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Category: spring

Easter Saturday

Easter Saturday

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I write today as the eggs are boiling, before the bulk of the cleaning starts and the cake goes in the oven. There will be 16 people here tomorrow. That’s a big gathering when the number is usually two. 

And it’s a big moment in this slow return to normalcy. It’s not exactly like the opening of the gates in Oran from Camus’ The Plague. Our experience with disease has been longer but less acute than what those poor fictional souls experienced. 

But it’s been enough, thank you very much. And our hope that this might be the beginning of the end will make tomorrow’s alleluias ring out all the louder. 

Curtain Briefly Drawn

Curtain Briefly Drawn

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It was a gully washer, a cloudburst, the kind of rain that lifts worms from their snug in-ground quarters and deposits them onto the driveway. I even spotted a banana slug this morning, clinging to the siding on the front of the house.

Yesterday’s downpour was torrential at times — rain with a mission. It filled the creeks and muddied the soil. It made the forsythia pop and the skunk cabbage unfurl.

Birds loved it; the feeder was mobbed with goldfinches, sparrows, cardinals and woodpeckers. 

It felt healing, this rain, a curtain briefly drawn between winter and spring — brown boughs and cracked dirt on one side, greenness and growth on the other. 

Celebrating Crocus

Celebrating Crocus

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This morning, a celebration of crocus, of the all the new ones that have sprung up in the yard this year, apparently dormant for several years but making their appearance now thanks to time and warmed earth.

There are clumps of crocus by the street, around the tree and amidst the laurel in the front garden. They are pale lavender, rich purple and creamy white.

Though I think of crocus as shy flowers, in company they project a bright and jaunty beauty, a kind of brazen, “let’s do it” approach that makes me admire them for their bravery.

Spring Awakening

Spring Awakening

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Spring woke me up this morning. It tugged at my elbow and jostled me to consciousness earlier than I was planning. I didn’t know it was spring at the time. Only after I learned of the 5:37 a.m. vernal equinox did my early awakening make sense.

But it had to be spring, had to be something hopeful and fresh that was already about its business before sun-up. Because it didn’t rouse me with light pouring in the window. It’s still dark in these parts. And it didn’t entice me with the aroma of lilac — that shrub is far from blooming here. 

It simply filled me with the sense of wanting to be up and about — even before daybreak. Why? Because it’s spring, 2021, and it will soon be bright and warm and full of promise.

The Details

The Details

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Sometimes all it takes is a short stroll to open the mind and senses to the day ahead. Today I took the long way around to the newspaper — out the back door, down the deck stairs, around the garden and through the gate and side yard to the driveway where it lay, double-bagged in orange.

The ground is hard and cracked, given two weeks without moisture, which made it easy for me to amble out there in my (sturdily-soled) slippers. Weather folks say we need the rain, but I say we need the dryness. The yard is finally not a lake anymore.

On my short expedition, I found several sticks that I broke over my knee and stuck in the bin for tomorrow’s yard waste pickup. I noted the fine pruning of the hollies, which no longer graze the garage. I heard the tiny peeps of birds fluttering awake in the azaleas. And I spotted swollen buds on the forsythia.

It’s a new day, these details said. Embrace it!

Sixty-Four!

Sixty-Four!

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The spring weather that was promised yesterday more than materialized. It reached 64, way above the 59 that was originally predicted and warm enough to take my laptop out to the deck and work there for a few hours.  

What a boost to soak up the rays of the still-faint late-winter sun, to hear the wind chimes clang in the unaccustomedly warm breeze.  It was just a taste of what’s to come, but it broke a deadlock of sorts.  

Winter has less of a hold on us now. We may still have cold rain, chill wind, freezing temperatures. But the witch hazel tree, responding to yesterday’s prompts, has burst into bloom.  It’s the earliest harbinger of spring in our yard, and I’m glad for its vivid evidence that yesterday was not a dream. 

(The witch hazel tree photographed in an earlier, snowier winter)

Fifty-Nine!

Fifty-Nine!

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The weather folks tell me that today’s high will be 59. Fifty-nine! I stare at my phone, at the sun icons and the numbers below them, which tell me that at 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. it will be 59. I figure if I look long enough those numbers might turn from 59 to 60. 

Sixty would be nice. It’s not much more than 60 inside right now (the nighttime temps still prevailing). Sixty would feel balmy and Florida-like to me, stuck mostly inside at the tail end of what’s beginning to feel like a very long winter.

Fifty-nine, on the other hand, still has a chapped, windswept feel. 

Before finishing this post, I walk out through the garage to pick up the newspaper at the end of the driveway. It feels pretty darn warm already. I can feel the difference in my bones. There’s a skip in my step as I walk back in the house.

I try the phone one more time. It now tells me that at 4 p.m. it will be 61! That’s more like it. 

Hidden Blossoms

Hidden Blossoms

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While it’s easy to be captivated by the grand views off the ridges of Shenandoah National Park, one of the prettiest sights I saw yesterday were these pink lady’s slippers. They were tucked behind a stand of (as yet un-bloomed) mountain laurel, as if they were hiding, biding their time. 

Spring is still arriving at 3,000 feet, and many of the trees were still flashing gold at their crowns. Wildflowers we welcomed weeks ago, like buttercups, are in their prime on the slopes.

But no matter the season, the views captivate year-round, whether framed in flaming leaves or spring wildflowers.

The Roses, Again

The Roses, Again

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The climbing roses have burst into bloom. Pale buds are blossoming into creamy pink flowers, are shading the deck table, are hanging overhead even as I write these words.


Does nature produce any flower as lovely as the New Dawn climbing rose? The shiny green foliage, the shy petals, the subtle color, like the barest of blushes.

I trained the roses to shade the deck, to cover the pergola, and now they almost do. As a result, the best view is from a second-floor window — odd, but a feature of this plant, which grows up and out.

And how can you not love a plant like that? One with such high aspirations, with such beauty and patience (because the buds were ready to burst open for weeks it seemed)? One with such poise and determination?

I write about the roses this time every year. I know I’m being repetitive … but I just can’t help myself.

Rough Winds

Rough Winds

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Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May 
And summer’s lease hath far too short a date.

So go the third and fourth lines of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, which begins with the lines “Shall I compare thee to a summer day?/Thou art more lovely and more temperate.”

They’ve been in my mind lately as the brisk winds continue to blow and the gray clouds continue to blot out the sun. It’s been one of the coolest springs on record, and is beginning to bother me — not that there’s a thing I can do about it except try to see the positive side.

And that brings me back to Shakespeare. Because the buds, though shaken, are staying buds longer than usual. They aren’t flowering and fading as quickly as they would if our temperatures were topping 80 each day.

A cool spring may try the patience of one who loves warm weather, but it will, for a few days at least, keep time at bay.

(If the bottom photo looks blurry, it’s because the wind was indeed shaking these fully bloomed knockout roses.)