It’s finally warm enough for a morning on the deck, writing, reading the paper, watching Copper in his earnest but futile campaign to catch the sleek crows that wing their way across the yard.
In the distance the sound of a small engine in the sky.
Its putter takes me right to the beach, a hot noon and a low-flying plane with an “All-You-Can-Eat Buffet” or “Free Jazz on the Pier” banner streaming behind it.
It’s Memorial Day. It’s warmer than 42 degrees. It’s finally summer.
The air is soft, the birds are singing, it’s time for the screen door.
A screen door breaks down the barrier between outside and in. It lets the air move freely between the two worlds.
Out go the dim lights, hot soups and thick socks of winter. In come the bright sun, cool salads and bare feet of summer.
This is not our screen door; it’s the screen door of my brother- and sister-in-law in Portland. We haven’t used our screen door since we got an energetic dog. Copper also sees a screen as a way to break down the barrier between outside and in — but in a more direct and less metaphorical way.
So I keep the back door open (no screen at all) and remember a time when the slap of the screen door closing meant summer and all of its freedoms.
As I write, the temperature hovers above freezing. 35 degrees on May 14!
Cold spring days are the smell of cut grass in nippy air. They are the crisp edge of morning when dawn is brisk as well as bright. They are lingering dogwood, preserved by the chill.
The seasons bump up against each other, one ready to begin and the other not ready to leave.
I know how this story ends.
The question is when.
I’m two days late on this one, but the story still needs telling. What we have here is perfection.
The azaleas are out and the dogwood still in bloom. The clematis winds its way around the lamppost. Tulips nod valiantly by the door. Forget-me-nots spread a blue cloud in the garden.
The front door is open and light pours in. May is like that. Early in the month it’s pure spring. But it opens the door to summer.
Not May Day. But a May day.
These are days that try the wardrobe. Low 40s at 6 a.m.; mid 70s at 4 p.m. Does one dress for the morning … or the afternoon?
Furthermore, is this a “glass half full or glass half empty” question? Does the optimist dress for the future and the pessimist for the present? Or does the decision have nothing to do with outlook, but only with body temperature? Do cold-natured folks dress for morning and warm-natured for afternoon?
These are questions without answers, so I decide to split the difference: A leather jacket yesterday (comfortable on the way to work, boiling on the way home) but only a suit jacket today (running to the office I was so cold).
As problems go, not a major one. Soon it will be cooler inside than out. And then there will be a different set of wardrobe decisions.
Two days of weather and it’s raining not just drops but petals.
Blossoms fall from the trees, cling to sidewalks, cars — and park benches, too.
A house I passed yesterday in the twilight caught my eye, its front lawn covered with vivid pink petals, from a Kwanzan cherry, I think. If I’d had time I would have stopped and snapped a picture.
Instead I remember this: an ordinary house, a tree branching green, a yard with pink snow.
On a walk this weekend I notice not just the pinks, purples and blues — but also the greens. Not just one but many, the trees as variegated in spring as they are in fall.
The delicate veil of the new weeping willow. The shiny darkness of the budding holly. The praying-hand buds of the tulip tree. The juvenile leaves of the red oaks, formed but not yet fully.
A ring of green around the meadow. A scarf of green tossed carelessly across the roof.
A pageant of green, freshened by rain.
It’s not green, not blue, either. It’s a brilliant white, brighter than any recent winter moon. It’s the Grass Moon, a springtime orb, arriving just as the grass is starting to grow again and the mowers are humming and before we’ve grown tired of that weekly ritual.
I learned of the Grass Moon by reading my favorite go-to weather site, the Capital Weather Gang. It will be a beautiful full moon tonight, the “Gang” told me, the Grass Moon. So I tiptoed out the front door at 9:30, trying not to rouse the dog, and stared at the moon peeking through the branches of the dogwood tree.
It was doubly framed, this moon, first by the tall oaks and then by the white blossoms of the tree. The moon shed enough light that I could make out each separate flower, could notice the details of branch and bloom, could have probably (if I’d wanted to) knelt down and counted each blade of grass.
It was a moon that brought the rest of spring into focus.
Wikimedia Commons: Fir0002/Flagstaffotos
In this season of flower and shoot, consider the redbud tree. Its bloom is not red at all, but a vivid shade of lilac. Like jewel-tone azaleas, this plant does not mess around with pale pastel. It is bold.
But it’s not the bud of the redbud I want to talk about, it’s the trunk — often gnarled, like the most venerable of the Yoshino cherries.
When I see a twisted trunk I think of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio:
On the trees are only a few gnarled apples that the pickers have rejected. … One nibbles at them and they are delicious. Into a little round place at the side
of the apple has been gathered all of its sweetness. One runs from tree to tree over the frosted ground
picking the gnarled, twisted apples and filling his pockets with them. Only the few know the sweetness of
the twisted apples.
In spring our eyes are drawn to extravagant bloom and brilliant color. But underneath are the crooked trunks, which are beautiful all year long. They are sturdy in their imperfections. They are as sweet as twisted apples.
To visit the Tidal Basin in late March or early April is to walk through a tunnel of ethereal white blossoms, to be transported into the soul of early spring. The Yoshino cherry trees never fail to transfix and amaze a winter-weary populace.
But there is another blooming cherry tree, a later arrival, whose beauty I appreciate more each year. It’s the Kwanzan, its blossoms pinker and more vivid than the Yoshino. The Kwanzan have a warmer hue and a more generous, sturdy flower. Fat-fisted, big-hearted —as awe inspiring as their cousin, maybe even more so.
I’m looking at ours right now. I didn’t understand what it was when we bought it, thought we’d purchased a Yoshino, and the first year or two was disappointed with its late, scarce bloom. But this year it has come into its own. Right now it’s wagging its head in the cool, brilliant sunshine. Look at me, it’s saying. Have you ever seen such a sight?