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Category: seasons

Mulching Season

Mulching Season

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I have a complicated relationship with mulch.

When we first moved here 24 years ago, I saw in mulch all the suburban ills — the false tidiness, the compulsive behavior of gardeners who seemed to have nothing better to do than spread the stuff halfway up their tree trunks.

These were days of high complaint for me. I missed the small New England village we’d just left. A place where houses sat right on the side of small lanes — and mulching, when it did occur, was done discretely out back.

Flash forward almost a quarter of a century. The small town idyll mourned and missed but ultimately abandoned. And the years that passed have not been kind to our yard. It’s obvious we have used no lawn service, no chemicals, either — unless you count lime.

Mulch covers a multitude of sins. Also, of course, it keeps weeds at bay.

Now I walk past yards aromatic with the stuff, gardens darkened with the best, shredded kind. And I wish not for a mulch-free yard, just the opposite. I wish for a yard already mulched. For mulch that doesn’t lie in bags in the driveway, for mulch that’s already been spread.

Lo, how the mighty have fallen.

On the Path to Spring

On the Path to Spring

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The rain that was supposed to come today arrived last night instead. We have sunshine and fuller air and only a faint breeze stirring the holly.

Winter has hung on longer than usual this year, and any warmth is welcome. I remind myself what it will feel like in August, the blanket of humidity that will descend upon us then, how even a half-mile stroll will be a walk through wet cement.

Doesn’t matter. I crave warmth anyway. At this point I’m an animal emerging from hibernation, shaking my coat, searching for a rock to bask upon.

Daffodils

Daffodils

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I discovered them last year and have imagined them many times since. Not exactly Wordsworth’s daffodils, but close. They have the same careless profusion, the same grace and glee. They come to a world stripped of color; they are the opening salvo of spring.

Even knowing they were there, I was still surprised by their number and color, by the way they’ve threaded themselves through the woods.

And I wasn’t the only one. There were other walkers on the path, nodding, pointing, savoring their glory.

I almost took another picture. But I’d taken several last year. So this year’s pilgrimage was just to look, to imagine, to store them up like sunshine and good times. To keep them in mind as the poet did, for a “vacant” or “pensive mood.”

And that’s where they are now, and where they’ll stay.

Waiting for Spring

Waiting for Spring

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An early morning trip to see the cherry blossoms. The only pink I see is in the sky. The buds, tight-fisted, will hold out a few days more.

They are bundled up as warmly as I am in coat, scarf and gloves.

But they’ll be worth the wait. They always are.

Late-Season Snow

Late-Season Snow

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Winter won’t let go this year. More snow here, white flakes on green boughs, and little icicles dangling from the low rafters.

The daffodils hang their heads. Too soon, they must be thinking. (Too soon being an occupational hazard for the daffodil.)

As the season lingers, I ponder its good points, the way it keeps me inside, with an internal focus. Not yet ready for the late nights of summer, the outward focus of warmth and light.

The flurries out my window are welcome. I watch them as they float aimlessly to the ground.

What We Look For Now

What We Look For Now

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It’s been a wild, wet, windy, snowy March — time to look ahead to warmer days.

To seek the spot of color in the still brown woods. The bright break in the clouds when the sun shines through.

The clutch of boats beneath the bridge, their hues out of place in storage but not when skimming the water.

Which they will do soon. We know this will happen. It always has before.

Almost Spring

Almost Spring

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Spring arrives in less than two hours. I learn this not from feeling it in the air or hearing it in bird song but from looking it up online. Which is to say that it hasn’t felt much like spring this March.

This time last year we were coatless and reveling in cherry blossoms. This year we’re dodging “precipitation events” (what the weather folks are calling potential snow storms — just in case they go bust like the “Snowquester” did in parts of this area).

I’m not complaining about the cool temperatures. Last year was warm enough to be eerie. Spring will be all the more welcome when it arrives.

Not when it arrives at 7:02 a.m. When it arrives for real.

Wind, Flake, Flower

Wind, Flake, Flower

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Yesterday, the soul of March. Brisk breeze, clouds dark and low, occasional sun, and every so often a flake or two of snow in the sky. 

Cold enough for winter, bright enough for spring. The snowdrops along the path hung their heads, stayed close to the ground. It was cold even for them.

In a few weeks we’ll have cherry blossoms, daffodils, red bud trees. But not yet. There is a thinness to the light, a hesitancy in the air. The great drama is still playing out.

Will winter win, or spring?

Indecision

Indecision

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The witch hazel has been poised like this for weeks. Half in autumn, half in spring. Some of the branches blooming, others not.

A true gardener might look at the tree and say, uh oh, it was nipped by frost — or it’s developed [add scary tree disease here] — or the big storm last June was hard on it, and that explains this holding back, this pause.

But I look at the witch hazel and see human nature. How easy it is to embrace the new,  how difficult to forget the old.

I look at it and see indecision.

Forty Days

Forty Days

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Pretend that you’re on a space station, I read this morning in the little book of Lenten devotionals that I picked up, for a dollar, at church. There your existence would be limited — no walks around the neighborhood or spur-of-the-moment drives downtown; and the food, nothing to write home about.

But your vision, your perspective, would be broad. The earth from space, the blue marble.

A funny image, but the more I’ve pondered it the more it has grown on me. Limiting some parts of life so that others might shine through.

Especially the quiet, contemplative parts, those that thrive without distractions. Time alone to think, to put things in perspective.

Forty days of that? Bring it on!