Category Archives: seasons

Quick thoughts on a February morning

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This will be the last post on this blog site but not the end to my blogging. I’m developing a new website and will be continuing to blog on that site. I’ll post the URL here as soon as the new site is ready for viewing.

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I’m sitting by the front window, 9:30 a.m. Sun again, blue sky, storm in the forecast. I’ve had my coffee, eaten some breakfast. Should I shower? Pull on jeans? Stay in my sweats to work? The essential questions of my work-at-home life.

I’m not sure what my writing work consists of these days. I’ve swooped into writing for quick hits and then flown off again. No deep dives. Shimmering in my brain, just at the periphery of mind-sight, is something about my sister’s fading and dying, something about ambiguous loss. Too soon? Maybe. Maybe not.

A friend called yesterday morning. She had an errand in town. Did I want to meet for lunch? A walk? Sure. We had lunch at a nearby cafe. I had breakfast for lunch, eggs scrambled just right with goat cheese, tomato, roasted garlic, kale, lick the plate clean food. Sun streamed in the windows. Outside, workers strolled by on lunch break from the construction project across the road; inside, the pleasure of good food and easy conversation with a long time friend.

After lunch we went for a walk near a stream and pond. We stuck to the road since we weren’t wearing boots and the trails were icy.  We remembered walks along those trails in times past and planned for more woodsy walks when the ice and snow melt.

We rounded off this “it feels like spring even though it’s not spring” excursion with a dairy farm visit and ice cream eaten at a picnic table with a view of fields, cows, hills.

If I were a diligent Instagram poster, I’d have recorded all these moments to post online thumb_IMG_0352but I didn’t—just a few pictures of the pond, the ice, the blue sky. Instead I use words to try to capture that feeling of sun (too soon for such warmth but oh so welcome), the squish of mud under foot as we walked to the picnic table, the sweet, cold ice cream bringing memories of summer evenings.

Sun now obscures the computer screen. I should pull down the shade but I love the warmth on my fingers and arms. The day stretches in front of me. What will I make of it?

 

What dazzles you?

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Small glimmers of light, days of sun in the midst of ongoing wintry weather.

Early morning. I’m sleepy after waking early to the cat’s cries, cat feet treading up my body, cat nose sniffing my face. I get up, make the coffee, and lounge on the couch. At the bird feeder out front, cardinals, wrens, finches dart in and out and sometimes perch, waiting their turn.

Afternoon. Lunch with friends on a bright day. We want to sit outside but there are no tables available so we sit on a glassed in porch, looking out at the brightness, the sun, the wind. In a few months there will be flowers. Now the people are flowers, families, lovers, friends turning their faces to the sun. We talk, I dip my cheese laden bread into tomato soup, drink iced lemon ginger tea. We walk back to our cars, wind whipping my hair across my face, pause by our cars to continue the conversation, wind, sun, friends.

Later another friend and I head out for a walk but are stopped by the wind, stronger IMG_0227now, requiring effort to walk into it. Still bright. Still sun. We detour to a garden shop. Look at row after row of plants, tender, small, green, earth smelling. We think about buying pansies but decide to wait. My friend buys a basil plant, thinking summer, thinking tomatoes, thinking pesto. On to another garden store, the pull toward summer strong in us now. We buy dahlia tubers, imagining strong stems, big blossoms, bouquets on porch tables. Last year the rabbits ate my dahlias when they first came up but I’ll try again and if I end up feeding the rabbits, so be it.

What dazzles me? I want to say life dazzles me. I can feel those words forming in my fingertips, ready to appear on screen, but that’s more a wish than a truth. Life does dazzle me, when I let it in—the moments, snippets, breaths, in and out, in and out.

Late February

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Late February and changeable weather. Mild days hinting of spring turn overnight into wintry sleet and rain. But one cold, damp, gray morning recently, I stepped out the front door and heard the shift in birdsong that always says “spring.” I’ve been searching the garden beds near the house, looking for those first green nubs thumb_IMG_0884_1024of crocuses and snow drops. Yesterday I spotted about 1/4 inch of tender green foliage —the first sign of early blooming crocuses.

I haven’t posted for several weeks—the world has felt heavy, especially after the Parkland school shooting. I alternate between feeling deep sadness and anger. I read, I absorb, my heart sinks, aches—not again, not again. At meditation group recently, we listened to a guided meditation from Tara Brach, titled Resting in Reality.  “Greet each moment with kindness,” she says.

I find that challenging right now—but as the days move forward I try to travel gently through the world, to rest in this here and now.

As I do, I notice:

The moon between tree branches on a cool, bright late afternoon walk.

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Sun coming in my front window, glinting off a blue pot, blue mug, blue book cover—an accidental still life

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Sensory memory that kicks in when I make bread for the first time in years—the feeling on my hands of sticky, elastic dough as I knead and later punch it down, shape it into loaves; the fragrance of baking; the crumb and taste of the first warm slice slathered with butter.

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The ease that washes over me as I listen to a musical setting of Wendell Berry’s poem “The Peace of Wild Things.”

Winter days

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Winter days drift slowly. On bright days, sun pours in the front windows of the house IMG_0856and I bask in the light. More frequently, the windows frame a dark green, gray, and white landscape. On the railing out front I’ve placed a blue pot filled with branches of red berries. I put it there wondering if birds would like the berries but they ignore it so I’ve hung a feeder from the plant hook where a fuschia lives in summer.

A week ago we had warm and rainy weather before the onset of cold temperatures again. The accumulated snow from previous storms melted in the rain and I walked around the gardens last Saturday, snipped branches off my discarded Christmas tree and used them to insulate the crocosmia from the predicted low temperatures.

I used to interact with winter more, plunge through the snow to fill distantly placed bird feeders, strap on my snowshoes to explore the field behind the house or rake snow off the roof. But gradually, a combination of aging joints and weather patterns that bring mixed icy precipitation has kept me inside more, viewing the world through glass panes, scurrying from house to car to office or store then car and home.

My only New Year’s intention this year was to show up in my life, but I’m not sure what that means in winter, when the pull is toward hibernation.

I look for things that delight my senses. Hot chocolate made with a dark chocolate cocoa mix and drunk from my red mug. The feel of the cat’s soft fur, her warm body weighting my legs. A dark red poinsettia in a dark blue pot. The smell of a new book when I first open it. The sharp hot bite of chili. Music, like this piece from Caroline Shaw, which both startles and satisfies me.

I saw a short video recently, The Monolith, about the NYC artist Gwyneth Leech and her response to several losses, including a skyscraper being built right outside her studio window, blocking the view that had been inspiring her art for years. She came to terms with the “monolith” by seeing it as colors and shapes and painting all the stages of construction. It’s a story about the creative process, about loss, about life, about showing up.

“…to be alive is something holy, fierce, and precious,” Jena Schwartz writes in a FaceBook post. Through the short winter days and long nights, I try to remember those words.

March in New England

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“…So how does this dialogue of green begin?”

-From “Looking for Spring” by Jean Connors

I have felt bound, boundaried, all winter. Now it’s late afternoon, late March–Skies have turned grey and it’s spitting rain, wind is whipping tree branches around, temperature hovers in the low 40s. The snow recedes slowly.

The rhododendrons have suffered winter damage, many leaves are brown and curled. Hopefully the buds are OK and bloom will be good. It’s hard to imagine May will come with its brightly blooming flowers.

A few crocuses are up and blooming IMG_0224along the front of the house. The hellebore is still covered with snow but the epimedium is uncovered–I will rake away the old foliage so the flower stalks can come up unimpeded. The boxwood near the front door is still partially buried but I can see many broken branches–it might need a radical pruning.

This afternoon after work, I swept sand off the front walk and bird seed hulls off the porch. The hungry birds have dotted the front porch with poop–the railing and porch will need painting this year. The rose bush at the front of the driveway is still covered with a big pile of snow–I suspect it will need pruning down to the ground as will the spirea in the back, also buried under big snow piles.

I want to stride across the yard but the mounds of snow deter me. Instead I pick my way along the icy path to the backyard bird feeder–I wonder if the squirrels have finally found a way in to the feeders since they’re emptying really quickly these days. This is the second time I’ve filled feeders this week.

I went for a short walk before the rain came. My next door neighbors built a snowman during Saturday’s snowfall and it’s now two large snow balls sprawled in the yard with mittens attached to the smaller ball. Down the street I spot the remains of a snow tunnel built by an enterprising child. Snow can be fun, I remind myself.

This is March in New England after a long hard winter. Bird song is changing, I’ve seen and heard mourning doves, willow trees are turning yellow, I see buds on the maple, sap is flowing–these are small hopeful signs, the beginning of a dialogue with green, but spring still seems remote–a promise, a perhaps. Be in the present I whisper to myself, find the kernel of beauty in this moment.

Morning musing

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I’m not a morning person. I don’t leap out of bed greeting the glorious morn. I savor the warmth of duvet and pillows pulled close, the slow drift in and out of sleep, the edge of light sneaking past the window shades when I open my eyes and then darkness again, the strange half dreams that happen at dawn.

 My cat has other ideas. At my first stirring she tunes up her complaints about an empty bowl. Sometimes I open my eyes to see her sitting at the end of the bed silently staring—I close my eyes again and soon feel the mattress shift slightly as she pads up the side of the bed to stand over me sniffing my breath. “Is she still alive?” I imagine her wondering (if she could wonder such things).

 And I have a job with a mandated arrival time so between imploring cat and job I have to act like a morning person. I slowly sit up, stretch, stand, and shuffle down the hall to the bathroom and then invite the yowling and purring cat to go outside so that I can have peace while I cope with the kitchen.

 I get the coffee started, pop toast in toaster, spoon cat food into cat’s dish, and then let the cat back inside. She races to her dish, meowing, and starts to eat. I take my coffee and toast and sit at the dining table, which is placed in front of a picture window winter2with a view of the birdfeeders, gardens, and trees. Right now the view is snow, snow, and more snow.

 I’m not a morning person but I’ve come to relish these few moments when I can sit by this window and drink coffee, munch on toast, watch the birds peck and nibble and squirrels chase each other. Except for the bird and squirrel activity it’s a static world in winter. On occasion I’ve seen an owl in the branches of one of the trees–every morning I look but rarely spot it. I know if I ventured out and looked closely I’d see an array of tracks but from the warmth of the house, viewed through glass, nothing moves. This is a pause, a time to breathe slowly. I sit forward on the edge of the chair so the cat can jump up behind me, her warm body pressed against my back. I sit some more, mind still on pause, before standing to begin the get-ready-for-work routine.

 What do you look forward to in your mornings?