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?
It’s the most suburban of neighborhoods, a place of happy families and dogs and swim team cheeriness. It’s tidy and cultivated.
Except every spring when the Bradford pears bloom. Then it’s magical. The natural world has taken over and I hardly notice the vans with sports stickers.
The white trees, the way they bend over the road. Their lacy branches and dark trunks. The ethereal effect of it all.
Spring reminds us of what is invisible the rest of the year.
What happens when you jump from winter to summer overnight? When you move from a few brave daffodils and halfhearted forsythia to flowering cherries and Bradford pears; to hyacinth, forget-me-not, periwinkle and violets — and, most especially, to budding maples and poplars and oaks.
What happens is perhaps summed up in one word, actually one sound. Awwwwwww choo!
Once or twice in this blog I’ve written about our late, great parakeet, Hermes. He was a talkative little guy who had a dozen or so words in his repertoire. But the sound he made most often was the human sneeze. He heard it enough that he figured it was our call.
There’s a reason for that.
I used to wait for the perfect photograph, hold my camera steady until a split-second unobstructed view. But on today’s early morning stroll around the Tidal Basin, I didn’t mind including people in the picture. It was the people I noticed most.
The joy on their faces, not a sour look in the bunch. These are cherry blossom devotees, early risers, up before 6 to be downtown before 7. Joggers, bikers, picnickers, photographers — all here for one reason, to get their fill of beauty.
Here’s what they saw:
Spring rode in on the tail of the southwest wind. And it rode in at full speed.
Whitecaps danced on the Potomac, and greening willows swayed in the breeze.
Cyclists on the Four Mile Run Trail (one of whom was me) felt like they were on stationary bikes, so strong were the headwinds they faced. They pedaled hard but barely moved forward. A strange and unnerving sensation. Exhausting, too.
The Four Mile Trail winds through Gravelley Point Park, which lies along the approach to National Airport. Which means that when I looked up from my torturous ride, I saw this.
If I was having so much trouble steering my bike, though, how difficult was it for the pilots to land? Hmmm. Maybe not such a good day to be at Gravelly Point Park. And so I pedaled away as quickly as I could. Which wasn’t very quickly.
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.
