We're here in this bursting period between Imbolc and Ostara, one of the most dynamic sections of the Wheel of the Year. The "Sun Band" on my Ecological Calendar has been growing wider and wider.
If you've learned to look with love and to pay attention, the trees, at least here in the miraculous MidAtlantic, are no longer the dead brown and grey of Winter. Every branch seems to be suffused with green and, when you cast your eyes over a grove of trees, there's the tiniest, almost-here-almost-not haze of pink, a pink that long-term lovers of the Potomac know is the first color to precede that yellowish-green!-alive haze that happens just a week before ACTUAL LEAVES burst forth. It will be a few weeks, yet, but you can hear the gentle beginnings of the sound. And no branch is still "just" a branch. Every single branch now sports buds, buds that have somehow developed between December, when the snow drove me inside and, well, and today, when I was able to go sit on my rock and make love to my maples and my birch and my crape myrtles and my figs and my . . . . You know.
The app on my iPhone tells me that tomorrow's Full Moon is known as the Quickening Moon. Everything in my blood says: Yes, yes, and, ah! yes! Almost paralyzes you.
And, I have snowdrops in bloom!
/Curtsies
This morning, when I left for work, they were no where to be seen.
But when I came home this afternoon, a good dozen of the 75 that Landscape Guy and I planted last November were in bloom in the Northern (I know!!!) cottage garden. I walked past. Did a double take. Walked back. Literally fell on my knees. I can't think when anything has made my heart fly so high or my spirit soar so wildly. ("Too easily pleased," my mother used to say of me. It's true, but it's a blessing, not a curse.) I think that I need to make this an annual event, a hanami when I can text all of my friends and say, "Come over this afternoon for champagne, dates w/ goat cheese, radishes with bread and butter, and snowdrop viewing!" Next year, if you're on my email list, be ready!!!
What makes you foolishly happy in the early Spring?
2 comments:
We're a bit behind you here in the Pacific Northwest, but our trees have also begun to swell and produce proto-buds here and there. Birdsong has returned ... although as I write this, we're having a heaping helping of hail. It doesn't seem to discourage the crows, who have a lot to say about it; a few brave individuals are actually flying through/despite it.
My soul, consulted as to why she sings as she does today, shrugged and said, "Why not?" As good an answer as any, I feel.
I live for hope and the opportunity to see the snowdrops and crocuses in my yard. Here, a couple of states north of you, the only thing under the 2 feet of snow in my garden is another 10 inches of snow. We are still awaiting spring...
(and my word verification was "petti" which is how I feel when I complain...)
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