Walkers usually keep to themselves. We’re an introverted bunch. But yesterday was different.
“Can you believe this day?” a woman said to me as she came closer, gesturing to the blue sky, her arms raised as if I were a long-lost friend.
I thought for a moment we might know each other, so enthusiastic was her greeting. But no, she was just a fellow traveler, her tongue loosened by the endorphins or the trail or the fact that we were both alive and well on a glorious spring morning.
A male cardinal hops along the front walk, pauses briefly, then flies up to perch on a slender branch of the climbing rose, his crimson plumage shouting out from amidst the green.
It’s not long before he’s back on ground, foraging in the leaf meal, pecking around the forget-me-nots, glinting in the periwinkle.
He shines, this cardinal, his feathers brighter, as I’ve read they are this time of year. He’s all decked out for the ladies, of course. And I’m lucky enough to be around for the show.
(Unfortunately, the cardinal couldn’t be bothered to pose. But I did snap a quick photo from the rear.)
So far, April is proving to be as wet as March was windy. The months are playing their usual roles, in other words.
I feel a certain responsibility on rainy days: unless otherwise occupied, I should use them for cleaning closets or going through old files in the basement.
Which means that after I’ve written, and after I’ve studied, and after I’ve made today’s calls and sent today’s emails, I must get myself to the nether regions of the house … and fight the good fight.
The new month has crept up on me. Though it is April in reality, it is March in my mind. What to do about this? Get out and walk through it, I suppose.
I’ll be looking for the usual signs: violets nodding in the early grass, bluebells along the path. The yellow blossoms of forsythia greening along the stem. And if we’re lucky, the dogwood and azaleas will overlap enough to make the tableau you see above.
Winds will blow, rain will fall, maybe even snow. But the sun will mean business. That’s another way to know that April is really here.
A few days of unseasonably warm weather meant I slept last night with open windows and the early spring air flowing through the room. It reminded me of warm days to come and the freedom of being at one with the outdoors.
It’s another story this morning. Colder and more seasonable air has moved in and the newly popped daffodil blossoms are shivering on their stems.
A good reminder of the halting, sidewise, untidy course of progress.
(Snowdrops along Reston trail.)
When I looked out my office window yesterday morning, the world was an unremitting winter gray, with just a touch of green from the grass and hollies.
Today, I see three sprays of yellow witch hazel, which burst into partial bloom with the afternoon’s balmy warmth.
We’ll see how those spare blossoms fare now, with temperatures falling into the 40s and a wild northwest wind battering the bamboo and waving the sweet gum branches.
I remind myself that the witch hazel is hardy and used to such shenanigans. It’s bloomed in far worse. Plus … those small yellow flowers are out among us now — and there’s nothing that winter can do about that.
This weekend, a hint of spring: Not from the temperature, which was frigid, or the daylight hours, which were paltry — but from the robins, who swarmed in to feast on the holly berry. I heard them before I saw them — the beats of their wings and the tenor of their calls, which bring to mind an April morning.
In January robins are not harbingers of spring. They winter here and flock together to forage and roost. But their twittering sounds like spring, so I pretended.
Watching them, taking closeups of them amid the shiny green leaves, made me think about symbiosis. The robins were just doing what they need to stay alive. But their presence was driving me out into the cold sunshine, where, at least that moment, I needed to be.
The hummingbirds are back! Once again, for at least the fourth time, exactly on April 28. Where have they been? And how do they make their way from other climes and latitudes right back to this suburban backyard? I don’t understand them — and perhaps that is part of their charm.
Seeing them again — at first just a flicker of movement from the corner of my eye — completes the season in a way no blooming tree or flower can.
Because these tiny creatures aren’t rooted here; they return voluntarily. And they bring with them the jewel tones of the tropics, a whiff of the faraway.
(The photo is my own, but not from this year. And because it’s a female, not as jewel-toned.)
Every year I obsess over a new type of spring bloom. This year, it’s the redbud tree. I’ve admired them forever, of course. On the long drives to Kentucky I would see wild ones blooming in the mountains, sometimes whole swatches of them coloring the hillsides.
Unlike the delicate cherries of early spring, the redbud is vibrant, bold — an azalea-hued plant that doesn’t wait till late April to show its bright color.
I’ve photographed several of them lately and covet one for the yard. I have just the spot for it.
Most days I have little choice about which walk I take. I have 30 or so spare minutes, and I sandwich in a stroll between meetings and deadlines, taking the most expedient route — the one out my front door, down the main drag in the neighborhood and back.
But yesterday, I had a little more time, so I picked a paved path that runs along the Fairfax County Parkway because it afforded the best view of blooming Bradford Pear and Redbud trees. I’d been seeing white petals blowing in the breeze like so many springtime snowflakes, and I figured if I was going to see the pears, I’d better do it soon.
The parkway path provided a broad-stroke, Impressionistic view of spring, the kind seen from a distance. It made me feel as if I had traveled far, when actually I was only a few miles from home.
