I started writing my Christmas cards yesterday. I’m not working ahead of schedule. Not supremely organized. Just the opposite. I have finally started writing my 2024 cards.
It’s not the first time I’ve been late, and probably not the first time I’ve been this late, but at least I can say it’s unusual even for me. Still, I’d rather send them late than not at all. This is the only time I connect with some of my friends and family, but every person on the list is someone I care about, and the connection is important to me.
So if you’ve been wondering why we didn’t send holiday cards in December, fear not. They’re on the way. I couldn’t possibly waste the work the husband put into drawing them.
Being March, it still occasionally feels like Christmas outdoors in the Midwest. We had snow earlier in the week, and occasionally my weather app tells me it’s 24 degrees still, or it’s 42 but feels like 26. It’s March in Chicago, and we know to expect late snow. Fortunately, it never kills the tulips.
Truth be told, I far prefer the vernal equinox to either solstice. So a celebration now makes more sense to me. Since spring is the time when life renews itself, why shouldn’t it also be the time when we renew acquaintances and connections?
The cardinal is singing madly from on high, and the trees—at least some of them—are suddenly covered in tiny sprouting buds. The magnolia tree down the block has put forth blooms not yet (thank goodness) open, and the beautiful corner garden a block away has a full stand of blooming crocuses, the palest of lavenders striped with white.
In my garden, it’s the tiger lilies that have won the race to emerge first from their winter shelter, poking just enough green up from the soil to claim the sunlight for their breakfast. The robins have grown quite loud, nearly drowning out the cardinal by proximity.
And, oh, the geese.
When I sat down to my desk this morning, coffee in hand and the windows still closed against 40-degree temperatures, I heard them—a cacophony of honks and hollers that raised my eyes skyward. I couldn’t see them from my desk chair, my field of vision narrowed to the width and height of side-by-side window panes (and those occluded by dog slobber). But visual creature though I am, I didn’t need to see the geese. They were unmistakable, flying high above my house, calling of spring.
And so I found myself after work sitting on my porch with book in hand for the first time this season, waving to the dog walkers and watching last season’s spent hydrangeas quiver in the breeze. My seed packets arrived by mail two weeks ago and will go into peat pots indoors as soon as I buy bleach to clean the starter trays. Then I’ll put them in a sunny window, keep them moist, and check them daily, eagerly, awaiting their precious sprouts.
It might be winter again tomorrow, or next weekend. Almost certainly it will snow again before summer arrives. But today it’s spring. And that is enough.
Gratitude is easier some days than others
Today is one of the easy days, when I’m grateful for many things. Including these:
The snow gremlins have been out. Also the snow fairies.
A new winter storm came in last night right about dinnertime, dropping a couple inches on top of the couple that had fallen earlier. We awoke to a snow-covered canine playground in the back yard, and sometime early this afternoon I went to the back deck and discovered graupel—a word I learned only a couple of years ago from a fellow writer and immediately absorbed into my vocabulary because it is both useful and celebratory. I’m not sure I ever saw graupel—basically, snow pellets—as a child, but we see it quite a bit now. (On the other hand, I saw a good share of hoarfrost growing up, and I can’t remember the last time for that. It’s a shame; I remember hoarfrost to be miraculous. Alas, winter is changing. Heavy sigh.)
So yesterday and today, snow, more snow, graupel. And in between, while we weren’t looking, our neighbors shoveled our sidewalk twice. Truth; we have that kind of neighbors.
We do the same for them, actually. When I go out with the shovel (or broom in a light snow), more often than not I clear more than one segment of sidewalk. Usually two or three houses’ worth, sometimes more. I’m already out, it’s a simple enough act of kindness, a gift to both the neighbors and anyone who will walk by, including the mail carrier. And sometimes, like today, they shovel our walk.
This is the way to live in the world. Act with kindness, and kindness is more likely to come back to you.
And so today’s #frontstooppoetry is more thank-you than poem, but it defines this day.
Also…the snow was packable!
This may have been the first truly packable snowfall since we got our second dog a few months ago. She’s Tess, aka the puppy because we didn’t intend to get a puppy. We intended to get a companion for Elwood, the 6-year-old beagle. He’s the one who chose a 10-month-old. Or they chose each other. In any case, she joined the family.
And she is a lover of snow, running and frolicking in it. Today, I threw her first real snowball to her. Suffice it to say her instinct is not to catch. We’ll see if that might change.
But in between doggie play events in the back yard, I came across this sweet, royal snowman while walking through the neighborhood. I’m a lover of snowmen, perhaps a connoisseur. They bring me joy at every stage of their lives, from pristine newness to melty end of life. This one stands out for his crown and his very happy expression.
Yes, grateful
For nice neighbors, happy dogs, snowmen, and the library system that allowed me to walk just a few blocks to get a book I only learned of this morning, I’m thankful. My small blessings are everywhere.
Just like that(!), the tree seemed to fill with catbirds. I couldn’t see a single one, but my ears told me they were there, and then my Merlin app confirmed it. The catbird is one of my favorite birds—social and talkative, pretty in a quiet way. And not usually particularly shy, but today’s were. Perhaps a migrating flock?
Because they drew my eyes up to the tree canopy, the catbirds did me the favor of showing me a flitting, frolicking flock of goldfinches, who were uncharacteristically quiet. On the move almost constantly, they skipped from branch to branch, back and forth, and it took me some minutes to make out their brilliant yellow plumage.
Too long away
I haven’t sat out on the porch since before Tank died. This was his spot with me, and Rolo’s with and before him. We could sit for hours, them watching the world go by (Rolo) or sleeping (Tank), me reading or working. I think it’s no coincidence that I’ve returned now, when suddenly there’s another dog to accompany me. The new guy, Elwood, isn’t 100 percent comfortable yet on the porch, but then he isn’t really 100 percent comfortable anywhere, yet. It will come. He’s settling in more every day, showing more and more of his personality, claiming new spaces for his own.
Dogs, birds, books, neighbors. That’s what the porch is for, and my favorite times to be on it are during the spring and fall bird migrations. Tonight’s migration forecast is “HIGH” (Thanks, BirdCast!). I wonder who I’ll see!
It’s a grateful Sunday. Gray and occasionally misty outdoors, following a day or so of strong but not scary wind, all I believe remnants of Hurricane Helene, which moved so much more quickly than most post-hurricane storm systems. I’m tired of gray, rainy days, but grateful to have my home in tact, no giant limbs ripped from trees, no heartbreak.
A friend in Georgia has heartbreak, a home and yard she loved in tatters, trees through the roof, ceilings collapsed. The home is uninhabitable, probably reparable eventually but currently with no power, a gas leak in the area, and of course that jagged opening to the sky. My friend has decamped to Atlanta, grateful that she, her husband and dog were uninjured, but devastated by this abrupt loss and the uncertainty that is now her world.
Friends in Florida were lucky this time, and they and I are grateful for that. At the same time, we’re reminded again how precarious the world is and especially the climate. We have done this to ourselves, and here in the Midwest it’s still easy—though terribly short-sighted—to not be worried. Our temperatures have risen, spring comes earlier, and here in September the leaves are already falling from some trees. Tornados and other dangerously severe storm systems are more common. It’s not the same climate I grew up in. While it’s a grateful Sunday, it’s also a wary one, worried for friends, worried for our interconnected future.
So I read
Meanwhile, what better to do with gray days that read and cuddle with a dog? I’ve just finished my Roger Angell book (This Old Man), having started down the rabbit hole of other reading it inspired even before closing the cover. I’ve checked one Angell-inspired book out on Hoopla, placed a library hold on another, and read two poems that Angell singled out for praise: Elizabeth Bishop’s “Poem,” and Philip Levine’s “Turkeys.” I confess I don’t yet love either one as much as Angell did. But I’m still re-reading them, and one of Levine’s lines stuck its claws into me instantaneously: “… The next year / spring came late if / at all. …”
Wow.
Wonderland
The rabbit hole already has opened into a warren I might get lost in, as looking for the Bishop poem I chanced on this blog post about it, referencing an essay discussing it in the introduction of a book, and now I also have a blog post and a book introduction to read.
All of which reminds me of something I read not long ago in defense of owning books you might never read, wherein someone made an argument that books aren’t only for reading. That’s right. Discovering books nourishes the soul, too—reading the back cover or the first paragraphs or pages in the book store and having those grab your interest so that you want to read it right then, even if you already have 200 books awaiting your attention, even if after you get it home you never recapture that moment of being thrilled and intrigued and the book ultimately goes unread in your home.
Meanwhile, I’m off to book club in an hour to discuss Dawn Turner’s memoir Three Girls from Bronzeville, which I read shortly after it was published in 2021 and haven’t reread but hope to remember clearly enough to profit from the conversation. On our way to book club, we’ll stop at the library to drop off Roger Angell and pick up the on-hold book it led me to by Donald Barthelme.
Enter Elwood, stage left
Did you notice where I mentioned cuddling with a dog earlier? We said goodbye to our Tank on August 1—I hope one day to be able to write about this, but for now it’s still too raw—and have been living without a dog in the house for the first time in 30 years. That ended last Sunday, when we drove into Chicago and met Duke, a shy 6-year-old beagle. We brought him home on a trial basis—because we have two rabbits (Tank’s best friends) who occupy a hutch in our living room; any dog we bring in has to be able to co-exist—and so far, so good. We believe we are headed toward adoption, in which case Duke will become Elwood. We would not normally rename a 6-year-old dog, but this guy truly does not recognize Duke as his name and responded to Elwood the moment we tried it out.
Already we’re growing attached, both to this sweet beagle and to the renewed experience of living with a dog. The greetings, the wiggles, the cuddles, the outings to the woods, the soft scent of dog. Elwood bounds into the room and tiptoes into our hearts.
The hawks are well and truly gone. Yesterday, believing they had left the nest the day before, I walked past to check (of course) and found that I could see much less of the nest than I had previously. One adult bird was up there, facing away from me and doing … something. There was its head moving, its tail bobbing a bit. But there didn’t seem to be any young birds. I heard one hawk call from a tree somewhere nearby, but that was it.
Today, another check. High, high in the sky a raptor soared above me. In the nesting tree, no birds. In fact, no nest.
No nest. It’s gone. Our nest of two years, that I watched a pair build last year, is no more. I don’t know if the young birds damaged it while trying to fly, if a storm hit it, or if the birds actively dismantled it because they were done.
I must read more about Cooper’s hawks. I want to be an informed neighbor, a good neighbor. And of course I hope they come back next year. I’m pretty confident they’re still in the neighborhood, but where? I must read more about Cooper’s hawks.
Flowers, not hawks
On the bright side, my milkweed and day lilies are in full bloom, together, a lovely combination. The hydrangeas, too, are thriving. And the bee balm and sweet peas that I put in last year have taken root—finally. I have tried both before with no success.
Yesterday I spied the bright red of a milkweed bug flying through the flowers some distance away from me. Its color gave it away; it was too small to identify otherwise at that distance. What a delightful surprise it was. I usually see them happily settled on the plants, sometimes massed together, rarely a single one in flight.
Ah, summer in the garden. If only the vegetables would thrive so well. This year’s lot seems somewhat sad: only one tomato plant with any flowers (and a meager couple they are); the basil scraggly but trying to recover from nibbling by bugs—probably our cicada emergence—at the start of the summer; no blossoms yet on the beans. Even the dill seed decided not to germinate (or perhaps got eaten?), so I had to put in a couple of plants later on. I’ll hold out hope, though, for a recovery.
