Mount Auburn Cemetery (The Mothership)

Here's what it comes down to for me. Cambridge equals Mt. Auburn Cemetery. Yes, there are wonderful shops and restaurants, but I don't have any money to spend; I've nothing to my name but hope that this new book digs me out. My last "paycheck" came a year ago, when I handed in the last of 320 illustrations for the book. So I don't spend much time around temptations that cost anything.

But oh, the temptations that are free for the enjoying...

All I can think about when I'm in Cambridge is getting back to Mt. Auburn. Forget the fancy food and the beautiful clothes...everything I need and want is there.

The place has a surreal beauty that completely captivates me. An arch leading to a landscape such as you'd see in a dream, Elysian light streaking across the greensward. I yearn for this place in all seasons, but especially in spring and autumn.

There are plants growing here that I don't recognize, and that is delicious. Anyone?

Venerable specimens of pink dogwood. They take me back to Virginia. So nice to see them growing so tall and strong in Massachusetts.

They join the beloved plants that I do recognize. My father wrote little poems. One had the dogwood as a lady in a lace dress, holding out her arms, proffering plates of divinity. In this case, pink divinity.

My camera, set on zone focus, preferred the dogwood blossoms to the black-capped chickadee! D'oh! Frustrating, but dreamy nonetheless. Maybe I meant to focus on the flowers...

Everywhere there are robins. This, a nicely faded female. I love robin architecture. Sometimes they hold their wings so low and straight they look like they're using crutches.

Her tiny cousin, the hermit thrush, just passing through on its way north. You can tell a hermit from a long way away by the rusty tail, and its habit of raising that tail suddenly, as if it were jerked upward by a string, then letting it fall slowly. Lovely habit.

I always pat this dog's head. He doesn't seem so forlorn on a warm spring day. 

And who could, when the question marks are tickling the Viburnum odoratum, and its full vanilla-cookie scent wafts through the new leaves?

And the wooly fiddleheads are growing taller and taller?

And the geese are grazing in the goldgreen light?