historian, and retired lawyer. He is currently a semi-professional dog walker who lives and works in Contoocook.
One of the great joys of my daily walks through Contoocook is getting the chance to observe the natural world up close. Because I walk my loop four times a day, every day, I get to see sights that, as a motorist, I didn’t ever see or just took for granted.
Spring flowers are always a delight, and I have become much more attuned to the order in which they pop up. I love crocuses, and there are several patches of them on my route. When I see them here, they always remind me of a spot on the lawn between the house I grew up in and the neighbors’ house.
Every spring, before the snow had completely melted away, a half dozen brave little purple and gold naturalizing crocuses came up through the grass, foreshadowing the arrival of more spring flowers, warmer weather, and pick-up baseball games in the front yard.
There are loads of daffodils along my route. They come up and then bloom over the course of three or four weeks, but not all at once. The fact that some come up so much earlier than others makes me think of sun and shade, proximity to a warm foundation, and all the other factors that work together to tell daffodils that it is time to do their spring thing.
There aren’t many peonies along my route, but there are some. When I see peonies here, I always think of the first ones I ever saw, the richly ant-covered peonies that grew in a backyard garden two houses down from the house I grew up in. I am particularly interested in peonies because of their prominence in Chinese visual art and literature. When I first saw Contoocook peonies blooming on one of my walks, the blossoms reminded me of fireworks, which made me wonder whether peonies might have been a part of the inspiration for the invention of fireworks in China.
Something that first struck me on my walks this year is the varying durability of different kinds of flower blossoms. The bulb flowers seem to come and go relatively quickly, but I got to watch a big patch of rogue daisies growing in the middle of a lawn that seemed to stay fresh looking for weeks on end, dare I say fresh as a daisy. And even when they withered and went to seed, I found a certain beauty in them. Call it the promise of next year’s daisies.
I have also come to love the trees I walk by, going so far as to name one magnificent oak “the monarch.” I’ve started referring to another tree as “the one with the mullet” because of the funky way it has been pruned to protect the power lines that run beside it. As with the flowers, I’ve become increasingly aware of nature’s chronology for putting leaves on the trees in the spring and taking them off in the fall, maples first, then the oaks. Because I walk all year round, I see the trees bare naked, all dressed up with leaves, and at every stage in between. I appreciate the contrasts, and it’s been interesting to discover which seasons suit which trees best.
In the spring, my fun with trees is all about timing. I particularly enjoy that one magical week that comes along every year when all the maple trees leaf out, seemingly overnight, covering themselves with the tenderest imaginable shades of green.
Another thing I see up close is the incredible range of reproductive parts that appear on the trees and shrubs I pass, delicate little buds and fronds and pods and tendrils. Speaking of tree reproduction, I’ll never forget the day when the monarch and some of its oak-tree friends decided to drop hundreds of acorns, all at once, right on my head. It sounded like a hailstorm. As a daily walker, I often find myself in the right place at the right time for that kind of special show from Mother Nature.
I’ve also had maple trees spontaneously drop a bushel of yellow leaves on me as I’ve passed by. Crunchy autumn leaves underfoot, and their distinctive aroma always sends me back to the Friday nights of my youth when I walked through piles of fallen leaves on my way to watch the high school football team play.
Finally, while the flowers and trees I see on my walks are glorious, I think the bits of nature I love the best are the volunteers, all the determined little plants that shouldn’t be there, but are, growing against all odds in sidewalk cracks, storm drains, and lawns into which they have escaped from a flower bed. I admire their persistence and dedication to life.
"Opinion" - Google News
October 02, 2022 at 07:02PM
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Opinion: Noticing nearby nature - Concord Monitor
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