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Category: seasons

Finally Summer

Finally Summer

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Summer arrived yesterday, or maybe it was the day before. It rolled in on clouds of humidity and the sound of frogs croaking in the night. It shimmered in the still afternoon and whispered in the breeze that stirred the new leaves.

Summer always seems to me the normal season, the way things ought to be always. So … things are back to normal now. And they will be for another few months or so.

I wouldn’t want to live where it was always summer.

But I’m glad it finally is summer again.

 

Begin the Day

Begin the Day

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May is unfolding slowly here, with cool nights and days that stay firmly in the 70s. I think that’s about to change soon, so I’m enjoying this cool morning and the bird song I hear as I write this post.

The trees have fully leafed out and the annuals I’ve planted are taking root. In the front yard, the breakout roses have snuck up on me again. (They’re not as full and healthy as the roses here … I wish … but given the shade in which they struggle, at least they’re still alive.) In fact, all is green and growing here, especially the weeds!

Inside, clocks are ticking, Copper is napping (after our walk at 7) and I’m grabbing a few quiet moments of what promises to be a busy one.

Thinking of all the possibilities …

It’s a good way to begin the day.

Welcoming May

Welcoming May

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I’m one day late in welcoming May, my favorite month. It helps that both my sister and I were born in it (though none of my girls, they’re summer/fall babies). It helps that the weather is warming and the summer is coming. And there’s a certain horse race in Kentucky that can usually be counted on to add some pizazz to the month.

When I was a kid, May also meant the end of school. It was almost more excitement than my little heart could take, a birthday and school’s out in one terrific explosion of excitement.

I’m far removed from those rhythms now, but I like to remember them. They remind me of an earlier, slower, more rounded time, when life flowed at a pace resembling sanity.

Now here it is May again … and so soon. But it’s always good to welcome it.

This is dedicated …

This is dedicated …

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A spring walk yesterday took me from ugh-it’s-a-Monday to I’m-glad-to-be-alive.

It was about 65 degrees with a brilliant blue sky and leaves that seemed to have their own power source, so brilliant was the green they were flashing.

Their power source, of course, was the sun, which was flooding the day with light and warmth. My winter-weary bones were soaking it up (through properly applied sunscreen, of course) and my work-weary mind was jetting off in several directions: how beauty sustains, how I wished everyone I love could be in my skin experiencing it with me.

Especially those no longer on this side of the ground, I wanted them to have it, too, to be back long enough to feel warmth on their skin and see a redbud tree in flower. So this walk, like the song says … was dedicated to the ones I love.

Mellow Mueller

Mellow Mueller

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Everyone was talking about it, reading it and tweeting about it, but by the time the Mueller Report finally came out yesterday, I just felt fatigued about it. I imagine many of us did.

I perked up a bit this morning, when the banner-headlined Washington Post landed in my driveway. (As is typical for a newspaper reader, I take my news a day old and more digested, thank you very much.) But on the whole, I’ve been ignoring the media feeding frenzy.

Maybe it’s because I’m distracted by the new leaves on the Rose of Sharon bush, or the carpet of petals underneath the Kwanzan cherry.

Or maybe it’s because I’ve been preoccupied with tech problems lately (email issues, Skype for Business issues, RAM issues, even voice recorder issues!).

But whatever has made me mellow about Mueller, I’m grateful for it.

The Lusty Cherry

The Lusty Cherry

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.