Tag Archives: Garden

Leaps of faith, acts of hope

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Spring’s first crocus arrived yesterday in the back yard, a bright purple beauty that, astonishingly, is still around today. Astonishing because our wild rabbits seem to love crocuses (I know, croci, but really?!), and the purple ones are their favorites. You doubt me? Years of experience have taught me that the rabbits’ dining preferences are an exact match for my aesthetic ones. They love a purple crocus flower best, followed by a white one, and least of all the yellow, which sometimes get left in place when all the others have been devoured. As with most things in my garden, I don’t begrudge them, though I’m always sad to lose the cheery crocus blooms, which are for me a true sign of spring.

Inside, my seedlings have begun to sprout, sending delicate stems stretching up from the dirt to remind me that life goes on. I’ve planted mostly vegetables and greens inside: kale and kalettes, chard, summer squash, basil, spinach. In addition to the raised bed, they’ll fill pots on the patio alongside edible flowers like marigolds and nasturtiums. I’ve started sunflowers indoors this year, too, a first for me. This is an experiment because the critters usually get whatever sunflower seed I direct sow outdoors. Again, I don’t begrudge them; even this year there’s extra seed left over, plenty for everyone. What else will I direct sow? Beans, lettuce, herbs, bee balm, and other seeds I can’t remember without hauling myself out of this chair right now to look.

Spring is my favorite season, a renewal, regeneration, start of the new cycle of life. It always cheers me, and this year I think I’m trying to escape the world by turning my eyes to the garden. I’m looking for reasons to be hopeful, and nature always provides.

It’s election season, which means postcard-writing season for me, and this year that has been an act of hope more than one of faith. I don’t know that I trust in the electoral process right now, but I refuse to surrender it. And so yesterday I dropped 100 postcards to swing-state voters through the mail slot at the Post Office that the current federal government wants to shut down. (That’s fewer cards than my usual contribution, but I’m plagued by a repetitive stress issue in my writing hand right now and wasn’t sure I could commit to more than 100.) Mailing GOTV postcards is always a joyous moment for me, and this year a somewhat defiant and very determined one.

Today I’m grateful for:

  • People who love and organize
  • Spring sunlight
  • A single purple crocus

Hawk watch

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Thursday was the day I started looking up at the treetops while walking, hoping to spot nesting Cooper’s Hawks.

We have them in the neighborhood, and we’ve had nests within a couple blocks of our house for the last two years. The right time to spot the nests is when they’re first being built, before the leaves grow in and obscure the view. By late spring, when the babes are born and starting to grow, it’s hard to see those nests through the foliage if you don’t already know where they are.

Thursday was warm and sunny, and I realized while out walking that this should be close to the time of the year when the nest-building begins. Perhaps a bit early, but better to start looking early than late. So upward went my eyes.

I haven’t yet spotted nesting hawks. But on Friday my search was rewarded with the discovery of a pair of nesting crows. I don’t think I’ve ever seen crows build a nest before, but there they were, two black tails wiggling together in a tree joint way up high, then one flying off southward and the other lifting off 10 seconds later headed east, both to return later to wiggle again side by side. Now that I know where to look, they’re easy to see.

As the March wind blows

I’m sitting on my front porch as I type, enjoying spring’s warmth and the bright, filtered sunlight of a partly cloudy day. The neighbor children are out, tossing baseballs and riding scooters, and winter seems truly banished even while the weather forecast threatens snow for tomorrow. The lilac has sprouted just the tiniest green buds, the forsythia seems from a distance to have done the same, and the tulips have shoved through the ground to soak up the light. Today is the day I’ll start seed pots indoors, filled with anticipation for the delicate seedlings to appear. Outdoors, I’ll leave the mulch of fall leaves untouched to protect everything that might be growing and sheltering beneath it.

I start my day grateful, for nature in all its glory and fury:

  • Sunlight
  • Warmth
  • Newly sprouted buds
  • Songbirds all around

The world around me is in chaos, and I’m worried about the state of my country and the future of our most vulnerable neighbors, our children and their children, not to even mention myself. That worry is ever-present these days, and I struggle to find a balance that lets me get through each day without ignoring what’s happening in the society around me. Looking to nature helps, but doesn’t make the worry go away. Nature and our actions are intertwined, and even as I carefully tend my own small place in the world I see the warning signs that show the damage we are doing on a much larger scale.

The geese are calling

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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:

  • Sunshine
  • Spring warmth
  • Geese high overhead, chattering

My tree is not dying (really!)

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White pine tree with brown needlesStrange title, perhaps, but this really is about a tree. We have a white pine in our yard, right behind our deck. It shades the deck in summer and provides a visual screen against traffic on a busy street. While it’s not my favorite tree in the world, it serves a useful purpose; I’d say it’s convenient.

I noticed about a week ago that a lot of its needles were browning, and a few had started to fall off. Within a few days, brown needles were raining down on our deck and the ground, and I started wondering if we were going to lose this giant of a tree. Continue reading →