Winter wolf’s bane is blooming in patches of yellow in the front and back of the house. Winter wolf’s bane is also called winter aconite but that is not nearly so evocative a name. Actually, the full Latin name is Aconitum lycoctonum. Aconite is an alkaline toxin produced when you boil the roots of the plant. This toxin is highly poisonous and difficult to treat. Click here if you would like to read about two recent cases of ingestion which happened in San Francisco. The second word “lycoctonum” means wolf’s bane. Sometimes the vowel gets shifted and it becomes “wife’s bane.”
I really should plant snowdrops among my spreading wolf’s bane. Or maybe plant a blue flowered bulb for contrast. I could also plant some early purple crocus. That would have the same effect, although purple is one complementary shade off from yellow. These are blooming right now at the same time as the winter wolf’s bane.
Jane Yolen has written the novel Mapping the Bones about Jewish children surviving the terrors of occupied Poland and a concentration camp and she uses the structural framework of the fairy tale of “Hansel and Gretel.” In both stories, the children are separated from their parents, wander lost in a forest, and suffer acute starvation and deprivation until they win free through their own determination and love.
In December, I was madly knitting a scarf to give to an old friend of my husband’s family at Christmas. This person took care of my husband and his four younger sisters for several years. She came over from a small village in the Black Forest to Ohio and never returned. She stayed, earned her nursing degree, worked in a teaching hospital and retired so she could have adventures all over the world such as experiencing “summer” in Antarctica.
Stepping out of the house to walk the dogs last week, I saw the first snowdrops blooming.
So here is the front of the card, I left for one of our children who now faces a challenge. No one grows if they are coddled. Growth happens in response to challenges.
Yesterday on the new non-fiction shelf of our local public library, I found a book with a pebbled blue cover and gold gilded lettering and design. It was clearly a knitting book as you can see from the front cover and I love shawls so I had to pick it up.
The knitting patterns are set up in the usual way: materials, needles, supplies, finished measurements, gauge. At the bottom though is a box called “Knitting Wisdom” which gives advice for knitting the project. It is almost as though an experienced knitter was whispering secrets into your ear so your project will turn out just right — like Goldilock’s porridge. The patterns include instructions for amulet bags, hats, shawl, gloves, vest, mittens and a baby blanket.
Today I reached for a small ceramic bowl. It was a perfect size. Just right for holding in the palm. It was painted a robin’s egg blue. It looked like a round bird with a little beak and brown eyes and brown wings.
Who needs to think? 