nature

Promise of a Rose Garden

Janet Fisher4 Comments

Imagine yourself in a deep forest of magnificent timber, and then you step into this.

Sun and cloud shadows sweep across row after row of roses in every color imaginable. I can’t resist taking pictures. Close-ups. Wide angles to show the scope of it.

Does this one have a scent? Mm-m.

And this?

I’m just back from a visit with my family in Portland, Oregon. They live in walking distance from Portland’s renowned rose garden in Washington Park, and my daughter promised we could walk there every day if we liked.

So here I am, ready to share with you some of the splendors of that place.

What a treat to be able to take all the time we want to enjoy this and know we can come back day after day. We took this walk several times, strolling through the woods and then immersing ourselves in the garden.

When I’m between writing projects and it’s time to breathe in, what better place than in the midst of roses.

On a clear day you can even see Mount Hood through an opening in the trees. No doubt they kept that gap on purpose.

The park itself is a wonder of natural beauty with the tall timbers and various features.

The nearby Japanese gardens are exquisite. The zoo is a short distance away.

But on this visit we focused on the rose garden because the roses are in their prime now.

My daughter and dog Ani led the way onto the “Queen’s Walk.”

And to the fountain.

It’s the oldest and largest public rose garden in the United States with more than 10,000 rose bushes. New rose varieties are tested at this International Rose Test Garden where some 650 varieties are displayed. Entry is free and dogs are welcome on leash.

So many roses. So many pictures to take. And to choose from for sharing. Here without comment are a few of my favorites. I can’t tell you the varieties. I only observed and photographed what caught my eye.

And so we depart. Back into the woods. Down the hill. Ready to return another day.

Promise of Yesteryear

Janet Fisher

One December morning last year I woke to this and snapped a picture which I posted on Facebook with a short comment, “Sunrise! New day. New hope. New promise.”

On this morning’s gray, rainy morning I looked back with some yearning for such a day.

The year in between has had its ups and downs. I took a wonderful trip to Ireland and Hallstatt, Austria, to check on scenes for my latest book–Ireland because it’s the center of the story, Hallstatt because that’s where the Celts were at the time of this dip into the ancient world of the setting. Another highlight came when my daughter Christiane got a job in Portland, Oregon, and she and Aspen moved back west after ten years in Kansas. One more highlight was an excellent writers conference in Seattle where I pitched that latest book, and those pitches went well.

I’ve always been a glass-half-full kind of person. And I need to move forward embracing hope. Without a new novel in the works right now I’m working on a companion book for the series which is related to my newest Irish story. I had already drafted parts of this companion book, but it shifts as my focus shifts. In the last few days I’ve been going back through old travel journals of my first trip to Ireland, reliving some experiences there.

The beauty of the land in its cloak of many greens. The wonder of great stone monuments with their intriguing mysteries, like the passage tomb of Newgrange, below. [The photos below are all from my 2024 trip; I didn’t have a digital camera on the first Irish visit.]

The magic of an exquisite woodland where wind spoke between great oaks. My traipses across green fields with my ready umbrella as boiling clouds opened and let streams of sunshine through to create one of those many Irish rainbows. Stunning cliffs descending into surging waters at the Cliffs of Moher.

And the birds. Oh, the birds! Were they ravens? Or rooks? Or jackdaws? All cousins of the common crow. The latter two weren’t familiar to me. We don’t have those where I live. But whatever the bird we saw great flocks of them sweeping across the historic Hill of Tara and others hovering around the haunting Rock of Cashel where they nested in those stone niches. My daughters joined me on part of that trip and marveled with me. [This morning I spent hours online trying to determine what birds we saw, listening to sample bird calls, reading about the different behaviors, watching videos of onsite tours, and my guess is that the bird shown below outside the Rock of Cashel tower is a jackdaw. And I’m guessing the birds at Tara were rooks.]

In this companion book I want to share the journey, the joys, and the challenges of my research to offer background for the novels.

So in these gray days some streams of sun shine through and I find purpose. May the promise of yesteryear sustain me. I wish such hope and promise for you, my good readers.

A Close Hawk Encounter

Janet Fisher2 Comments

Yesterday I had a close encounter with a hawk like this female Northern Harrier.

Female Northern Harrier – Robin Loznak photo

I was taking my daily walk on a beautiful sunny afternoon, trekking uphill past the farm’s upper barn to the broad field above. As I occasionally do on the uphill climb I stopped for a breath and turned around to observe the panorama below me and to enjoy the glorious perspective that widens with each step in elevation–the forested mountain range in ranks from dark-green to blue, the verdant middle plain, the nearer skeletal oaks.

With startling suddenness the huge hawk came up behind me and swooped over my left shoulder and down the road in front, maybe three or four feet off the ground, shimmery rich-brown wings spread. Soundless. Hovered not six feet away. No sign of fear, though she had to know I was there. The moment felt long, time suspended. As I watched in awe, she made a sharp right turn and flew out over the green slope beside me, the bright-white clump of feathers on her rump clearly identifying her as a Northern Harrier. The brown wings and back suggest she was probably a female. She seemed to float above the grass, tilting this way and that, then turned again and soared downhill out of sight.

I caught my breath in wonder.

I later checked online, curious about the size of it, and learned that a Northern Harrier has a wingspan between 38 and 48 inches. And they range from 16 to 20 inches long. That’s one big bird! Not as big as an eagle, true, which may have a 6- to 8-foot wingspan, but you seldom see these grand creatures hovering right in front of you offering the full impact of their presence. Harriers are distinctive in the way they hunt low to the ground with upswept wings and are known for their aerial dances in the sky.

The place

Readers who have followed my work may recall my intrigue with the white hawks that seemed to be harbingers of good news from time to time, beginning about ten years ago with the one that swept in front of my office window, then flew low above the road as if leading my grandchild and me up the hill. Leading where, we didn’t know, but it felt quite magical. A hawk like him would appear one day when my son-in-law Robin had his camera handy, just in time to be added to pictures in my book A Place of Her Own.

Some of the Northern Harrier males that visit our property are white on the underside with the black wing tips and pale ashen backs, like the one below that Robin photographed more recently. When they fly they appear quite white. The females can be mistaken for juveniles, which are also brown on backs and wings, but females have whitish undersides with brown streaks like the one in the top photo, while juveniles have buffy undersides without the streaks. These birds were formerly called Marsh Hawks. My thanks to Robin for all these hawk photos.

Male Northern Harrier – Robin Loznak photo

The hawk that arrived in time for the book, shown below, also has the white coloring that led me to call them white hawks.

Male Northern Harrier, picture from the book – Robin Loznak photo

I hope the lovely one that came yesterday promises good news. Her presence certainly lifted me up.