Shoulder Seasons
What is it about shoulder seasons? Are spring and fall truly more poetic or do they just seem that way?
“Margaret are you grieving/Over Goldengrove unleaving?” wrote Gerard Manley Hopkins in his poem “Spring and Fall to a Young Child.”
Autumn and spring are times of great beauty, times when it’s easier to notice the underpinnings of things: the uncoiling of a fern, the thinning of leaves.
I wonder, too, if spring and fall aren’t times of greater yearning, when we see outside our small worlds to what lies beyond.
Author Susan Cain would call these seasons bittersweet, “a tendency to states of longing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute awareness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world.”
A Reckoning
The furnace came on this morning. I smelled the heat before I felt it, slightly acrid but warm and comforting, too. The aroma of thick bathrobes and steaming kettles and stepping inside from a cold rain.
We could have held out longer, but why? It’s inevitable. The cold is coming. Toughing it out won’t keep it away.
As befits a day of forced air heat, clouds dominate, and the stillness they bring is welcome. They promise seclusion and concentration and a long writing session. They promise cold, too.
Backward Glance
I know people who extol the beauties of fall — the color, the crispness, the end of humidity — but I’m not one of them. To me there’s always a backward glance at this time of year.
I don’t mind the heat, I relish cicada song, and I love the long days that summer brings.
So on the last day of this summer, I’m reveling in the sun that’s trying to peak through the ever-thickening cloud cover, and I’m savoring the adventures — from Seattle to Scotland and all the places in between.
Summer and Smoke
For me and for many, summer is a recharging season. A lot of the recharging occurs outdoors. Whether it’s walking the trails, writing on the deck, or dining al fresco, summertime is outside time.
But not this summer. This summer I check my phone first. This morning the air quality index is 153, Code Red. So I’ll write from my office and exercise in the basement. There are plenty of indoor projects — cleaning up decades worth of clutter, for starters.
I won’t be idle. But I won’t be happy.
And yet … it’s the way many of the world’s people live everyday, without the privilege of working at (and inside) the home. Missing summer is the least of their concerns. I’ll keep them in mind today.
(Summer in the city, where there was no smoke last week. A tip of the hat to Tennessee Williams for the post title.)
Humidity of Home
It’s not that Manhattan defies seasons, not completely. It can be stiflingly hot there, and bitterly cold. But weather does not rule as it does in other places I’ve lived.
I remember my first winter in the city, being amazed when snow finally stuck on the pavement. I thought that all the heat underground — the subway, smoke belching from grates — would make it impossible for white stuff to accumulate. It eventually did, of course, but the city itself is an excellent distraction from all things meteorological.
All this is to say that last week I was ensconced in a season-free bubble, so this week I open my eyes (and my pores) to the new season in town: summer. I know this not just from the calendar, and the writing on the street, but from the humidity, which began building Saturday and is now gearing up for a sticky, months-long run.
What can I say — it can be miserable, to be sure, but it’s the humidity of home.
Maybe May
It’s May Day, the first day of a glorious month, not a holiday in this country but in many others. I used to tell my daughters, if you’re looking for a lovely time of year to be married, the beginning of May is that time. They were married in April, September and December. So much for motherly advice.
But what’s interesting about time and weather patterns is that I wouldn’t say this today. A decade or so ago, early May was a reliably beautiful time of year, prime azalea season, iris yet to pop, plenty of color amidst the green. These days it’s unsettled. We might have such a May 1, but more than likely we won’t. This year’s unseasonably warm winter means it’s looking decidedly summery, though it’s quite chilly, an odd combination, to say the least.
We talk a lot about climate change with its serious implications for life on this planet. But shifts in longtime patterns of growth and maturity, planting and harvesting, affect us more subtly too. They prey on our spirits and mess with our minds.
(An azalea in its prime … on April 14, 2023.)
Kwanzan Up Close
The Kwanzan cherry had barely begun to leaf this time last week. But the warm temperatures of early April have sent it into overdrive.
I’m spending some time this morning just looking at the tree, observing how the big-fisted flowers bend its branches to earth.
The Kwanzan is not as ethereal as the Yoshino cherry, which typically blooms a few weeks earlier. It’s an earthier, later blossom. It’s best photographed up close, I think, against a bright blue sky.
Stop Time?
Speaking of buttercups … spring unspooled slowly through the month of March. Daffodils that bloomed in late February were still with us this time last week.
But in the last few days the season hit fast forward. Our dogwood and Kwanzan cherry were barely leafing out on Monday; now they’re in full flower. Temperatures above 85 degrees will do that to a plant.
I’m hoping that today’s burst of cool air has stopped time enough to preserve “nature’s first green,” which is gold. It’s been gold for weeks now. I hope, against all evidence to the contrary, that it will stay.
(A hyacinth blooms in February.)
The Volunteer
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough.
I don’t have many lines of poetry at my fingertips, but for some reason, I have these by A. E. Housman. Today, I’m thinking about — and looking at — the pale pink weeping cherry in the backyard.
It wasn’t planted, and I wasn’t even aware of it until we almost lost it in the great tree debacle of 2018. But it must have been there, growing slowly and a bit crookedly, trying to reach the light through a thick canopy.
But now the yard is open, tree coverage is sparse, and the delicate plants, including this earnest volunteer, have a chance to shine.
Such is the life cycle of a forest, even when the forest is in a backyard.
(This volunteer may be kin to another I wrote about several years ago.)