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Category: seasons

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.

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.