For the night followed by the day
for the idle winter ground followed by the energy of spring for the infolding of the earth followed by bursts of unfolding thanks be to you, O God. from Saturday Morning Prayer, in Celtic Benediction by J. Phillip Newell
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Spring keeps dancing on the threshold, teasing us with a day of sun and warm temperatures, followed by gray, windy days and frost. But she can't hide completely. There are hints of new life everywhere.
This morning I smelled the sharp, green scent of newly cut grass, thanks to the first mowing on campus. We're in the greening time -- in a few days time, the grass has gone from a dormant huddled brown to a vibrant growing green. And a gauzy green is beginning to tint the gray-brown bushes.
So today I'm celebrating green, and Viriditas, indoors and out. From Mary Sharratt, author of Illuminations, a novel about Hildegarde of Bingen, the medieval German Benedictine abbess, composer, theologian, visionary and naturalist: A cornerstone of Hildegard's spirituality was Viriditas, or greening power, her revelation of the animating life force manifest in the natural world that infuses all creation with moisture and vitality. To her, the divine was manifest in every leaf and blade of grass. Just as a ray of sunlight is the sun, Hildegard believed that a flower or a stone was God, though not the whole of God. Creation revealed the face of the invisible creator. Hildegard celebrated the sacred in nature, something highly relevant for us in this age of climate change and the destruction of natural habitats. The Elkhart Truth editorial cartoon this morning showed an outlined paint-by-number April landscape of two glum-looking people walking their dog. The color key read: 1. Gray, 2. Gray, 3. Gray, 4. Gray, 5. Gray, 6. Gray.
April indeed. But April showers also bring April flowers. The daffodils and Siberian iris are bright spots of color, even when covered with raindrops. The bridal wreath spirea is a tangle of bare branches with tiny buds of green and a king's ransom of raindrop gems. And a pair of house-hunting ducks came wandering through the back yard, perfectly content with the weather. The violets under my front step are blooming and fragrant, and there is a violet carpet under the bushes nearby. The mini-daffodils, barely four inches tall, have opened, and the taller daffodils are on the verge of it. Our forsythia hasn't quite burst out yet, nor the flowering quince, but they are both brimming with potential. And all along the canal yesterday, John and I spotted pairs of mallards, some scouting good nesting sites and others checking out the fast food menu, bright orange feet splashing.
At long last, some days with sunshine and warmer temperatures, so yesterday I headed down to the Calendar Garden to see what early spring looked like there.
It's an in-between time, with a lot of trimming and garden clean-up happening. The new is beginning to appear, like the hyacinth just starting to poke up through red-gold sedum. But there are still plenty of remnants -- leaves and river birch bark and dried hydrangea blossoms, lit by warm sunlight, stirring memories of last year's autumnal reds, golds and browns. And, unexpectedly, a flock of goldfish brightening the pond -- and nary a frog or pollywog in sight. The spring equinox, so today we are standing on the threshold between fall/winter and spring/summer -- and today was a day that held glimpses of both. As I walked across campus this morning, I heard the soft cooing of a mourning dove, a forerunner of the summer days ahead. The sun slid between puffy clouds of gray, sending a welcome shaft of sunlight across the bare trees ahead of me -- and when I looked towards the east, I discovered a gauzy veil of dancing snowflakes. They were hardly visible when I looked west, except for an occasional large flake that caught the light. And then there was the windchill that took the temperature down into the teens. Huddled in my winter coat and scarf, I felt a kinship with these early purple crocuses, and their decision to stay furled this morning. In a south facing bed, the yellow and white crocus were cautious, but started to loosen up as the sun touched them, and later brought a welcome touch of golden light. The photo of the snowdrops is from a warmer day last week. I took it just in time -- they are pretty much done now. I wanted to commemorate my delight in their nearly two months of blooming, hidden again and again under snow and yet still standing. There's also a touch of summer in this photo. A bee scrambled headfirst into one of the blossoms and if you look closely, you may be able to spot where it's hiding.
Walking across campus this past sunny Sunday afternoon, John and I encountered a flock of about two dozen robins, feasting on the crabapples near the Rec-Fitness Building. They were all a-flutter, hopping around on the melting snow, keeping a safe distance from passersby, and constantly moving from ground to tree branch and then back down to join the flock on the ground.
I grew up thinking of robins as the traditional sign of spring, but I've learned that the robin's winter range extends from the Gulf coat into Michigan. We don't notice them as much in winter, unless we come across a flock like this, because they don't come to bird feeders. They prefer wintered-over fruit, like bitter crabapples that have mellowed with the freezing and thawing. The summer robins from this area are most likely further south right now, while the ones we saw Sunday spent their summer further north. Who knows -- maybe this is the same flock that we saw feasting on mountain ash berries at the Glick cabin near Edmonton last September, getting ready for their flight south. |
My approach to contemplative photography --
"Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." Mary Oliver in "Sometimes" Archives
August 2020
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