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Category: seasons

Outside on Earth Day

Outside on Earth Day

It’s my first outdoor post of the season, and I’m writing it on Earth Day. The glass-topped table is perpendicular to the way it usually rests — a remnant from Easter dinner’s crowd of 20 — so I have an expansive ringside seat on the back yard.

As I type these words a glossy brown fox trots across the lawn and disappears behind the ferns. A few minutes ago I spotted a pileated woodpecker — a primeval-looking creature if ever there was one — drilling down into the stump of an old oak in search of breakfast. Hawks cry, squirrels hop, and a mama cardinal nibbles delicately at the feeder.

Before me flames an azalea that’s far too big for the garden in which it’s planted (a common failing of mine). Behind it, near the trampoline, blooms a pretty pink azalea transplanted decades ago from a friend’s house in the District. Ferns unfurl. Wood poppies pop. The lavender azalea behind the house isn’t as abundant as last year, due to some necessary pruning (we could no longer see out the kitchen window!), but it’s still striking. Did I mention it’s azalea season in my neck of the woods?

And finally, the most exciting garden news: The lilac I’ve celebrated for years has finally produced more flowers than I can count. To inhale its fragrance is to be transported.

Transported is what I am on this Earth Day. The long winter is finally over.

Cold Snap

Cold Snap

I wore a parka and gloves on yesterday’s walk, and last night the furnace whirred off and on more than it has in weeks. Our up-and-down spring is down again … or up, depending upon your preference.

The chilly spring day has one thing in its favor. It pauses the procession of bloom. Today it’s paused the Kwanzan cherry at the peak of its resplendence. It was a tall, scrawny specimen when we bought it years ago. I didn’t even know what it was at the time. A cherry tree, yes, but what kind?

I didn’t know about the gnarled trunk it would develop or its splashy pink flowers or how it would bloom later than the Yoshino. This is a tree to be reckoned with: its roots have spread halfway across the front yard, which gives the mower a bumpy ride.

But for a few days in April, the Kwanzan takes our breath away. And this year, thanks to the cold snap, maybe it will take our breath away for a few days more.

Cool Spring

Cool Spring

It’s one of those days that looks like spring but feels like winter. The Bradford pears are blooming, their white arms shivering in the breeze.

Hyacinths hesitate, wondering if it’s warm enough to venture above the soil.

The daffodils and cherry trees have made their decisions. They’ll brave the temps .. and last longer because of them.

AaaaChoo!

AaaaChoo!

Spring arrives today and with it sneezes, sniffles and coughs. It’s high pollen season here in the mid-Atlantic, and scratchy throats and itchy eyes are the result.

I try to ignore seasonal allergies, which I can do since mine are middling at their worst, but some people can’t. They’re forced to stay inside during these lovely days, especially folks in Wichita, New Orleans, Oklahoma City, Tulsa and Memphis, which were ranked the five worst cities for allergy-sufferers in the country.

Two Virginia cities ranked in the “top” (worst) ten, Richmond and Virginia Beach. The D.C. area did not, in part because rankings take into account the number of allergy docs, and we have a lot of them.

My remedy for all of this is simple: Have Kleenex, will travel.

Skipping Ahead

Skipping Ahead

The faint yellow fuzz at the top of witch hazel tree has fully sprouted. From my office window I can see the first faint signs of spring. Typically, I watch spring unfold gradually, in place here in the mid-Atlantic.

But later today I leave for a place that is really in the mid-Atlantic, as in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean — the island of Madeira. Three hundred miles off the coast of Morocco, Madeira has a temperate climate. Spring should be in full flower when we arrive Friday morning.

Here’s to spring, then, whether it unfolds gently or hits you in the face. Both ways are good.

(Wisteria in the Madeira Botanical Garden, March 2024)

Unzipped

Unzipped

We’re not quite there yet, not ready to shed jackets entirely, but at least I unzipped mine yesterday — a small but important victory.

It reminds me that although my impatient personality wants things to happen quickly, they happen slowly for a good reason. The slow fade and the gradual reveal are healthier than jumping ahead.

But tell that to the spring-starved souls who’ve had to endure a real winter for a change. We want spring and we want it now. All in good time, nature reminds us. Today, maybe I’ll get away with a sweater. A heavy one, but still.

Strange Beauty

Strange Beauty

A crisp blue sky today but I keep my eyes on the ground, on the ghostly traces of slurried salt, the feeble fist we shake against winter. Today is cold but clear, snow contained but not yet melted. It feels as if we might win this battle.

But I look closer, see the rimed crust of last week’s skirmishes, recall the slick side streets. We’re only where we are because the weather has cooperated.

What struck me on this morning’s walk was the beauty of whitened cracks in the pavement, what’s left from last week’s treated roads. The residue is most visible along the shoulders and in crevices once hidden, now outlined in white. It ought to be ugly, but is not. It reminds me of the vulnerability of the modern world, of how, despite our bluster, we fumble and we fail. And there is beauty in the failure.

More November

More November

Novemberness is not a word, but I’m making it one with this post. Why shouldn’t we turn a month into a state of being? Melville did it: “Whenever it is a damp, dreary November in my soul…”

My experience with November is not as gloomy. I’ve always liked the month, the coziness of its early darkness, its lamplit afternoons. Thanksgiving brightening it, distracting us, and at its very end, the birthdays of two people I love.

The syllable “ness” turns adjectives into nouns: goodness, sweetness, faithfulness. The “ness” of “Novemberness” turns a proper noun into a quality or condition. Novemberness is the quality of being November, and this year we have more November to enjoy it.

I speak, of course, of the feast day happening in just two days and its placement this year, which is the latest it can possibly happen, given that it happens on the fourth Thursday of the month. Merchants are decrying it — seven fewer days to shop! — and devotees of Hallmark Christmas films are ignoring it and beginning their seasonal rituals anyway.

But I’m savoring it. I’m reveling in the stillness, in the few bright leaves that still cling to branches. I’m enjoying having more of a month that is too often rushed and folded into holiday folderol. I’m celebrating Novemberness.

Acoustic Season

Acoustic Season

We come now to the acoustic season. On paths and trails, lawns and clearings, leaves pile and crisp. They gather in corners and culverts, land softly on hedges and hollies. And when I walk through them, they talk back.

They crinkle and crackle. They swish and snap. They carry in their once full-veined selves the memory of green days and insects singing.

You cannot move through them quietly. Even small squirrels make big noises when they play. Autumn leaves amplify our footfalls, reveal our passage. They keep us honest.

Catch a Falling Leaf

Catch a Falling Leaf

On a walk this afternoon I spent more time than I intended trying to photograph leaves in flight. So many of them are swirling around that it seems I should be able to capture at least one or two mid-journey.

But either the light isn’t right, or they’re eddying about frantically rather than gently floating to the earth. Just as often, I spy the perfect slow-descending leaf but by the time I pull out my camera, it’s too late.

It’s a delicate business, like capturing a single snowflake or the down of a thistle. Perhaps it’s best left to chance.