Spring Is Sprung!

According to the calendar, Spring “opens” today—whether the weather is cooperating where you live or not.

“The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.”
—Henry van Dyke

[Photo by Mark Hamblin.]

Awestruck

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
—Albert Einstein

Each time I leave my four walls, my senses scan for spectacle and transformation: a pink bud bursting into a white blossom, a vertical tulip-tree branch forming a chartreuse-and-orange-patterned wall at a busy intersection, the heady scents of lilac and pear giving way to roses, the newest placement of the stars. Every day brings new color and texture and fragrance to my small world that wasn’t there the day before.

And each day I try to absorb everything Nature offers—to be alive and open to it, to capture its Spring wonders in my heart and memory.

Take a moment today to see—really see—one thing Nature is trying to reveal to you.

Seeing Purple

Wandering home from the grocery store yesterday, I traveled down one of my favorite streets. It’s only a block long and curves up and down and left and right. The post at one end is always dressed in a nod to whatever holiday approaches, as are the homes and yards of many residents. This week, colorful eggs hang from trees and bushes; pastel wreaths hang on doors.

I stopped for a moment to sit in the grass and pet a black-and-white cat named Fearless. His fearful, half-tailed Calico sister did and did not want the same treatment. She circled round us, keeping her distance and staring at me all the while, then scented me by licking her brother’s face and mouth. Guess I wasn’t as intriguing as she first thought for she looked at me once more and then took off across the street. After a bit more Fearless petting, I took off, too.

Further down Louisiana, I found another treat: Irises of deep purple and lavender were beginning to unfold. The day before, they were just tight buds.

I love watching how time and weather alter the landscape moment by moment—alter the fragrance in the air, alter the palette of plant life.

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”
—from The Color Purple, by Alice Walker

What’s unfolding in your neighborhood?

Just Breathe

I started the day by reading a book I’ve really enjoyed so far, until I got to this passage:

“Now, don’t fall in love with it. When the foal is born, don’t pet it or even name it. You’re going to sell it as a yearling. Don’t get attached. Think of this mare as your factory.”
—Eddie Gregson

Think of this mare as your factory? Well, you can imagine where my mind started to travel after those words: foal factories, puppy mills, Apple in China, capitalism, greed, ethical boundaries, sociopaths… I stopped reading, started ranting (on paper), then decided to spare you my thoughts.

Step down from the soapbox, I commanded my crazed self, and breathe. It’s the first day of Spring. Is this any way to start the season?

No, it isn’t. (Inhale.) Besides, company is coming. (Exhale.)

Whew! I feel better already. My oldest friend (she’s not old, the friendship is) is due here tomorrow and I can hardly wait.

“My friends are my estate.”
—Emily Dickinson

In Case the Groundhog Is Right…

I’ve been under the spell of Springlike temperatures and bursts of color here in the Bluegrass.

Crocuses have popped up everywhere and honeysuckle bushes have bloomed. Taller bulb flowers—jonquils, daffodils, tulips—have been ever-so-slowly pushing their way toward the sun since December. The bees seem as thrilled as I am about the early blooms.

I realize none of this guarantees Old Man Winter’s departure, so I’ve been making the most of the interim. Yesterday, my husband and I ate an early picnic dinner in a nearby park filled with towering old trees and alive with tennis players, skateboarders, dog walkers, and toddlers on swings. And squirrels, one who discovered a special fondness for our malt vinegar chips.

The whole scene was scrumptious.

Flower Power

The sun’s been a bit shy about coming out these past few weeks, but that hasn’t prevented the fleurs from flaunting themselves. They’re crazy with color right now in the Bluegrass, which makes the gray skies tolerable. Reminds me of a Rilke passage:

“[E]verything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke

[Nature pics without credits are from either yours truly or her camera-toting husband. This particular one was shot by the latter.]

Where Dark Arts and Job-Hunting Converge

ome time ago I read a job ad that was unusually well written (you knew exactly what they wanted) and even clever. It made me want to work for the hiring company. It tempted me to write to them just to express my gratitude for the standout ad. The hook was:

“Do you ___________, ___________, and know the Dark Art of pickling eggs?”

I was fairly skilled in the first ___________, would have liked to learn how to do the second ___________, but the third? I never knew pickling eggs to be a Dark Art—only a family tradition.

Next I considered applying for the position I wasn’t qualified for just to be able to write, “Indeed, I am steeped in the Dark Art of pickling eggs. My family has practiced this Rite of Spring for generations.”

In fact, I was pickling eggs just this week. ’Tis the season, after all. But it didn’t go as smoothly as I anticipated.

First, I couldn’t find my grandmother’s recipe—one of the many hazards of moving. So I placed a call to my mother.

Then, it took forever to free the eggs from their blasted shells. Once I got them into the secret rosy juice, one of them floated to the top. What did that mean?

For me, it meant calling my cuisine-expert sister for an explanation, and for advice about the shells. Why go to the Internet when you can go to family?

Sometimes, a simple task can take a village…

[The pic is from Jules Food…, where you will find a recipe for pickled eggs so that you, too, may practice a Dark Art. The drop cap is from Jessica Hische.]

Let the Sun Shine

What could be more emblematic of this season of renewal than this precious, back-from-the-dead creature?

This is the last photo I have of Patrick, which I borrowed from Lia, Zoe & Friends. I don’t see it in the gallery kept by Associated Humane Societies and Popcorn Park Zoo, so I’m not sure where it originally came from. Since I first blogged about Patrick, AHS has had to take measures to protect his photos because…well, read for yourself. It’s weird and irritating.

Anyway, in this pic, Patrick seems enchanted by the sunlight and the smells around him. Perhaps a little Edna St. Vincent Millay is going through his head…

I will be the gladdest thing under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not hurt one.
—from “Afternoon on a Hill” (a dog’s version)

Whatever the Weather, It’s Still Spring

Stranger In A Strange Land – No. 13
A friend told me it snowed the other day in the Windy City. Yet, just days before, temperatures had climbed toward 80°F.

That’s the frustration about Spring in the upper Midwest. Flowers peep out in the heat, then lose their chance to blossom when snow returns. The palette that washes across the Horse Capital of the World is long delayed in the North.

My father had a favorite ditty that made sense in the Land of Lincoln, but not in the Bluegrass State:

Spring has sprung,
the grass has riz.
I wonder where
the flowers iz.

Thanks to my father, I’m experiencing the season of renewal in a new way—in glorious color. Unlike the North, the rise of the early perennials and the blooms of the flowering trees last longer here. Now Spring in the South will always conjure memories of the man who gave me life and the spirit with which to enjoy it.

This is part of an ongoing series regarding my transition from the Land of Lincoln to the Bluegrass State. For a list of previous articles in the series, type Stranger in a Strange Land into Lull’s search function on the right.

Antidote to World Gloom

“Where flowers bloom, so does hope.”
—Lady Bird Johnson

Everything’s Coming Up…Yellow

I missed the exact day when these trumpet-heads burst from their cocoons. I’ve been trying to be as mindful about Spring unfolding as I was last year.

But it’s harder without the pooch in tow.

However, on a walk to the post office yesterday, I noticed that the day’s welcome sunlight had finally persuaded the forsythia to stop peeping out one bud at a time and, instead, to step into the world en masse.

How can a darkened soul resist the joy of Spring yellows?

First Hues of Hope

A dear friend recently sent me this poem, which I’ve been wanting to share with you. Today seems appropriate, after spotting my first crocuses of the season.

“Even as the snow fell
Through it came whispering
A breath of spring!”
—Kobayashi Issa

First Sip

“Every child begins the world again.”
—Henry David Thoreau

[Pic from the farm of Penelope Trunk’s new husband.]

Bystander

“I don’t reproach the spring for starting up again.

I can’t blame it for doing what it must year after year.

I know that my grief will not stop the green.”

—Wislawa Szymborska, in “Parting with a View”

Adaptability

“In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four-and-twenty hours.”

—Mark Twain

[Photo by Carol Spears.]

Subtle Signs of Spring

“Springtime is the land awakening. The March winds are the morning yawn.”
—Lewis Grizzard


[Photo by Nino Barbieri.]

Promise Rising

Walks with the pooch now begin with coaxing her off the front steps. She’s wary of the fog enshrouding our neighborhood, just as she is of the shadows in our hallway. Her eyesight is not as sharp as it once was, so I can only imagine how she’s interpreting the indiscernible darkness I pull her into every day.

But since this weekend, whiffs of green have been inching up from bulbs beneath the soil. Cardinals pierce the fog in song and color, a welcome avian change from the decapitated pigeons we were dodging on previous mornings. Spring is surely on its way and I hope for the sake of the pooch that she can smell it in the air.

Unless Miss Fortune steps in to turn my luck a different direction, this will be my last Spring in northern Illinois. I intend to note every new leaf and bud and irritating squirrel and hawk repast I encounter. Of course, I do this every year. But this season I want to commit it all to memory, to take with me wherever I’m headed next.

Spring never lasts long enough in this part of the world, but it’s weighted with renewal and hope—two keys to the future of the jobless. Cling to these and don’t let go, my fellow job-seekers. As the landscape alters, so will we.

[Pic by Kevin Bolton from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.]