It's a Different Year.

When looking back over last years blogs I came across this one for St. Patricks Day, 2009.  It was one of my earliest blogs and very few people read it back then. I decided to recycle part  of it.

What is interesting is how things have changed in a year.  For one thing, I now have a fence around the garden.  For another, There is no color in my garden except a few crocus blooms. The ones in the photo below are the same plants I featured in the March 12, 2010 entry.  This February was a bit colder than last year.  I don't know about the average, but I know that we did not have any warm days like we do most years. The Magnolia shows little signs of blooming.  The buds are swollen as are the dogwood, but we will need some sunshine coax the blooms out. I'll see if they show color by tomorrow, St. Patricks Day 2010.

So, please enjoy seeing what I say a year ago.  

 (St. Patricks Day, 2009) The Morning fog is fading as the sun burns it off. Last night it finally rained so I figure that todays sun will cause the grass to green up quickly.

Up until last week there was very little color in the garden. The deer must be having trouble finding food in the woods because they have decided to spend their evenings eating whatever they find in my garden. I have hooked flags of fabric softner everywhere in an effort to deter the deer. It seems to work for a couple weeks. hopefully by then Spring will have brought new shoots and buds to the woods, giving the deer another place to take their meals. Notice that in this picture, taken a week ago, there is no sign of blooms. Now things are changing by the hour. Exuberant signs of creation are everywhere. Once the robins and worms began their movement, every thing else followed. The ground is bulging with signs of Spring. The crocus blooms show bright purple and yellow and the jonquils have begun to shine. These early jonquils were rehabilitated from a home site that was abandoned over 100 years ago. In the late spring, if you can find the spot now in the middle of the woods, you will come upon hundreds of yellow blooms of jonquils or daffodils amidst thousands of blue periwinkle blossoms. I haven't taken the short trip across the hill to the site, recently because the last two summers have seen heavy logging on top of the woodland garden. While I understand the need for the money brought in from the timber, I'm afraid my heart will break. I'll go back after the forest has had time to heal. Meanwhile I'll enjoy the yellow that is the first color of my own garden.

Yesterday the Star Magnolia bloomed. At 9:00 am there were only a few buds showing pink, but by 2:00 in the afternoon, some flowers had fully blossomed.

The peonies have even poked their heds through the soil. Of course the Resurection Lillies (you may call them Surprise Lillies or my favorite name, Naked Ladies) have had leaves up for a few weeks. It pleases me to know that they will die back; then, once I've forgotten all about them, their bright pink flowers will bloom atop tall stems, "naked" of leaves

Besides all the blooming and budding activity, Spring brings activity of the birds and the bees. A couple days ago a flock of about thirty turkeys sauntered through the yard. The hens and gobblers were so preoccupied with each other that I had time to get my camera and take a few shots. There were three pairs of males paired off as each tried to prove his "turkeyness" They were fluffed out huge with tail feathers displayed as they slowly circled each other.

The birds know that winter is not yet gone for good. All the regulars are still here, juncos, bluejays, red bellied and downy woodpeckers. Llast week were were even visited by a yellow bellied sapsucker. Isn't that the best name ever? It spent the day checking out the suet feeder then closely examining the trees for bugs. I suppose it is here all winter, but we seldom see it.
(Note - The yellow-bellied woodpecker came back this winter, 2010.  Perhaps it will be a regular winter visitor)

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Reformed Theology

It’s early February and things don’t seem so great. Some days are nice, but most days are overcast as morning sees a gray soupy pall ascending until it reaches the dull frozen earth below. When the sun appears it is to warm the  Earth's crust until grass mixes with mud leaving indentations from shoes that must be removed at the door.

February might leave many of us fighting cabin fever as winter’s siege holds us behind our doors. For many, there may not seem a reason to hope.

But for me, this is a time of hope. In February I must cling to the hope that spring will come. Green will return, reborn from the brown leaf litter under which it hides through the long winter.  My hope is based on experience.  For generations spring has brought the color for which I yearn.  Even as December is ending and the hours of daylight grow, it is in such slight increments as not to be detected until February makes me suddenly aware.  Yes, once again the light that never really left will grow brighter and brighter until it warms the Whole; until it warms my shoulders melting the heaviness that I have carried through these dark months. First I see the dark green tips of daffodil leaves as they push through the dirt, pointing skyward.  Next chartreuse parsley appears, seemingly overdressed in its frilliness.  Its immature leaves are curved and twisted to catch  and hold every drop of light.

Each day that I go out to meet the world I see more signs.  If I miss them it is because I'm not paying attention.  I hear the robins now. Soon they will leave the woods which have sheltered them to  once again dot our yards and fields as they search for worms.

Tiny green hearts spread out over a small hill in my flower garden with their promise off bright yellow sunbursts, violets that are the first blossoms of my garden, often blooming through the snow. The corms from these plants have spread around the edge of the compost pile, remnants from an energetic weeding episode. 

Even the trees are getting ready for the promised spring. The redbud has swollen almost to the point of bursting which is just what it will do very soon as its deep pink blossoms are scattered through the woods and line the highways of Appalachia. The two volunteer redbuds in my garden appear healthy despite being eaten by bugs last summer and nibbled by deer this winter.  It is that pink spot repeating itself throughout the woods, seemingly attached like a long string of Christmas lights, that show the connectedness of the entire forest, connected with itself; connected with me, connected with the light.

Another early bloomer is the magnolia though its buds now more closely resemble a dust wand than a flower.  These fleece-like buds give me more hope of what is to come.  Hope that swells from my memories, from my experience, from what I've read, from what others tell me.  We all know that spring will come even though we might forget it in the cold of winter. 

But not in February.  In February my excitement builds as hope becomes faith. There is nothing that I can do to stop it. I have knowledge that the unseen spring will follow as the earth is reformed, reshaped into something new, yet something that has been there all along, connected to that first organism growing under the warmth of the first light, connected to me.