Browsed by
Category: seasons

The Lusty Cherry

The Lusty Cherry

Comments 0 Comment

Frequently writing about nature and the out-of-doors means that I often notice the same things every year. I’ve learned this by now — and have become more careful not to repeat an identical observation. Such was the case today when I thought about the Kwanzan cherry trees.

So I will not call this piece “The Other Cherry,” because I already used that title. But I will say that yesterday a grove of Kwanzan cherries once again stopped me in my tracks.

The trees were waving and petaling and being their lovely selves right in front of my office. I reveled in their peak bloom (and snapped some photos) as I ran out to the post office in the mid-afternoon.

I’m not the only one who appreciated them. Suzanne texted me this morning to say she’d noticed them on a run through my work neighborhood.

Every year I have this internal debate: Which is more lovely, the ethereal Yoshino or the lusty Kwanzan? I’ll never come up with an answer.

Coatless

Coatless

Comments 0 Comment

The first time each season always feels strange, like jumping off a high dive or setting off in a tube on a fast-moving river. There is a similar lack of control. The coat will not be there if the weather takes a nasty turn. There is no turning back.

Today I took a jacket from the house but left it in the car. It was that balmy this morning, with the promise of more warmth to come. The wrap would have been superfluous. It would have been wadded up in my tote bag before I even reached the office.

So off I went, with only a sweater between me and the elements. No jacket, no coat. It wasn’t until I reached Metro that I realized I’d also left my umbrella. So now I’m coatless — and umbrella-less, too. It must be spring.

Baby Shade

Baby Shade

Comments 0 Comment

As I’ve mentioned before, spring is farther along downtown and in Crystal City than where I live. Which means that when I strolled down the tree-lined stretch of Crystal Drive that leads to my office this morning, I was not seeing winter-wan trunks without a hint of green. Instead, I was walking beneath baby shade.

Baby shade comes from trees just leafing, still unsure what they’re meant to do. They are uncurling, unfurling, making themselves useful not just to the plant in general but also to the pavement below.

We on the pavement are remembering what it’s like to amble beneath a great arched umbrella of greenery: how it cools us and calms us, how it intercedes between heaven and earth.

Baby shade is wan and tentative, but it is all we have now, and it is precious in its fleetingness.

Procession of Bloom

Procession of Bloom

Comments 0 Comment

According to my favorite weather site, the cherry blossoms may last as long as 10 days this year. Though I haven’t checked on the Tidal Basin flowers since Monday evening, I can tell by the hordes on Metro that hanami is still in full force.

As the blooming season moves out to my neighborhood (always a few days later than the city trees), my ho-hum daily drives are taking on a hanami quality of their own. I’m slowing down, seeking out the streets I know from years past.

There are the Bradford pears in Franklin Farm, the redbuds on Folkstone, the Kwanzan cherry in my own front yard. All of this, if the weather cooperates, in a slow steady procession through dogwoods and azaleas — a riot of bloom that takes us from the gray trunks of winter all the way to the vivid fuchsias and scarlets of  mid-May.

Hanami

Hanami

Comments 0 Comment

I just happened upon the ranger talk at the Tidal Basin last evening at 6 p.m. I’d decided to see the cherry blossoms after work, and then, impulsively, walked counterclockwise instead of the other way around. And there, at the FDR Memorial, was a green-suited ranger with a Smokey the Bear hat.

He was speaking of L’Enfant when I arrived, but went on from there to cover the flood of 1881, the creation of the Tidal Basin and the ugly construction-site look of the land around it at the turn of the 19th century. He described National Geographic writer Eliza Scidmore’s 24-year campaign to plant Japanese cherry trees around the basin, a quest that finally took root, so to speak, when President Taft’s wife, Helen, became interested in the project. (The lantern above commemorates the spot where Taft planted one of the first cherry trees.)

There are other twists and turns to this story and how cherry trees came to dominate the landscape around the Washington and Lincoln monuments. But my favorite part of the talk came when the ranger talked about the Japanese custom of hanami or “flower viewing” of the sakura or cherry blossoms.

The sakura represents a “short life, well-lived,” the ranger said, and for that reason was revered by both samurai warriors and kamikaze pilots. Hanami celebrates the fleetingness of the blossoms, the beauty that is ours just for a moment — and more lovely because of it.

The Volunteer

The Volunteer

Comments 0 Comment

In so many ways, the name doesn’t fit. When I hear “volunteer,” I think of a smiling face with a hospital tray, or a badge-wearing angel at an airport information desk. There is a lot of goodness in the word, to be sure. But the word also a martial implication, young men marching off to war. How odd, then, that trees that spring up where they aren’t planted are also called volunteers.

But they are, and I can now stand amidst the branches of one — a weeping cherry that was spared at birth by our neighbors the Morrisons, the same neighbors who are more than halfway through their around-the-world cruise. Decades ago, they left the cherry alone while it spread its roots, enlarged its trunk and sent its branches down in a cascade of blossoms, larger and more fulsome every year.

The tree sits far too close to the street, is off-center, is too big for its footprint. But it has thrived, just the same. And watching it bloom this year makes me wonder at the wisdom of natural selection.

According to the itinerary they left behind, the Morrisons recently left Sri Lanka for Indian ports. These will be followed by a long string of sea days, then Jordan and the Suez Canal. The Morrisons aren’t in Virginia to see the small pink flowers bud from the hanging stems. For this, they will need a stand-in — and  I volunteer. 

Brave Buds

Brave Buds

Comments 0 Comment

Before the leaf and flower, trees take on a vague pink sheen. On closer inspection the sheen turns out to be clusters of budding branches. But from afar, when caught in a spurt of sunshine on a breezy day, they seem to gleam with a light pink halo.

It’s the maples, the brave ones, showing us the way. It’s not that hard, they say. It’s a matter of faith, of reaching to your highest branches, letting the life-force flow.

On a walk this weekend I snapped photos of trees and shrubs in various states of bloom. I thought about anticipation, potential, that which is worth waiting for. Surely there are spring shots lovelier than these.

But to me these speak to the heart of the season, that from the gray trunks of winter come a riot of bloom. That summer greens would never happen without these brave buds.

Jeepers, Peepers!

Jeepers, Peepers!

Comments 0 Comment

In the woods and wetlands of Fairfax County, the spring peepers are singing. I hadn’t expected them yet, but the minute I heard their music I felt like I’d been listening for them all along.

“It’s spring, it’s spring,” I imagine they’re saying, though it’s probably more like, “I’m hungry, I’m hungry. What do you have to do around here to get some flies!”

One year I first heard them on St. Patty’s Day, so they are at least a few days earlier than that year. But what matters most is that they’re here, and being hearty fellows they will weather the cooler weather that’s blowing in here tomorrow.

If the color of spring is yellow and the scent of spring is hyacinth, the soundtrack of spring is what I heard last night: the music of tiny frogs welcoming the season.

(Look closely; there must be some peepers in there somewhere!) 

Restorative

Restorative

Comments 0 Comment

I had One of Those Days. Suspicious activity detected on a work computer so I spent hours reconfiguring passwords. A long, frustrating task with nothing to show for it at the end but (I hope) greater security, which I too often assume is mine anyway (though not as much as I used to).

Once home, though, there was a restorative: seeing the world from a dog’s perspective. Time to smell the roses, or rather, sniff them. And not roses, not yet, but buttercups and snowdrops, which I spied on our brief stroll.

I took some deep breaths, looked up at the sky, caught the flash of a sun-lit contrail.

It was 7 p.m. and still light enough to take a walk outside. All’s right with the world.

Standing Water

Standing Water

Comments 0 Comment

After the record-breaking rain totals of 2018, the D.C. area seems poised to break more records for 2019. Lately there’s been some form of precipitation every weekend and most weekdays. It rains and mists, snows and sleets.

And so, there’s a lot of water in the yard. It pools in the hollows, saturates the grass, clings to the leaves and sticks and other flotsam jiggled from the aging oaks by storms and downpours.

It makes the yard most unsightly. But if you look hard enough and long enough, you can see a blue sky reflected in the standing water.

I hope it is the harbinger of good things to come.