Raining this morning along the Columbia canal. A few drenched runners and walkers pass by laughing.
I carry my green polka dot umbrella. The canal has overflowed. No rocks can be seen in the Congaree as it furiously rushes by.
As the rain begins to let up, animals appear. A great blue heron just yards away on the bank. Two rained slicked Canadian geese just on the side of the path. A pair of wood ducks (aix sponsa) paddle out into the flood. Farther on, a pair of mallards.
I can see something with a silky swim coming across the canal. It is a small brown muskrat (ondata zibethicus)who clambers up the edge of the shore and begins munching on the varigated honey suckle growing up everywhere among the rocks. The spirit of the muskrat is to create order out of chaos.
The honeysuckle is so very fragrant and I have never seen the yellow/rose/white variety. I break off branches to take home, dip in root hormone and plant at my mailbox. As children, we pulled the stamen through the flower, releasing a drop of nectar to drop on the tongue and relish the pure sweetness. Honeysuckle is native to Japan. For the Greeks it was the flower of love, blooming all summer long while Daphnis and Cloe were together. The Chinese used it for snake bite and the Scottish draped it on barns to keep the evil spirits away from their cattle.
The rain has stopped, I notice the 12 foot sculpture by Rachel Palmer called "Welcome Home" which speaks of the three rivers, the Congaree, the Saluda and the Broad. There are seven cubes on top of each other, each displaying layer upon layer of earth, silt, rocks, sediment and even a glove, a bottle, a key, the fragments of someone's life.
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