An Excellent Trade

An Excellent Trade

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Every year in early spring I try to organize the two climbing rose bushes that clamber over the pergola on the deck. So yesterday, I ventured forth with clippers and gardening gloves and a ladder to snip off the deadwood and re-attach boughs with twisty green gardening wire.  

A new task this year was freeing the detritus that collects under the tangle of limbs. This meant holding up the thorny wood with one hand while sweeping the gunk out with another, all while balanced on a ladder.

By the time I was done, I had leaf bits in my hair, black smudges on my face and pricked fingers and thumbs (the gardening gloves can only do so much). I was, in short, a mess. But the rose … it was looking pretty good. Maybe it’s just where I am now, but I consider this an excellent trade. 

(The rose at the beginning of its blooming period last year.) 

The Heat

The Heat

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For the first time in a long time, I’m warm. The windows are open, the sweater and long-sleeved shirt are peeled off and I’m sitting comfortably in short sleeves. 

The heat has roared in on a wild west wind, sending temperatures into the 70s before 10 a.m. It reminds me of a mythical beast, this heat, like something I’d heard about but wasn’t sure was real. Now that I’ve had a taste of it, I’m remembering how it limbers up the muscles and frees up the mind. How it opens doors, both literally and metaphorically. 

I’d like to think the heat is here to stay, but I know better. It’s a fickle time of year. We could have cold rain tomorrow. But at least the heat is here now. And I’m basking in it. 

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. 

Open-Door Policy

Open-Door Policy

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It’s a drizzly morning filled with bird song. Water beads on the just-sprouting branches of the climbing rose and small puddles collect on the aging deck floor. 

I sit on the couch just inside the back door, which is open to the moisture and the song, which matches the morning in its timbre and intensity.

It’s often like this in the warm or even warmish months: back door open to breeze and heat and whatever else is out there. That we’ve had mice and snakes and an occasional bird is part of the package. I’ll accept them if it brings us closer to the landscape. It’s my own open-door policy.

(The only open-door shot I could find is of the front door. It’s often open too, but it has a storm door.)

New Normal

New Normal

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Over the weekend, a taste of normalcy: dinner out — in a restaurant — with friends who are also vaccinated.  The restaurant was empty save for one table of three seated 20 feet away. The server was properly masked. In that sense, it was not business as usual. 

But what a thrill to see actual human faces, not squares on a screen; to enjoy full human expressions, not the crinkle of eyes above an oblong of cloth. There were appetizers and stir-fries and shrimp with vermicelli. There was much catching up. And afterward, there was a stroll through the narrow streets of a small, quaint downtown.

It was not the kind of dining experience I might have sought 14 months ago, folks crammed together talking and laughing, the clink of glasses, the buzz of alcohol and laughter. It was the new normal. And it was absolutely wonderful. 

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.

Writing and Music

Writing and Music

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Having a piano I can actually play means that I’ve been digging into all sorts of old music. There’s Debussy’s Arabesque with its rolling arpeggios, Handel’s Passacaglia with its variations on a theme, a Chopin polonaise with its jaunty beat and Scott Joplin’s piano rags, just because.

But the most poignant find was the book of Brahms’ Intermezzos. How I loved those pieces when I last played piano seriously, and how playing them again brought back the self that played them then: young, dreamy, all of life ahead of her. 

I wasn’t sure what kind of life I wanted to have then, but I knew I wanted it to include writing and music. And now, all these years later, it does.

The “R Word”

The “R Word”

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This week, I’ve begun to share the news with colleagues that, come May, I will start a new phase of life, one without the grind of daily work-for-pay. You might say I’m “retiring,” though that’s a loaded word in my vocabulary.

Writers seldom retire, but editorial directors for international development organizations do, so I’ll use their nomenclature when necessary. 

The fact of the matter, though, is that I don’t much care for the “R word.” It sounds like Bermuda shorts and golf courses and happy gray-haired couples staring off into the sunset. 

Which won’t look much like what I’ll be doing, which is writing and peddling my work, not so much a new thing as an old one with a twist — a return to the freelance world I inhabited happily for decades but with less of the financial pressure. 

Still, it’s an adjustment, one I’ve been mulling over privately for months — and one I can finally mull over publicly here. 

An Irish Walk

An Irish Walk

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There were cobblestones and spongy soil, rocky fields and urban trails. The walks of Ireland took us from Giant’s Causeway to Trinity College — and many places in between.

One of my favorites, which I’m reliving today, took us from central Kinsale to Charles Fort. It was a sun-dappled paved path with jaw-dropping views of the harbor that winked at us every now and then. 

Seeing the landscape up close, at walking pace, has kept it close to my heart. The memories of that walk are embedded there, to be pulled out at special times — like St. Patrick’s Day — to remember and to cherish.