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Category: seasons

In from the Cold

In from the Cold

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The ferns came in 10 days ago,  the cactus mid-week, and one big pot of begonias a few nights ago. The plants that bloomed and thrived for almost six months on the deck are now huddled by the fireplace or hogging the light of the two small basement windows.

And it’s good that they are, because over the weekend came a killing frost, a hard freeze that nipped the dogwood leaves left on the tree, shriveling them overnight. The begonias
still standing on Saturday morning took a a graceful bow as the day progressed and by Sunday morning had folded and fallen.

If autumn is a gentle reminder of our own fragility, a hard freeze is mortality’s slap in the face. So, even though I’ve been expecting it, even though it’s overdue, this shift of seasons leaves me vaguely melancholy. No wonder we plan feasts for these dark hours, one day for gratitude, another to celebrate the light and our hope in its return.

Wrap Season

Wrap Season

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The rains have finally come, and I left the house with something I haven’t had in months — a jacket. True, this is a lightweight rain jacket, hardly a warm winter coat, but still it seems like the end of something — the carefree habit of walking out wearing only what I have on inside.

I thought that this morning when I hung up the jacket in my coat cubby that I haven’t used this in a while. Even last week, with morning temps in the 40s, I got by with a sweater and a warm scarf (both of which I needed to wear in the office since they keep the blasted place so cold.

But today marks a sea change; it’s the first day of the Wrap Season. (Not the “It’s a Wrap Season,” which sounds much more interesting.)

I console myself as I always do on issues of weather and climate. At least I’m not in Chicago, where the Wrap Season lasts from September through May.

Gone for the Season

Gone for the Season

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The hummingbirds are gone for the season. I had an inkling of this last weekend with their even more voracious feeding. It looked as if they were stoking up for the long journey south — and apparently they were. Something in the light has triggered their departure. They won’t return until late April.

In the last few years I’ve seen a lot of hummingbirds. The two feeders off the deck rail reel them in, and in April there were five breeds to ogle at Arizona’s Ramsay Canyon.

Watching them closely dispels some notions. Hummingbirds are pugnacious creatures, always fighting among themselves. In this way, they remind me of humans. Also in their greediness. But unlike humans they are capable of breathtaking flight, of suspension in air.

Hummingbirds make a high-pitched squeak that I thought I heard several times yesterday. But every time I looked up the feeders were empty. It must be the small peep of the robin or chickadee that I’m hearing — not the hummingbird. I’m surprised by how much I miss them.

High Midsummer

High Midsummer

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On a sultry evening I take in the world from my perch on the trampoline. Butterflies flit through the coneflowers and hummingbirds dive-bomb the nectar feeder. A long goldfinch perches near the birdbath. It is high midsummer. 

I think about how pleasant the world is when I’m in motion. Not unlike the kaleidoscope of the carousel, those old memories of going round and round and up and down. Circular and spherical. Altitude and plentitude.
A fullness, in other words. Not easily defined, but felt in the blood and the bones. 
High Latitude

High Latitude

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Woke up with the day this morning, knowing from the start it was the longest, vowing to spend as much of it as I can outside. I thought, as I was walking, of the gift of light, the extra hours of it, six hours more than the winter solstice by my rough count. Six hours more sunning and walking; six hours more to see and do and be.

“Solstice” derives from two Latin words “sol” and “sistere,” which roughly translate to “sun standing still.” And that is my wish today. That the sun stand still. That time stand still until I catch up with it.

I just read a passage from my favorite Annie Dillard, and my heart caught again on these lines: “I am here now … up here are this high latitude, out here at the farthest exploratory tip of this my present bewildering age.”

Life bewilders, age bewilders, time bewilders. But some days give us time to absorb that which bewilders. May today be one of those days.

(Sunrise on Chincoteague, April 21, 2016)

Poetry Month

Poetry Month

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Trees have budded and bowed, petals littering the grass. Their golds are green now and shade has returned to the land. Oak tree catkins drape themselves on the azaleas and maple seeds helicopter down.

Nature seems ready to burst with all this growth and all this gladness. It needs an outlet. It needs a poem. Even this one:

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Happy National Poetry Month!

Second Beginning

Second Beginning

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A pre-dawn walk today in a light rain, Cyclops-eye blazing, cap and a hood to keep the drops at bay. These early outings merge into dreamscape. Did I really don shoes and socks and walk to Fox Mill Road and back? Or was that another walk, another day?

By the time I left the house this morning the day had lightened and the rain was steadier. The pink dogwood lifted its arms gracefully on one side of the yard, and the white dogwood took my breath away. In between were ferns, azaleas and forget-me-nots. The familiarity of the spring garden.

It seemed a different day than one hour earlier. A second beginning.

A Dogwood’s Year

A Dogwood’s Year

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After an early bloom and an untimely freeze, I didn’t expect much of Spring this year. But it has surprised me. The hyacinths are wafting, the lilacs are trying (I have three blooms this year, up one from last year) and the dogwood, well, it’s something else entirely.

I remember when we would have four or five flowers on this tree. And now, it has burst into life and threatens to overcome the mailbox if there isn’t some judicious pruning.

Until there is, here’s the shaggy, unruly tree in all its gleaming,white 2017 glory.

Work of Redemption

Work of Redemption

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Trotting down the road this morning I looked to my right, at the trees just greening in the forest. Little leaves still so young, so tender. They were shining with the effort and the touch of early light.

Maybe it was the music playing in my ears at that moment, a string trio by Mendelssohn, or maybe it was the release of a work week’s tension, but I was suddenly overwhelmed by the bravery of those leaves, by the work of redemption they perform every spring.

Of course, there’s a biological explanation for what they do. I vaguely remember it from high school biology class.

But for me, the biological becomes the metaphorical, just as the walk becomes the lodestone, the anchor of a day.

Finding the Source

Finding the Source

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I’m skipping the cherry blossoms at the Tidal Basin this year, an annual ritual I haven’t missed in 10 years. This is in part because of the cold-stunted blooms this year and in part because I can’t easily walk to the show.

But cherry blossoms are everywhere. Even on my 12-minute walks around the block. And I’m not the only one who notices.

It’s not a matter of traveling to the source, but of finding the source wherever you happen to be.