Green Weekend

Green Weekend

Comments 0 Comment

The Irish music has been blaring yesterday and today, pipes and jigs and ballads, from my laptop, iPod and CD player. I listen and am back in the little pub in Inishmore in the Aran Islands, or in Dingle Town, where the great Steve Cooney showed up to play at the Courthouse Pub.

I’m remembering the stones, the cliffs, the bare hills all green with lambs grazing, the ancient, ruined forts with rainbows all around them.

I’m tasting the brown bread at breakfast, the scones and the fish and chips and the Cadbury’s chocolate, which somehow tastes better over there.

I’m remembering how I felt in Ireland, which was … like I’d come home.

Jeepers, Peepers!

Jeepers, Peepers!

Comments 0 Comment

In the woods and wetlands of Fairfax County, the spring peepers are singing. I hadn’t expected them yet, but the minute I heard their music I felt like I’d been listening for them all along.

“It’s spring, it’s spring,” I imagine they’re saying, though it’s probably more like, “I’m hungry, I’m hungry. What do you have to do around here to get some flies!”

One year I first heard them on St. Patty’s Day, so they are at least a few days earlier than that year. But what matters most is that they’re here, and being hearty fellows they will weather the cooler weather that’s blowing in here tomorrow.

If the color of spring is yellow and the scent of spring is hyacinth, the soundtrack of spring is what I heard last night: the music of tiny frogs welcoming the season.

(Look closely; there must be some peepers in there somewhere!) 

Walking Outside

Walking Outside

Comments 0 Comment

An elliptical machine is a wondrous thing. It allows me to walk in all weathers and at a time that suits my schedule, from 5 a.m. till 8 p.m. What it can’t do, nor would I want it to, is mimic the sights and sounds of the walking world.

I often write of the psychic benefits of walking, which to my mind rival the health effects. I can get a buzz from the elliptical, but it’s not the same as the lift I get from walking outside. Take the random interactions, for example.

First, there was a short walk with Copper, where we ran into neighbor Nancy, who I’d just seen last week at a neighborhood gathering. We exchanged pleasantries as the little guy pulled at his leash.

Later, on my own solo stroll, I saw Nancy again, as well as the couple who are adding a gigantic garage onto their house, and another woman with curly gray hair who’ve I’ve seen walking but had never before linked with her house. This time I saw her checking her mailbox.

I don’t know all these people well; some I just nod to. But they’re the human heart of the walk. Some of them have lived here as long as we have; they give the place character and depth.

So I’m thankful for the elliptical because it’s kept me sane this winter. But I’m thankful for the outside walk, too. It’s what life’s all about.

Restorative

Restorative

Comments 0 Comment

I had One of Those Days. Suspicious activity detected on a work computer so I spent hours reconfiguring passwords. A long, frustrating task with nothing to show for it at the end but (I hope) greater security, which I too often assume is mine anyway (though not as much as I used to).

Once home, though, there was a restorative: seeing the world from a dog’s perspective. Time to smell the roses, or rather, sniff them. And not roses, not yet, but buttercups and snowdrops, which I spied on our brief stroll.

I took some deep breaths, looked up at the sky, caught the flash of a sun-lit contrail.

It was 7 p.m. and still light enough to take a walk outside. All’s right with the world.

Standing Water

Standing Water

Comments 0 Comment

After the record-breaking rain totals of 2018, the D.C. area seems poised to break more records for 2019. Lately there’s been some form of precipitation every weekend and most weekdays. It rains and mists, snows and sleets.

And so, there’s a lot of water in the yard. It pools in the hollows, saturates the grass, clings to the leaves and sticks and other flotsam jiggled from the aging oaks by storms and downpours.

It makes the yard most unsightly. But if you look hard enough and long enough, you can see a blue sky reflected in the standing water.

I hope it is the harbinger of good things to come.

DST vs EST

DST vs EST

Comments 0 Comment

There are movements afoot to banish Standard Time, to make Daylight Savings Time the law of the land all year long. Given how little Standard Time we have now (just a little over four months of it), we may as well.

Since I often deal with jet lag these days, to say nothing of early awakenings, it doesn’t make much difference to me either way. I love the long light of summer, but that’s because there really is more daylight to go around that time of year. In the spare season, a time change is the horological equivalent of a comb-over. There aren’t many hours, period. Pretending there are is just sad.

So let’s just pick one time and stick with it. Give up springing ahead and falling back. And given the eight/four discrepancy, it looks like Daylight Savings Time should get the nod.

Conversational Snow

Conversational Snow

Comments 0 Comment

It’s March 9 and the daffodils have pushed themselves at least two inches through ground. But the ground is now covered … not in mulch but in snow.

Welcome to what the Capital Weather Gang calls “conversational snow.” This is white stuff that we talk about but do not fear. Snow that clings to trees and grass but not roads.

This snow fell yesterday but lingers today. Conversational? Yes. But not hardly whispered. Just ask the witch hazel tree (foreground), with its yellow blossoms all coated and frozen. It would like to change the conversation, I think. And it will have its chance. Tomorrow, we could hit 70!

Of Memoirs and Tree Ferns

Of Memoirs and Tree Ferns

Comments 0 Comment

I began this International Woman’s Day reading (and finishing) a memoir by a most amazing woman, Diana Athill. Retiring at 75 from a successful editing career where she worked with such writers as John Updike and Jean Rhys, Athill began her second act — as a memoirist.

She penned several volumes in her 80s and 90s, including Stet, full of literary gossip and wise observations, and Somewhere Towards the End, which she wrote more than 12 years before the end, as it turns out. She died less than two months ago at the age of 101. She is my new role model.

Not that I think I’ll live as long as she, but it would be wonderful to write another book someday, and reading her gives me hope that there may be some juice left after I finally leave my day job.

Let me quote from her postscript, with a bit of explanation. Athill begins her book describing a tree fern that she would like to plant but hesitates to — because she thinks she won’t be around long enough to enjoy it. By the time the book ends, she has a more optimistic view:

The tree fern: it now has nine fronds each measuring about twelve inches long, and within a few days of each frond unfurling to its full length, a little nub of green appears in the fuzzy top of the ‘trunk’ (out of which all fronds sprout and into which you have to pour water). This little nub is the start of a new frond, which grows very slowly to begin with but faster towards the end — so much faster than you can almost see it moving. I was right in thinking that I will never see it being a tree, but I underestimated the pleasure of watching it being a fern. It was worth buying. 

Under Construction

Under Construction

Comments 0 Comment

It didn’t take long. Just weeks after Amazon’s announcement that my work neighborhood, Crystal City (aka National Landing), would be its new HQ2, the demolition — and the detours — began.

First, my cut-through was cordoned off, which made my walk from Metro to office less diagonal and hence longer. Then one whole stretch of sidewalk was blocked, a pedestrian walk constructed in the bike lanes, and the whole lot of it painted white.

Now I wait at the light and cross to the other side of Crystal Drive so that I’m strolling on a pavement-stone sidewalk that runs alongside apartment buildings where a few brave pansies still show their yellows and purples.

This is not just a construction zone; it is the construction zone. A transformation that will continue for years, and will, I imagine, outlast my presence in these environs.

There’s a tinge of excitement in it, I’ll admit. It’s not unlike the neighborhood I grew up in, full of two- and three-bedroom bungalows being built as quickly as the hammers and saws could make them. The sound of construction, the sound of new life.

Ashes

Ashes

Comments 0 Comment

I began Lent by returning my overdue library book (see below … additional venial sin averted!) and receiving ashes. To accomplish the latter, I reached my parish church by 6:33 a.m. (the service having already begun, of course) and found the parking lot almost full. Wind chills today are in the teens but that doesn’t stop Catholics from their appointed rounds.

Back on the road to Metro before 7:00 a.m., I noticed that my church wasn’t the only one offering predawn distribution. Cars were leaving the Methodist church, too.

But the greatest surprise came at the Crystal City Metro. I usually avoid that station these days, having found a bus that leaves from another Metro stop that gets me to the office more quickly. But today I opted for Metro all the way because it was warmer.

As I was scrambling up the escalator into the usual crowd of buskers and hawkers, I spotted a man in purple off to my left. He was bearded, smiling and … wearing vestments. It was a priest giving out ashes!

Guess I would have gotten them today one way or the other.