It’s one of those days that looks like spring but feels like winter. The Bradford pears are blooming, their white arms shivering in the breeze.
Hyacinths hesitate, wondering if it’s warm enough to venture above the soil.
The daffodils and cherry trees have made their decisions. They’ll brave the temps .. and last longer because of them.
Spring arrives today and with it sneezes, sniffles and coughs. It’s high pollen season here in the mid-Atlantic, and scratchy throats and itchy eyes are the result.
I try to ignore seasonal allergies, which I can do since mine are middling at their worst, but some people can’t. They’re forced to stay inside during these lovely days, especially folks in Wichita, New Orleans, Oklahoma City, Tulsa and Memphis, which were ranked the five worst cities for allergy-sufferers in the country.
Two Virginia cities ranked in the “top” (worst) ten, Richmond and Virginia Beach. The D.C. area did not, in part because rankings take into account the number of allergy docs, and we have a lot of them.
My remedy for all of this is simple: Have Kleenex, will travel.
The faint yellow fuzz at the top of witch hazel tree has fully sprouted. From my office window I can see the first faint signs of spring. Typically, I watch spring unfold gradually, in place here in the mid-Atlantic.
But later today I leave for a place that is really in the mid-Atlantic, as in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean — the island of Madeira. Three hundred miles off the coast of Morocco, Madeira has a temperate climate. Spring should be in full flower when we arrive Friday morning.
Here’s to spring, then, whether it unfolds gently or hits you in the face. Both ways are good.
(Wisteria in the Madeira Botanical Garden, March 2024)
We’re not quite there yet, not ready to shed jackets entirely, but at least I unzipped mine yesterday — a small but important victory.
It reminds me that although my impatient personality wants things to happen quickly, they happen slowly for a good reason. The slow fade and the gradual reveal are healthier than jumping ahead.
But tell that to the spring-starved souls who’ve had to endure a real winter for a change. We want spring and we want it now. All in good time, nature reminds us. Today, maybe I’ll get away with a sweater. A heavy one, but still.
The term sounds vaguely familiar, like something I learned long ago, and a quick search tells me that it was a system of equal trade and investment in China in the first half of the 20th century.
I chose the title with another thought in mind: the way it feels to leave the front door open on a perfect June afternoon. An open door policy made possible by a screen instead of glass, and perhaps only good for another day or two.
So far, we’ve been able to get by without air conditioning in the house: opening and closing windows at strategic moments, gathering in the morning coolness like an arm full of crisp line-dried laundry.
They’re calling for much higher temps by week’s end, so we may have to give in and close up the house. But it’s been lovely to leave doors and windows open, to breathe in and out with the day.
The aroma of honeysuckle is in the air, and every year I want to hold onto it, to have it close at hand so I can inhale it whenever I walk out the door. I dream of rooting a sprig of the vine, planting it, and training it to tumble over my back fence.
This year I came close to doing that, was even scouting out potential plant “donors.” Then I came to my senses. Introduce another invasive species when our yard is full of knotweed, stilt grass and bamboo? I must be crazy.
Honeysuckle is a wild thing, after all, and it’s best left where it is, mostly in the park or common land. A whiff may be all I get. But sometimes, a whiff is enough.
The climbing rose peaked a few days ago, but the plant is still weighed heavy by blossoms, and when I sit on the deck to write the air is filled with fragrance.
When I look out at the yard through its flowers, it’s a little like looking at the world through rose-tinted glasses.
But at some point, I must squeegee off the glass-topped table and abandon for a minute my journal or laptop to sweep up petals with the old broom I leave outside.
What better way to enjoy the rose than by immersing myself in its detritus, still soft and pearly pink?
What do you write about when one of your oldest, dearest friends lies full of cancer in a hospital bed? The same thing you write about when your parents are dying, when you’re sick or confused or worn out. You write about the world around you.
It’s the second day of May. Roses are budding, birds are nesting, clematis is blooming. Last night, the first hummingbird of the season made its appearance. It’s a perfect spring morning.
Not perfect for everyone, of course, but at this moment, I feel its perfection. And I take comfort in describing it, parsing it, moving it from the real world onto the page.
Walking is witnessing, a way to be present in movement and in time.
Yesterday’s stroll took me from the oldest part of Reston to the newest, from a community center to a commercial plaza, from a small cafe to a bustling bakery.
And all along I’m thinking spring. The dogwood, the azalea, the first green of the oaks and poplars. How lovely it is to see it unfold along familiar paths, how grateful I was to witness its unfolding.
The Kwanzan cherries are spreading their heavy arms, wowing us, as they always do, with their big-fisted blossoms. Dogwood are playing it closer to the vest, but they’re almost peak bloom, too.
I worried I’d missed the Virginia bluebells, but yesterday I scooted out for a late-morning hike on the Bluebell Trail that runs along the Potomac River. The flowers were primo, scattered fetchingly among the phlox and ferns with the river roaring in the distance.
Moving through springtime beauty is one of the best ways to ingest it, to make it stick. Which is what I want to do now, to inhale the loveliness, to claim it as my own. But that, as we know, is not possible. Walking through and past the flowers reminds me that they, like all of us, are present only a short while. We make time to see them when they’re here — and then let them go.
