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Category: seasons

Enough

Enough

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These days I take walks whenever and wherever  I can find them. On busy days, around the block is all I have time and space for.  Yesterday was one of those days.

I pushed open the heavy glass door, slipped on my sunglasses and turned right at the Cosi Restaurant to reach the service road.

Usually it’s quiet back there but yesterday there was enough traffic to keep me on my toes, skirting puddles while steering clear of delivery trucks.

At the end of the block there’s a fitness park, which is where I snapped this photo. Many of flowering trees took a hit in last week’s frigid weather. About half of Washington’s famed cherry blossoms were nipped, the first time this has happened in the trees’ century-old history.

But this little guy survived. And seeing him there with a background of blue made me feel like it was truly spring, not just March 20.

It was a short walk. But it was enough.

The Art of Perseverance

The Art of Perseverance

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These crocus hold their heads above the snow. Don’t forget to breathe, they tell each other. Spring will soon be here.

These lavender flowers tell me all I need to know about staying the course. And their spiky green leaves are the exclamation points to this crazy season.

It’s still Sprinter, the new hybrid we’re pioneering this year. One day winter, one day spring.

The crocus have the right idea, I think. They turn perseverance into art.

Leaving DLT

Leaving DLT

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Here’s a modest proposal: Given that Daylight Savings Time now lasts from early March till early November and we have only three full  months in Standard Time, perhaps we should reconsider our nomenclature.

Maybe we should call the time we just entered — which begins with cold, bright evenings and takes us through spring, summer and fall — Standard Time.

And those other outlier weeks — we’ll call them either Winter Time or Daylight Losing Time (DLT).

I know. It’s a negative message.

But isn’t it closer to the truth?

Carpe Season

Carpe Season

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These are days of high contrast: 70 degrees and cherry blossoms one day, 30 degrees and sleet the next. Are those petals or snowflakes?

Weather like this reminds me of what I should always remember but almost never do: Enjoy what you have when you have it. So much is out of our control.

I thought of this yesterday when I took a quick stroll around the block at lunchtime. It was warm with a balmy breeze. The jacket-less turned their faces to the sun. The al fresco diners ate salads on round, wrought-iron tables. A lone Tai Chi practitioner balanced two red balls on the top of his arms, slow-mo juggling.

We all knew the forecast. No lamentations for what was to come. Just joy at what we had right that moment.

Snowdrops: A Beginning?

Snowdrops: A Beginning?

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Last evening on the way home from work I realized that I had the time and the daylight to take a walk on a Reston trail. It’s the path that I’ll call CCC (Cross County Connector; see yesterday’s post!) because the last part of it merges with my beloved Cross County Trail.

What a walk it was! The birds were singing, the sun was lowering and the flowers were blooming. Great clusters of snowdrops peeping up not from the snow (which has been scarce to nonexistent this year) but from the leaves and brown grass. 
These are wintry flowers, white and delicate, but they are further harbingers of the season. They are proof that this balminess, this lovely light, is not just a preview but maybe, just maybe, a beginning.

A Preview

A Preview

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The witch hazel is an early bird. I’ve seen it bloom when there’s snow on the ground. No surprise that it’s erupted in yellow blooms these winter-spring days.

Looking at the witch hazel, being outdoors over the weekend, with the plants stirring and the birds singing — it’s enough to bring on a bad case of spring fever. Or at least to make us ask, Is this it? Is it really spring?

Of course we have some cold, gray days ahead, but in late February one can hope.

I guess the best way to think about this unseasonable warmth is is as a preview, a glimpse of what lies ahead.

Religious imagery is not always what comes to mind first with me, but for some reason I’m thinking about the Transfiguration of Jesus, when he appeared to his apostles all radiant and glowing from within. That, too, was a preview, a taste of the beyond.

Which is all to say that a preview asks us to see and appreciate, not grasp and pin down.

Winter Bounty

Winter Bounty

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This morning as I was making tea (in the daylight, for a change), I happened to look out the window as the rising sun struck the top of the oaks and drenched them in pale light. It was a simple moment but a lovely one.

Winter helps me see more clearly. It strips away pretense, withers it and blows it away. It leaves behind only the most essential.

This is a thought I often have this time of year, but for some reason this morning it hit me how it’s in thinning, in pruning — in loss — that we realize our bounty.

It’s hard if not impossible to see the structure, the underlying architecture, when it’s covered over and plumped up. But when all is laid bare and worn down — then we can see.

Pulling for Pansies

Pulling for Pansies

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Every fall landscapers engage in the delightfully doomed act of planting pansies. False hope, I say to myself. These flowers will never make it.

And, for the last few years, I’ve been right. Cold temps and frigid winds nipped the plants, and come spring, there was nothing left but a few withered stems.

But this year the pansies are thriving. Look at these babies, resplendent in their midwinter glory.

I used to think I didn’t “deserve” spring if I hadn’t suffered through winter. Blame it on Catholicism — or on living in Chicago for a few years.

This year I consider any escape from winter a gift from the gods. I’m pulling for pansies.

Speaking of Sprinter

Speaking of Sprinter

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These days, seasons are separated not only by hours but also by miles. Yesterday’s snow squalls left no trace in my work neighborhood, but by the time I reached home it was a wintry world: snowy lawns and decks.

It’s a reminder to me of the slender margin between liquid and solid (just one degree, of course), darkness and light, goodness and evil.

Which makes me think how little separates the winner from the loser, the saint from the sinner. Though I’m not a black-and-white believer — I put my faith in those endless shades of gray — there are lines and there are divisions. And sometimes there is nothing in between.
Sprinter

Sprinter

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Not the kind that pushes off from a block and streaks down a track. The kind of sprinter I have in mind is a season strung between spring and winter, a new hybrid that moves from balmy to brisk in a matter of hours.

Yesterday on my way to work I saw yellow petals on the sidewalk. I imagined a van unloading plants for a catered event, or a landscaping truck with pale forsythias ready for bedding. Surely these petals had no local source. It was February 8, after all, and I work in a concrete jungle!

But something — hopefulness? — made me look up. And there, on top of a Crystal City wall (Crystal City is very good at walls) was a bright yellow jasmine vine spilling over the stone.

Today, a cold, raw wind is blowing, and it’s spitting snow. The jasmine vine is shivering. But no need to worry — by Sunday it will be 70 again. After all, it’s sprinter.