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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.