Singing Malaika in the Serengeti

I have been very fortunate to travel to Africa three times. In October 2014 (my second trip), we visited South Africa as part of a garden tour hosted by Donna Dawson. Apart from visiting Table Mountain and Kirstenbosch National Botanic Garden and wonderful gardens like Harold Porter National Botanical Gardens, Babylonstoren and Makaranga, we took part in a safari at the Southern Camp of Kapama Private Game Reserve. I wrote about that lovely adventure in three blogs starting here.

Kapama was adjacent to Kruger National Park and even though our time there was short (2 days), we saw an abundance of wild animals, including a black-maned lion who roused himself from sleep while we sat in our vehicle and watched.

In 2016 (my third trip), we attended a wedding at Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Laikipia, north Kenya, followed by a few days on safari at a tented camp called Kicheche in Ol Pejeta Conservancy, below.

Our Kicheche guide Albert was very skilled, and I wrote a 3-part blog on our wonderful safaris at Kicheche starting here.

The most thrilling experience there – in fact one of my most exciting experiences anywhere – was watching two cheetah brothers mark territory, play and wash each other. Have a look at my YouTube video, below.

Kicheche was rustic (if a bush tent with a bathroom can be called rustic). Lewa Conservancy was different, in that it was also a festive social occasion, shared with friends from Canada and Kenya.  Here I am with Lewa’s wonderful Maasai lodge manager, Karmushu.

But it was also much more luxurious.  Thus, our beautiful Lewa Wilderness accommodation was set on the edge of a hillside leading down into a valley, with a little terrace and chairs outside. That proximity to the wild made our first night there very memorable.

Though we had spent a few days acclimatizing in the Nairobi suburb of Karen (including touring ‘Out of Africa’ writer Karen Blixen’s house) prior to flying into Lewa Downs on their own air strip….

…..we were very ready to sleep, especially given the welcoming four-poster beds in our little house, below. So I was in a dead sleep in the middle of the night when I awoke to a strange sound, like shells sliding slowly along a hard surface, very nearby. It was as if…. as if….. a large animal was dragging its paws as it settled itself onto the still warm polished concrete patio outside our shutters! “Doug!” I whispered. “There’s something outside!”  I had to call a little louder to wake him up. “Doug, listen! I think it could be… I think it’s… a lion!”  Then came the sounds again.  Lions have retractable claws on their paws! How sturdy were those windows? Had we shut the door tight?  “I’m getting into your bed,” I whispered, lifting the mosquito netting, putting my bare feet on the floor and scooting under his netting. We lay there, listening. Then there came a huge heaving sigh, just feet away “Uuuuahhhhahh.”  It had to be a lion!  We stayed awake for a long time listening, but eventually fell asleep again. By morning when we peeked out our shutters, there was no sign of our guest. We were excited to share the news with our friends under the pergola at breakfast, but before we could say anything, someone blurted out, “Hey! Did you guys see the lion this morning?”

Between wedding events, we were able to enjoy a few short game drives at Lewa.

At 62,000 acres (250 km2), it was established as a conservancy in 1995 on the site of a cattle ranch that had been owned by the Craig/Douglas family from 1922. Before becoming a conservancy, the family had established the Ngare Sergoi Rhino Sanctuary to protect endangered black rhinos from poaching for their horns. It is estimated that Kenya’s black rhino population had declined from 20,000 in the mid-1970s to just a few hundred by 1986, when the sanctuary was formed by the Craigs and Mrs. Anna Merz.  We watched a mother black rhino and her calf being walked by rangers….

….. who waited while the rhinos grazed.

We saw some of Lewa’s estimated 400 migratory elephants as they came close to our vehicle…..

….. and dispersed to eat acacia foliage nearby.

We watched a critically-endangered Grévy’s zebra (Equus grevyi) – the largest living wild equid – feeding on grasses.

There were beautiful reticulated giraffes (Giraffa camelopardalis reticulata) browsing on thorn trees. The population of reticulated giraffes in east Africa has declined by half in the past 30 years from 36,000 to around 15,000, leading in 2018 to their ‘endangered’ designation by the IUCN. With wildlife conservancies like Lewa offering protection, their numbers are now starting to rebound.

The giraffe neck is one of nature’s miracles.  Giraffes are the tallest land mammals extant. The long neck was originally thought to have evolved in order for giraffes to compete successfully in browsing on high trees, i.e. the “competing browsers” hypothesis. But since giraffes feed during the dry season on low trees with their necks bent, as in the above photo, that theory has been challenged in favour of the “necks-for-sex” hypothesis.  Evidently, the longest, strongest necks on males — used in their ‘necking’ form of fights — help  eliminate romantic competition and therefore attract female mates.

Both hypotheses are given credence today. And whatever the case, the reticulated giraffe is a beautiful animal….

….. with a very sweet face.

I was fascinated by this video of Lewa staff working to remove a metal ring from a giraffe’s leg.

I’ve always been interested in nature’s evolutionary version of a “harem”, as with impalas, Kenya’s most common antelope species. Below we see a herd of female impalas and their dominant male.

There were vervet monkeys at Lewa, too.

The photo below shows a monkey walking the railing at Lewa Wilderness Lodge’s outdoor dining pergola, with the expanse of the beautiful conservancy behind it.

Our game drive wound around a promontory rising out of the savannah.

We saw lots of interesting birds at Lewa as well, including the beautiful superb starling, below.

The blue-naped mousebird had the familiar tuft of our male blue jays and cardinals.

Near Lewa’s abundant farm beds, there were garden areas with flowering aloes where the Hunter’s sunbird was nectaring, below.

This beautiful tapestry defines “garden” at Lewa….

And this.

I had a special tour of the Lewa farm by Will Craig. There were bananas, mangoes, papayas, citrus, pomegranates and all types of vegetables growing in rows.

Fragrant blackthorn trees (Senegalia mellifera) were in flower and alive with honey bees.

******

But where’s the music here? Given that this is the 20th blog in #mysongscapes of winter 2020, we can’t just be gallivanting around African savannahs looking at elephants!

Well, that’s where my first trip to Africa comes in, way back in 2007. As a 30th anniversary gift to ourselves, we signed up for a safari to several prominent game parks in Kenya and Tanzania, including Amboseli, Ngorongoro Crater, Maasai Mara, Tarangire and the Serengeti.  It was an opportunity to be close to wild animals, like the elderly lion below taking a few moments of shade beside a safari vehicle in Ngorongoro Crater. It is also my very favourite travel experience.

Now I’m going to set the scene. We’re in the majestic Serengeti. Savannah grasses as far as the eye can see. The name “Serengeti” derives from a word used by the Maasai to describe the area, siringet.  It means “the place where the land runs on forever”

It’s ‘sundowners’ time, i.e. cocktail hour…. and our safari group has been served drinks by our wonderful guides, who hail from tribes in both Kenya and Tanzania, which is where the Serengeti is located. (I was given this small photo of Doug and me on the occasion.)

I needed my glass of wine that day, for I had resolved to sing a little song on the Serengeti. I do love to sing. Not on stage, but at family sing-alongs at the cottage on summer nights; helping to lead the carols and songs at our annual Christmas skating party; at the occasional industry karaoke party; and… loudly… in the shower. The song I had in mind was one I’d heard as a young teen in Vancouver, when my mom took me to see Harry Belafonte and his special guest singer from South Africa, Miriam Makeba. I think it was 1960, Miriam would have been 27 years old. I was transfixed by this young woman who could emanate clicks from somewhere deep in her throat, in the manner of the Xsoha language of her home country. One of the songs she sang was The Click Song.  Over the decades, Miriam Makeba would become known as ‘Mama Africa’. Most of all, I loved a song that Belafonte and Makeba sang together in Swahili – the language of Kenya and Tanzania – called ‘Malaika’, or ‘My Angel’ in English. Written by Adam Salim in 1945, it told of a young man who was sad because he didn’t have enough money for the dowry to marry his sweetheart.  It appeared a few years later on an album I bought, below.

Over the years, I played the album and sang the song over and over, until I knew the words by heart.   So on that occasion in 2007, when I’d had a few glasses of wine to give me courage, I left our group and walked over to where our guides were standing, waiting for us to finish.  “I have a song to sing to you,” I said. They laughed. “Okay!” Then I proceeded to sing all three verses of Malaika. When I finished, they burst into applause. “Mama Africa!” they cried. I was so happy (and relieved) and I sang it again the next night for our friends as we travelled in our safari van under the moonlight from a barbecue dinner on the savannah.   I don’t have a recording of that cocktail recital (thank goodness), but I do have a video I made featuring my own photos of our 2007 safari with Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba singing ‘Malaika’ as soundtrack.

*******

MALAIKA (Adam Salim 1945, sung by Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba)

Malaika
Nakupenda malaika
Malaika
Nakupenda malaika

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Ningekuoa mali we
Ningekuoa dada
Nashindwa na mali sina we
Ningekuoa malaika
Nashindwa na mali sina we
Ningekuoa malaika
Pesa
Zasumbua roho yangu
Pesa
Zasumbua roho yangu
Nami nifanyeje, kijana mwenzio
Nashindwa na mali sina we
Ningekuoa malaika
Nashindwa na mali sina we
Ningekuoa malaika
Kidege
Hukuwaza kidege
Kidege
Hukuwaza kidege
Nami nifanyeje, kijana mwenzio
Nashindwa na mali sina, we
Ningekuoa malaika
Nashindwa na mali sina, we
Ningekuoa malaika 
**********

This is the 20th blog in #mysongscapes series of winter 2020 that combine music I love with my photography. If you enjoyed reading it, have a look at the others.  And please leave a comment if you enjoyed any of them.

  1. Joni Mitchell’s ‘Night in the City’;
  2. Paul Simon’s ‘Kodachrome’ and my life in photography;
  3. Vietnam and Songs of Protest;
  4. Galway Bay and memories of my grandfather and Ireland;
  5. Simon and Garfunkel’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme;
  6. The John Denver lullaby I sang to my first grandchild, Today While the Blossoms Still Cling to the Vine.
  7. Gordon Lightfoot for a Snow Day
  8. Madame George by Van Morrison – my favourite song in the world
  9. Brown Eyed Girl(s) – Van Morrison’s classic and my black-eyed susans
  10. Raindrops – on flowers and in my gardens
  11. Miss Rumphius and the Lupines
  12. Bring me Little Water – on water in the garden
  13. Amsterdam… Spring Sunshine – a Dutch travelogue and a brilliant Broadway play
  14. Both Sides Now – a reflection on clouds and Joni Mitchell
  15. Crimson & Clover and Other Legumes – a love letter to the pea family, Fabaceae
  16. Mexico – James Taylor serenades in my travelogue of a decade of trips to Mexico
  17. Crystal Blue Persuasion – blue flowers in the garden
  18. My Bonny – remembering the late Laura Smith (and my dad)
  19. Up on the Roof – a Carole King love-in and a lot of green roofs

Up on the Roof

I adore Carole King. And I admit that I saw ‘Beautiful: The Carole King Musical’ three times: twice on Broadway (2014, 2015) and once in Toronto (2017). My favourite versions were the two that featured Canadian actor Chilina Kennedy, below, who played Carole to perfection from her teenage years in the 1960s in New York City as a young wife, mother and co-writer of hit pop songs, to the 1970s in Los Angeles and her own mega-hit album Tapestry (You’ve Got a Friend, It’s Too Late, I Feel the Earth Move, etc.)

Chilina Kennedy as Carole King in the Broadway production of ‘Beautiful – The Carole King Musical’

Like all the songs from Carole’s song-writing partnership with and marriage to Gerry Goffin (when she was 17 and he was 20), below, Carole wrote the music and Gerry penned the lyrics. From that partnership in New York’s iconic Brill Building at 1619 Broadway came songs like Take Good Care of my Baby (1961 – Bobby Vee), Will You Love me Tomorrow (1962 – The Shirelles), The Loco-Motion (1962 – Little Eva), It Might as Well Rain Until September (1962 – Carole King and Bobby Vee), Go Away Little Girl (1962 – Steve Lawrence), One Fine Day (1963 – The Chiffons), I’m Into Something Good (1964 – Herman’s Hermits), Don’t Bring Me Down (1966 – The Animals), (You Make me Feel Like) A Natural Woman (1967 – Aretha Franklin) and Pleasant Valley Sunday (1967 – The Monkees). In 1962, Carole also wrote the music for The Everly Brothers’ Crying in the Rain with a different lyricist.

Carole King and Gerry Goffin in the Brill Building, New York

One of my favourite songs from Carole King’s long career – and the one that features in this 19th #mysongscapes blog – is ‘Up on the Roof’, written in 1962 for The Drifters, below. In a Rolling Stone story about the song, Gerry Goffin recalled, “Appropriately enough, the song was born among the rat-race noise of a crowded city street.” Carole came up with the melody in the car. Gerry thought it could be about a place to be alone. Carole ventured ‘My secret place’, the song’s original title. But in time it was changed to ‘Up on the Roof’.

When Carole King was celebrated at the Kennedy Center Honours in 2015 alongside President Barack and Michelle Obama, her friend James Taylor sang the song for her. (I saw Carole and James in Seattle singing the song in May 2010 during their Troubadour Tour, one of the best concerts ever).

But perhaps my favourite version of ‘Up on the Roof ‘ is this 1982 rendition by Toronto’s a cappella singing group The Nylons. I had them on cassette tapes in the 1980s, saw them in concert and knew many of their songs off by heart, singing them at the top of my lungs around the house when my kids were little. The lead singer here with the beautiful tenor is Marc Connors; tragically, within a few years, he would die of HIV- AIDS. So for me, it’s bittersweet to watch him and the three others celebrate that special place to get away from ‘the rat-race noise’ in such a proudly Canadian way.

UP ON THE ROOF (Gerry Goffin & Carole King, 1962, Screen Gems – EMI)

When this old world starts getting me down
And people are just too much for me to face
I climb way up to the top of the stairs
And all my cares just drift right into space

On the roof, it’s peaceful as can be
And there the world below can’t bother me

Let me tell you now
When I come home feeling tired and beat
I go up where the air is fresh and sweet
I get far away from the hustling crowd
And all that rat race noise down in the street

On the roof’s the only place I know
Where you just have to wish to make it so
Let’s go up on the roof

At night the stars put on a show for free
And darling you can share it all with me
I keep on telling you

Right smack dab in the middle of town
I’ve found a paradise that’s trouble proof
So
 if this world starts getting you down
There’s room enough for two , up on the roof
Up on the roof, oh come on, baby
Everything is all right
Everything is all right
Up on the roof

******

Up on the Roof in the Garden

All right. Time to finish up my Carole King love-in and move on to the garden side of my blog. If there was a rooftop that I looked at and thought, “Ah, this is a lovely place to get away from the rat-race below,” it was Clarissa Morawski’s roof deck garden in Toronto. I photographed it for a book series I was illustrating in the mid-90s. At the time, Clarissa’s career was all about the three R’s: reduce, reuse, recycle. (Today she’s a consultant in waste minimization). And her rooftop was the perfect illustration of the three R’s. There was an actual main-sail for a sunshade; wooden crates filled with veggies and herbs; and bushel baskets filled with flowers.

While a rooftop deck with planters is a relatively conventional gardening scenario and has been around for a long time, an actual “green roof” is a bigger technological endeavor, one that North America was slow to pick up on, compared to Europe. Green roofs buffer rain water, cleanse the air and cool ambient temperatures, acting as natural air-conditioning for buildings, thus saving energy, both in winter and summer. They’re also beautiful and bring wildlife and pollinators to urban spaces. When we arrived in Amsterdam in 1999, I snapped a shot of the sedum-planted green roof spanning the departure terminal at the Schiphol Airport; at the time it was more than ten years old. The roof was recently redone by a Massachusetts firm, retrofitted with solar panels and now features a hardy succulent plant mix called “Sedum Carpet’ especially formulated for green roofs.

Later in that 1999 trip to the Netherlands, we visited a town called Alphen aan den Rijn to see an experimental Dutch model community called Ecolonia. The buildings utilized sustainable construction material; green roof technology was used, below; wetlands were restored and made a focus and a central storm retention pond became a feature. Conceived by Lucien Kroll of Belgium, it was similar in concept to the New Urbanism movement in North America.

There’s a green roof in my neighbourhood in Toronto, atop the workshop of the house owner and adjacent to the art studio used by his wife. Designed by architect David Lieberman, I photographed it in 1998 as it was being installed by my friend Terry McGlade, then managing his own green roof company called Gardens in the Sky, now part of Flynn Canada. A few years later, I came back and nervously climbed up the ladder so I could stand on the roof and photograph the now-mature plants and the resident cat. Then I wrote and illustrated a story on the roof for the magazine Gardening Life, below. The photos after that show the steps in its creation (though there are now modular components that take the place of the Styrofoam).

The roof was covered with a waterproof, single-ply EPDM membrane surrounded by a 30 cm (12 inch) high metal parapet. The perforated drainage tube would be laid around the perimeter and connected on overflow pipe.  Note that the white things on the outer wall that look like portholes are actually vents leading out from an airspace between the roof and the insulated ceiling of the workshop below, designed to keep the soil frozen in winter and the plants in dormancy.

Then an 8-10 cm (3-4 inch) layer of Styrofoam pellets was distributed, covered by filter cloth to prevent plant roots and soil from entering the drainage area.

Next, a 15-23 cm (6-9 inch) layer of lightweight, compost-rich, soilless mix was spread on and watered thoroughly.

Then a palette of low-maintence hardy perennials was planted: sedums, perennial geraniums, strawberries, phlox, thyme, calamagrostis, liatris, echinacea. Hostas were planted on the shady east side.

A few years later, I returned to check out the plants. The family cat eyed me with interest.  Everything did well except the echinacea, which seems to prefer sandier soil.

From a little flagstone path on the rooftop, I could look down on the ground-level deck below. I have learned that this rooftop had to be redone in the past year or so, which means it had a 20-year life. Presumably newer technologies would have extended that lifetime.

The sloping green roof atop the Dembroski Centre for Horticulture at the Toronto Botanical Garden was planted in 2005 by Terry McGlade. At slightly more than 2400 square feet, it was a critical factor in the TBG gaining a Silver LEED designation for the building itself. The plants used on the initial roof planting are a combination of drought-tolerant sedum species: Sedum album, S. sexangulare, S. spurium and S. kamtschaticum.

The flat part of the TBG’s green roof features native wildflowers such as penstemons, coreopsis and other meadow-like, drought-tolerant perennials.

The TBG also has a small straw-bale building with a sloping green roof.

It features prairie grasses, coreopsis (C. lanceolata), columbines (Aquilegia canadensis), hairy penstemon (P. hirsutus) and…

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…. the occasional nesting goose.

I photographed the 3rd floor rooftop herb garden of the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel in Vancouver back in 2010 for a story I was proposing on urban beekeeping.

I loved walking through the garden, which evidently saved the kitchen thousands of dollars each year in herb costs.

I was able to sample those herbs in a honey-themed lunch served to me by the Fairmont.

But my real interest in the Fairmont’s green roof was the apiary set in a miniature meadow overlooking Vancouver’s Coal Harbour. At the time, it featured beautiful hives hand-painted by students at Emily Carr College of Art. Alas, the meadow also harboured ground nests of yellow-jacket wasps that frightened guests (unlike the honey bees) so the following year the meadow was removed and replaced with a conventional garden that was not nearly so appealing. Note the Vancouver Convention Centre across the street; I’ll get to that green roof in a minute.

I did a big photo shoot of Graeme Evans, the hotel’s beekeeper, who at the time was also Head of Housekeeping. He had proposed the apiary to the Fairmont chain and was a natural with the bees, never wearing protective gear as he checked the frames or harvested honey.

The resulting story, which also featured profiles of beekeepers in Chicago and Atlanta, was published in a 2012 edition of Organic Gardening magazine. Alas, like a lot of other gardening magazines, it is no longer around. (Yes, that’s a queen bee surrounded by her worker nurse bees in my photo of a brood frame from the hives at the hotel.)

Back to the convention centre. At the time, this was the largest green roof in North America, at 6 acres (2.4 hectares). It was planted with 400,000 native British Columbia plants from 25 species.  To achieve a west coast meadow look, there were 40,000 bulbs, including nodding onion (Allium cernuum) and camas (Camassia quamash) plus 128 kilograms of flower and grass seed, including Idaho fescue (Festuca idahoensis), red fescue (F. rubra) and sheep fescue (F. vulgaris). As well, 80,000 sedums were planted on the hottest part of the roof on the west side. It has become a haven for nesting birds and a rich foraging site for pollinator insects.

The Hugh Garner Housing Cooperative green roof in Toronto was featured on a Garden Bloggers’ Fling tour in 2015. The South Roof, then 5 years old, featured a combination of raised planter boxes and actual green roof technology beds to produce a beautiful space for residents, with pergolas and community garden space.

There was a photo display showing the engineering processes used to build the roof. The specifications from the project’s web page include a “Cold Applied Rubber roofing membrane with ILD leak detection system; polyethylene sheet root barrier….

…. 4″ extruded polystyrene rigid insulation; 2″ Pontarolo storm water reservoir; filter cloth; and ballast consisting of reused concrete pavers, wood decks, planters and planting beds (ranging from 6″ – 18″ in depth).”

Interestingly, the architect on the Hugh Garner project was Monica Kuhn, a founding member of Toronto’s Rooftop Gardens Resource Group. I photographed her own little Cabbagetown rooftop way back in the mid-90s for my newspaper column. I remember that she cautioned me to be careful because she didn’t have her railings up yet!

I wrote a blog a few years ago about Siri Luckow’s lovely garden in Toronto. Her garage features a green roof and while touring the garden with fellow bloggers, we climbed a ladder, as my friend Sara Katz is doing below…..

…. to photograph the textural meadow that grows on the roof.

During that bloggers’ fling, we also toured gardens on Ward’s Island in Toronto and I liked the effort put into the miniature green roof on this toolshed.

In 2017, a sodden morning of rain didn’t deter these media folks previewing the Toronto Botanical Garden’s garden tour route from trying to get a better view of the green roof over a garage at one of the gardens.

I found my telephoto lens worked well to take a closer look. I see lots of bearded irises up there!

In 2018, during a symposium in Chicago with my Garden Communicators (Gardencomm) group in Chicago, I was privileged to visit a 25,000-square-foot rooftop farm at McCormick Place West,  run by the Windy City Harvest program out of Chicago Botanic Garden.

In this garden, apprenticeship graduates from the program work with Savor (the building’s food service operators) to focus on rare heirloom crop production and rooftop-appropriate varieties of vegetables, native fruits, herbs, hops and edible flowers. The rooftop farm features microgreens production, honey bee hives and vermicompost bins.

Some of the Windy City Harvest produce also goes to a local farmers’ market.

I’ll end my musings on ‘Up on the Roof’ with one of the most famous green roofs in North America – though many visitors might not guess that Chicago’s beautiful Lurie Garden and Millennium Park are actually “situated over a network of underground parking garages, pedways, and commuter electric train lines”. As the Lurie website says, “This unique engineering and location situation presents special, but manageable, plant care challenges. Visitors are often surprised by the presence of large, mature trees in Lurie Garden given its relatively shallow soil depth and construction as a rooftop garden. Horticulturalists at the garden have become highly skilled in managing plant growth and development in the challenging environment of a rooftop garden.”

I’ve blogged about the Lurie and would invite you to have a look at this fabulous urban meadow designed by Piet Oudolf.

******

This is the 19th blog in #mysongscapes series of winter 2020 that combine music I love with my photography. If you enjoyed reading it, have a look at the others.  And please leave a comment if you enjoyed any of them.

  1. Joni Mitchell’s ‘Night in the City’;
  2. Paul Simon’s ‘Kodachrome’ and my life in photography;
  3. Vietnam and Songs of Protest;
  4. Galway Bay and memories of my grandfather and Ireland;
  5. Simon and Garfunkel’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme;
  6. The John Denver lullaby I sang to my first grandchild, Today While the Blossoms Still Cling to the Vine.
  7. Gordon Lightfoot for a Snow Day
  8. Madame George by Van Morrison – my favourite song in the world
  9. Brown Eyed Girl(s) – Van Morrison’s classic and my black-eyed susans
  10. Raindrops – on flowers and in my gardens
  11. Miss Rumphius and the Lupines
  12. Bring me Little Water – on water in the garden
  13. Amsterdam… Spring Sunshine – a Dutch travelogue and a brilliant Broadway play
  14. Both Sides Now – a reflection on clouds and Joni Mitchell
  15. Crimson & Clover and Other Legumes – a love letter to the pea family, Fabaceae
  16. Mexico – James Taylor serenades in my travelogue of a decade of trips to Mexico
  17. Crystal Blue Persuasion – blue flowers in the garden
  18. My Bonny – remembering the late Laura Smith (and my dad)

My Bonny – Remembering Laura Smith

Today’s blog, the 18th in the #mysongscapes series of winter 2020, honours  East Coast singer Laura Smith and her beautiful rendition of a traditional song that was part of my own childhood. Laura died of cancer yesterday in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia. I offer this in her memory, and in memory of my dad.

When I was a little girl, my father sang the traditional Scottish version of this song to me. Maybe it was a lullaby; maybe it was just one of the many songs he sang or whistled around the house. (I’m a whistler, too, and I have a whistling son, which makes me inordinately happy.)  “My bonnie lies over the ocean, my bonnie lies over the sea, my bonnie lies over the ocean, oh bring back my bonnie to me.” My little sister’s name is Bonnie, so the song got lots of play in our house over the years.  My father died in 1995, not long after the photo of us, below, was taken. Coincidentally, that was the year that Laura Smith released her award-winning album B’Tween the Earth and My Soul.

Laura’s version on that album was moody and even a little haunting.  She called it ‘My Bonny’ and it hinted at the sad end of a love affair and her own determination to move on.  But it also seemed to celebrate the wild east coast… “someone’s got a kite on the wind…”.  Although I saw Laura Smith in Toronto acting in a play, I never saw her perform this song.  But we have my friend Duke Lang’s (paganmaestro) beautiful video version with evocative images illustrating her unique voice. Here is the late Laura Smith singing ‘My Bonny’.

MY BONNY (Laura Smith, 1995 from the album B’Tween the Earth and My Soul)

My bonny lies over the ocean
My bonny lies over the sea
My bonny lies over the ocean
Bring back my bonny to me 

The leaves haven’t even started fallin’
Already there’s such a chill in the air
Someone’s got a kite on the wind, maiden calling
Well I’ve got a tramp’s whisker that tells me you still care

So bring back, bring back
Ah bring back my bonny to me
Yeah, bring back, bring back
Ah bring back my bonny to me

Soon there’ll be no difference between the land and the water
I can walk on the ice to places I’ve never been
When I get as far as I can go, oh I’m gonna turn
And throw my cares over my shoulder
Along with your memory
I’ll just let it all float down the Gulf Stream

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My bonny lies over the ocean
Come on bring back, bring back my bonny to me

Yeah, bring back, bring back
Ah bring back my bonny to me
Yeah, bring back, bring back
Ah bring back my bonny
Bring back my bonny, yeah
Bring back my bonny to me 

********

This is the 18th blog in #mysongscapes series of winter 2020 that combine music I love with my photography. If you enjoyed reading it, have a look at the others.  And please leave a comment if you enjoyed any of them.

  1. Joni Mitchell’s ‘Night in the City’;
  2. Paul Simon’s ‘Kodachrome’ and my life in photography;
  3. Vietnam and Songs of Protest;
  4. Galway Bay and memories of my grandfather and Ireland;
  5. Simon and Garfunkel’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme;
  6. The John Denver lullaby I sang to my first grandchild, Today While the Blossoms Still Cling to the Vine.
  7. Gordon Lightfoot for a Snow Day
  8. Madame George by Van Morrison – my favourite song in the world
  9. Brown Eyed Girl(s) – Van Morrison’s classic and my black-eyed susans
  10. Raindrops – on flowers and in my gardens
  11. Miss Rumphius and the Lupines
  12. Bring me Little Water – on water in the garden
  13. Amsterdam… Spring Sunshine
  14. Both Sides Now – a reflection on clouds and Joni Mitchell
  15. Crimson & Clover and Other Legumes – a love letter to the pea family, Fabaceae
  16. Mexico – James Taylor serenades in my travelogue of a decade of trips to Mexico
  17. Crystal Blue Persuasion – a psychedelic hymn that lets me celebrate blue flowers in the garden

Mexico

I adore Mexico. Counting my honeymoon in Mexico City and Puerto Vallarta in the dark ages (1977), we’ve visited Zihuatanejo, Sayulita, Manzanillo, Cozumel (including return visits to a few of those places) a dozen times. This week, we’re celebrating the milestone birthdays of three family members in Playa del Carmen, an hour from Cancun. It’s our first time here, and a way to discover a little more about a country we’ve come to love, despite all the bad press it gets. We’ve only found friendly people, beautiful beaches — like the one below, in the state of Colima, wonderful food, interesting flora, and a welcome escape from winter.

About those beaches, there are wild beaches too, like the ones on the east side of Cozumel in the state of Quintana Roo….

…. where the ocean hurls itself up through yawning holes in the limestone.

In Sayulita in the state of Jalisco, the waves pound the shore relentlessly, washing over the boulders buried in the sand.

Sometimes there are good books….

….. and sometimes not much of anything…..

…..except watching the iguanas going in and out of their hiding places in the rocks…..

….or a pelican taking off to catch fish.

We’ve stayed in some ‘interesting’ places, like this hilltop casa straight from the 1980s in Sayulita….

…. with its rather precarious hammock perch and so many steps to get down to the beach we considered it all the exercise we needed.

We’re not really “all-inclusive” people, but we’ve stayed in three. This was Casa Velas in Marina Vallarta, a neighbourhood of Puerto Vallarta….

….. and it had pet peacocks wandering around that would come right into your room, if you let them.

This was the view from Meliá Cozumel, a Spanish-owned all-inclusive on our first trip to Cozumel.

Perhaps the most dramatic stay was in a rented house overlooking Manzanillo Bay with a lovely outdoor dining table….

…. and a spectacular view of the sun rising over the bay. That beach down there, by the way….

…. is where Bo Derek made her spectacular exit from the water in the movie ‘10’.

There were trips with an ecological flavour, like this stop at a turtle sanctuary in Colima, near Manzanillo, where we escorted baby turtles to the ocean…..

….. and later learned how sea salt is harvested at Lagoon Cuyutlán….

….. and the value of the adjacent mangrove ecosystem to all kinds of wildlife.

My artist son could often be found with his sketchpad, pencil and watercolours…..

…. capturing a particularly lovely scene.

We’ve done some snorkel trips on very nice boats, like this one in Cozumel….

…. and some on simpler affairs with questionable lifejackets and all-you-can-drink tequila!

On one stay in Cozumel we were lucky to climb down a ladder from our deck right into the area where abundant fish were swimming in fairly shallow water, including slender barracudas that swam past without batting an eye.

On one occasion, my eldest son treated the family to a sunset sailing trip.

The handsome brothers posed for their mom.

And, of course ,there was a sunset!

On both the Pacific coast and in Yucatan, we love watching the sunsets, like this one in Puerto Vallarta….

…. and this one setting behind people walking on a pier in Cozumel.

When winter is still flexing its muscles at home, this is a lovely way to end the day.

And food! I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to buy a big, ripe papaya (the ones on the tree below do not qualify as ripe) at the town market and enough limes to squeeze on top for breakfast each morning. Heaven – and unlike any papaya you’ve tasted in Canada or the U.S.

When we stayed in Sayulita one year, the hotel’s banana plant was laden with fruit.

No Mexican vacation is complete without fresh pico de gallo, or salsa fresco. With taco chips, of course!

Coconut shrimp at Casa Mission in Cozumel was accompanied by a…..

….. mariachi trio, who sang my husband’s very favourite Spanish song. If we’ve been to Mexico a dozen times, we’ve probably heard at least a half-dozen mariachi groups sing this one.

When we stayed in Manzanillo, the accommodation came with a very accomplished cook who made us delicious crab salad….

…. and traditional sopa de tortilla (chicken tortilla soup).  Even back home in Canada, that is one of our favourite Mexican dishes.

At our hotel in Puerto Vallarta one winter, I just had to photograph these perfect huevos benedictinos!

Mexico is known for its fish, of course. A lovely picnic lunch at our place in Cozumel included this grilled grouper with rice and vegetables.
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Mexican flora?  Yes, of course! Almost any place where the ocean meets the shore is where you’ll find sea grape (Coccoloba uvifera), which is native to coastal beaches throughout the Caribbean.

On the wild east side of Cozumel, I found a perfect ‘nature’s garden’ of seaside (littoral) plants. The one nearest is sea lavender (Heliotropium gnaphalodes); the bright green one behind is seaside tansy (Borrichia frutescens).

I found native bees on the seaside tansy.

And palms are everywhere, of course.

At our rental in Manzanillo, there were pots of beautiful tropical flowers, like desert rose (Adenium obsesum)……

….. which was the perfect colour for my hair adornment!

Bougainvillea is everywhere in Mexico, and so entrancing in its rainbow of colours.

One thing we haven’t done in Mexico is shop in stores that you might find in any big city in North America. But I did love this little water garden at the mall near our hotel in Puerto Vallarta.

We first visited Puerto Vallarta on our honeymoon in 1977 and it was still a small town. Now it’s a big centre with lots of development and airplane access daily from Toronto and many other centres in the U.S. When we last visited, we enjoyed the opportunity to have lunch at a beach restaurant with my old friend….

…. landscape architect Tom Sparling, right, and his partner Tom Reynolds, left.  Like a lot of Canadians, they have made their winter home in Puerto Vallarta.

And we finally got to the Vallarta Botanical Gardens on our last visit to Mexico in 2018….

….. where we met my Facebook friend Lisa McCleery. Originally from Toronto, Lisa now lives full-time in the little town of El Tuito, near Puerto Vallarta.

The botanical garden is quite wonderful, with a wealth of tropical plants….

…. and beautifully displayed succulents.

The accessories in the garden are exquisite.

We ate a delicious lunch in the Visitors’ Center, which has a nice shop and comfy chairs…

…. overlooking the jungle.  It was a truly lovely day…. and I owe the garden a comprehensive blog.

One of the reasons we’ve spent so many winter vacations enjoying Mexico is that someone I know quite well had the very good sense to have a birthday in the last week in February.

And this week, we’re celebrating that occasion once again, as well as the milestone birthdays of two of my sons. It is a family celebration in a part of the world we’ve come to love… Playa del Carmen…. with the amazing blues of the Gulf of Mexico as it meets the Yucatan Peninsula…

and its stunning beaches and attractions.

Viva Mexico!

********

So…. #mysongscapes always require a suitable song to accompany the photos. That’s no problem for me! Not with James Taylor and his 1975 song Mexico.

MEXICO

Way down here, you need a reason to move
Feel a fool, running your stateside games
Lose your load, leave your mind behind Baby James

Oh, Mexico
It sounds so simple I just got to go
The sun’s so hot I forgot to go home
Guess I’ll have to go now

Americano got the sleepy eye
But his body’s still shaking like a live wire
Sleepy señorita with the eyes on fire

Oh, Mexico
It sounds so sweet with the sun sinking low
The moon’s so bright like to light up the night
Make everything all right

Baby’s hungry and the money’s all gone
The folks back home don’t want to talk on the phone
She gets a long letter, sends back a postcard
Times are hard

Oh, down in Mexico
I never really been so I don’t really know
Oh, Mexico
I guess I’ll have to go

Oh, Mexico
I never really been but I’d sure like to go
Oh, Mexico
I guess I’ll have to go now

Talking ’bout in Mexico
In a honky tonk down in Mexico
Oh, Mexico, Mexico, Mexico
Oh, Mexico, Mexico, Mexico
Oh, Mexico
Mexico, Mexico

******

This is the 16th blog in #mysongscapes series of winter 2020 that combine music I love with my photography. If you enjoyed reading it, have a look at the others.  And please leave a comment if you enjoyed it.

  1. Joni Mitchell’s ‘Night in the City’;
  2. Paul Simon’s ‘Kodachrome’ and my life in photography;
  3. Vietnam and Songs of Protest;
  4. Galway Bay and memories of my grandfather and Ireland;
  5. Simon and Garfunkel’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme;
  6. The John Denver lullaby I sang to my first grandchild, Today While the Blossoms Still Cling to the Vine.
  7. Gordon Lightfoot for a Snow Day
  8. Madame George by Van Morrison – my favourite song in the world
  9. Brown Eyed Girl(s) – Van Morrison’s classic and my black-eyed susans
  10. Raindrops – on flowers and in my gardens
  11. Miss Rumphius and the Lupines
  12. Bring me Little Water – on water in the garden
  13. Amsterdam… Spring Sunshine
  14. Both Sides Now – a reflection on clouds and Joni Mitchell
  15. Crimson & Clover and Other Legumes – a love letter to the pea family, Fabaceae

Crimson and Clover (and Other Legumes)

My music tastes tend towards singer-songwriters from the 1960s and 70s with heartfelt lyrics, great musicality and understandable messages. But I do have a bit of a soft spot for a few psychedelic tunes from the late 1960s. I’m thinking of the year 1968 – that’s me in the grainy 1968 shot, below. I wasn’t exactly a flower child in my workaday high heels and Carnaby Street-inspired coat, but I did know how to wield a daisy.

Do you remember this one by Tommy James & the Shondells from 1968?   I loved it. I can still remember the strobe lights pulsing on the dance floor to the words “Cri-m-m-m-m-m-son and cl-o-o-o-o-o-o-ver o-o-o-o-o-over and o-o-o-o-o-over”.  Turn your speakers up!

CRIMSON AND CLOVER (Peter Lucia, Tommy James – Sony/ATV 1968)

Ah, now I don’t hardly know her
But I think I could love her
Crimson and clover

Ah when she comes walking over
Now I’ve been waitin’ to show her
Crimson and clover over and over

Yeah, my, my such a sweet thing
I wanna do everything
What a beautiful feeling
Crimson and clover over and over

Crimson and clover over and over
Crimson and clover over and over
Crimson and clover over and over
Crimson and clover over and over

They weren’t exactly genius lyrics, were they? And such bad grammar: “I don’t hardly know her.”   Turns out the song didn’t have a lot of meaning, it was just some words that came to songwriter Tommy James. As he said in an interview with Songfacts:  “They were just two of my favorite words that came together. Actually, it was one morning as I was getting up out of bed, and it just came to me, those two words. And it sounded so poetic. I had no idea what it meant, or if it meant anything. They were just two of my favorite words”.  But there’s something about the cadence of the song and the very cool tremolo on the chorus that still sends me back to the 60s!

******

So, it’s now more than a half-century later.  I’m pretty sure when I was dancing at the Daisy nightclub or The Pink Pussycat or  Oil Can Harry’s in Vancouver in the late 1960s and early 1970s,  I couldn’t have imagined myself writing about psychedelia FIFTY YEARS LATER. But that’s what happens, apparently; one ages. Those lyrics never did mean anything to me, but “clover” means a lot. CLOVER, after all, can make its own nitrogen!

As we learn on Etymology Online, “ ‘clover’ is a plant of the genus Trifolium, widely cultivated as fodder, Middle English claver, from Old English clafreclæfre  ‘clover’, from Proto-Germanic klaibron (source also of Old Saxon kle, Middle Low German klever, Middle Dutch claver, Dutch klaver, Old High German kleo, German Klee) which is of uncertain origin”.

Hmmm. Uncertain origin. I hate it when you get through all the linguistic roots only to find that no one really knows how “clover” came to be.  Trifolium means “three leaves”, and except for the lucky four-leafed clover, that’s a good key for the clover genus. Perennial Dutch clover (Trifolium repens), which would be “claver” in the Netherlands where it is native (as well as the rest of Europe and Central Asia), has been grown as forage and fodder for centuries. It now grows throughout the world as a lawn weed. Bees love it, like this bumble bee foraging for nectar on the tiny white florets.

It is also a favourite of honey bees, and clover honey is one of the most common honeys. Interestingly, Dutch clover nectar is produced abundantly in the morning but not in the afternoon, so honey bees know when to forage.

Red clover or meadow clover (Trifolium pratense) is also native to Europe but is also found throughout the temperate world as a weed.

Alsike clover (Trifolium hybridum) usually has bi-colour pink-and-white florets. It is found in pasture seed mixes, along with grasses, as a hay crop or forage for animals, especially horses.  Despite its name, it is a true species, though it was originally believed to be a hybrid of T. repens and T. pratense.

During a visit to the wonderful Montreal Botanical Garden one June, I was impressed with a design for a bee-friendly lawn of mixed clovers, instead of a weed-free lawn with no appeal to pollinators.  (However, last March in Chile I did walk barefoot through a clover lawn with painful consequences.  Sadly, the honey bee gave her life.)

The clover that comes closest to Tommy James’s lyrics is crimson clover (Trifolium incarnatum), also called Italian clover. Native to most of Europe, it is rarely seen where I live in Canada. I found a single plant in the vegetable garden at Vancouver’s UBC Botanical Garden

There are other plants that we call clovers. White sweet clover (Melilotus albus) is a tall plant with wand-like branching. It is native to Eurasia but widely distributed throughout the world.

Apart from its use as a forage crop, it is also an excellent honey plant.

At my cottage on Lake Muskoka north of Toronto, it grows as a drought-tolerant weed in my sandy soil. I thought it looked quite fetching with hoary vervain (Verbena stricta) that I seeded in that area.

Yellow sweet clover (Melilotus officinalis) is another North American “weed” that is native to Eurasia. In Toronto, I found it mixed with red clover.

All the clovers are legumes, members of the pea family Fabaceae (formerly Leguminosae).  The trait that most legumes have in common is their ability to ‘fix’ nitrogen from the soil via various types of rhizobium bacteria that dwell within small growths on their roots called nodules. Nitrogen (N2) is the most abundant gas in earth’s atmosphere and is needed by all living things, but in its gaseous state it cannot be utilized by plants or animals. Animals absorb it in the form of NH4, ammonium or other nitrates in amino acids and proteins directly from  certain plants that they eat,  or from plant-eating animals that they eat. In plants, N2 is fixed via ‘diazotroph’ bacteria like the various types of rhizobia in legumes; many other plant families use different types of free-living soil bacteria, such as frankia (e.g. for alders), to fix nitrogen.  Blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) also fix nitrogen (e.g. for gunnera).

Fabaceae is a huge family, with some 670 temperate and tropical genera ranging from small annuals to massive trees.  Because of their efficient nitrogen fixation, many legumes are grown as crops to produce food for domestic animals or humans.

Alfalfa (Medicago sativa) is one of those legumes. In Europe it’s called ‘lucerne’ and it’s been used for grazing, hay and silage for at least two thousand years, since the Greeks and Romans.   It can also be used as a green cover crop to improve the fertility of the soil. When we were visiting my son-in-law’s Alberta farm one summer, he ‘treated’ me to a trip on an ATV to go through their fields.

This was the easy part. There were no knee-high thistles as we approached the hayfield.

I was captivated by all the alfalfa  growing in the fields.

In some places, Alsike clover was mixed in.

The alfalfa bloomed in shades of purple, lilac-blue, mauve…..

….. and white.

I saw bees and dragonflies using the flowers for forage and rest.

A VALENTINE TO FABACEAE

The rest of #mysongscapes blog is just an illustrated love letter to some favourite members of the family Fabaceae.

Bird vetch or tufted vetch (Vicia cracca) is a weedy legume that grows in all the temperate climates of the world. Here it is nitrifying the soil with Dutch clover in a weedy patch in Toronto.

But it is a superb bee plant. In five minutes, I watched honey bees, bumble bees and carpenter bees foraging on it.

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Scientists have long studied nitrogen fixation in one of my favourite little leguminous weeds, birds-foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus).  It is currently fixing nitrogen all over the edges of my meadows and garden beds at Lake Muskoka.

I wrote about lupines (Lupinus spp.) in a recent #mysongscapes blog about Miss Rumphius.  Aside from being a way to ‘make the world more beautiful’, as Miss Rumphius counselled,  they also add nitrogen to the soil.

I’ve never managed to grow purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea) in my meadows, but not for want of trying, via seed-sowing.  Have a look at that orange pollen!

I don’t grow annual sweet peas (Lathyrus odoratus), much as I would love to. They don’t fit into the way I garden – and my soil isn’t sweet enough for lime-lovers like them – but I do adore burying my nose in their blossoms.

However, even if I wanted to, I could not get rid of everlasting(!) pea (Lathyrus latifolius) that scrambles all over the plants in the meadows at my cottage. Fortunately, the bees like it. Here it is using blue flag iris (I. versicolor) as a trellis.

There’s a beautiful stand of leadplant (Amorpha canescens) in the Piet Oudolf-designed Entry Border (my blog) at the Toronto Botanical Garden (TBG). The bees are always all over it, too.

An ornamental clover called red feathers  (Trifolium rubens), below …..

…. was used by Piet Oudolf in the TBG’s Entry Border. Though it looked lovely with meadow sage and phlomis and is supposed to be hardy to USDA Zone 3, it did not seem to come back in subsequent years.

Speaking of the TBG, I’ve always loved this Kirilow’s indigo shrub (Indigofera kirilowii) that grows on the Westlake Terrace there. It turns bright yellow in autumn.

And I’m always keen to see the eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis) trees come into flower in the TBG’s Nature’s Garden….

….. where they attract all kinds of native bees. This is the unequal cellophane bee (Colletes inaequalis).

The TBG’s wisteria (Wisteria floribunda) vine is loaded with pendulous inflorescences each spring.

 Laburnum (Laburnum x watereri ‘Vossii’) produces masses of long, yellow inflorescences, giving it the common name golden chain tree.

I always look forward to the first week in June in Toronto when you can smell the night-time fragrance of the black locust trees (Robinia pseudoacacias).  Bees love them too.

And at the Mount Pleasant Cemetery where I have spent hundreds of hours over the past few decades (my blog), it is a fine June indeed when the yellowwood (Cladrastis kentukea) graces us with its long white inflorescences (something it only does every 2 or 3 years).

Various beans, peas and other legumes such as peanuts, soybeans, lentils and chickpeas are good sources of vegetable protein and the basis of vegetarian diets. There are lots of different pea varieties (Pisum sativum), of course, but I loved this dwarf type growing on the patio table at Rob Proctor and David Macke’s Denver garden (my blog).

Beans, beans, the musical fruit, the more you eat, the more nitrogen you absorb. (Haha, fooled you!) I liked seeing scarlet runner beans (Phaseolus coccineus) growing on a corn ‘trellis’ with squash underplanted (the “three sisters” in indigenous culture) at Wanuskewin Heritage Park outside Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (my blog).

Broad bean or fava bean (Vicia faba) is grown around the world, and is also excellent bee forage.

For me, chickpeas (Cicer arietinum) are the ingredient in my homemade hummus (no tahini, magic ingredients are 1 can (2 cups) of chickpeas drained, 1/2 cup of olive oil, 1/4 cup of lemon juice, 2 cloves of garlic crushed,  1/4 cup of parsley, 1 tsp. of salt, dash cayenne).  Whiz until smooth. Refrigerate. You’re welcome.

Then there are the subtropical and tropical legumes like Acacia, Senegalia and Vachellia. In Africa, acacias are a primary food of giraffes, elephants and other animals.

It kind of blows my mind that my 15-second video of ants in a whistling thorn (Vachellia drepanolobium) at Kicheche Camp Laikipia in Kenya (my 3-part safari blog) has been seen by almost 2,400 people since I posted it in 2016. This leguminous shrub and the ants that live inside the swollen thorns have developed a mutualistic relationship: security guard services in exchange for a home.

The African coral tree (Erythrina caffra) has beautiful scarlet-red blossoms.

Desert legumes like honey mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa) are also good bee plants. Its seeds are eaten by many birds and mammals. This is the cultivar ‘Maverick’.

 

Finally, I’d like to raise a glass to the legumes and their good work with this image, made at Kendall-Jackson Wines in Sonoma, California.  It shows that winemaker’s strategy for improving the fertility of soil in the vineyard with an assortment of legumes, including clovers, vetch and fava beans. A toast with crimson wine to the clovers!  Crimson and  clover, over and over and over.

********

This is the 15th blog in #mysongscapes series of winter 2020 that combine music I love with my photography. If you enjoyed reading it, have a look at the others.  And please leave a comment if you enjoyed reading any of them.

  1. Joni Mitchell’s ‘Night in the City’;
  2. Paul Simon’s ‘Kodachrome’ and my life in photography;
  3. Vietnam and Songs of Protest;
  4. Galway Bay and memories of my grandfather and Ireland;
  5. Simon and Garfunkel’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme;
  6. The John Denver lullaby I sang to my first grandchild, Today While the Blossoms Still Cling to the Vine.
  7. Gordon Lightfoot for a Snow Day
  8. Madame George by Van Morrison – my favourite song in the world
  9. Brown Eyed Girl(s) – Van Morrison’s classic and my black-eyed susans
  10. Raindrops – on flowers and in my gardens
  11. Miss Rumphius and the Lupines
  12. Bring me Little Water – on water in the garden
  13. Amsterdam… Spring Sunshine
  14. Both Sides Now – a reflection on clouds and Joni Mitchell