SPRING SONG

When spring comes along, the winter-weary heart rejoices. 

No matter whether the day is sunny and warm, the very personification of the new season—or dreary and cold, with sleet and snow pouring from a sullen sky. What's important is that winter has been left behind and is already fading in our memory's rearview mirror. 

Spring has arrived, the word itself setting mood and direction. One does spring up, after all…so it only follows that we're instantly uplifted. Dark spirits are lightened, ennui metamorphoses into energy, despondency becomes hope. There is vernal magic afoot, and even if we can't see it with our eyes, we feel it stirring in our DNA.

The spheres have danced their timeless waltz. Earth has spun and whirled, bowed to the sun, tilted that necessary degree as it crossed the celestial equator. Daylight now rules over darkness. 

Spring is here and our souls rejoice in gladdened song!             

ROBIN UP!

The sun has just made it over the hill up the road from the cottage. Yellow-gold light is now varnishing the high tops of the tall sycamores on the island. There's not a cloud in the sky and the weatherman says we'll reach 77˚F this afternoon!

What a glorious day!

I've been up since 4:45, took Moon-the-Dog out, made coffee for me, tea for Mylady, fixed our breakfast, and by 6:00 a.m. was here, at my desk, plugging away at the first draft of a column. It was still dark beyond the window, but even so, the robins were beginning to stir. Every so often one would cut loose with a few swinging bars of their distinctive morning song—and while night lost its hold and black turned to gray as the burgeoning dawn found it way, the song of the robins became louder, bolder, longer, the building light being magically translated and poured out in their reflected joy.

I love robins, love their straightforward, joyous song. They sing with such unbridled enthusiasm! As if their hearts have simply swollen and finally bubbled over with pure melody—too glorious to be held back and contained until dawn. And so they sing their good news into the darkness, a boisterous proclamation of vernal triumph. A singing robin is truly spring personified, lyrical proof-positive of the season's arrival.

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SPRING SONG

A song sparrow sits on the corner of the riverside deck and
lives up to its name by filling the morning with melody. 

Spring is in full swing here along the riverbank—with each successive day trying to outshine the one before.

The new crop of green leaves, in a thousand different shades, is coming along nicely. A veritable chlorophyll explosion. Some trees and shrubs are already more than halfway leafed out, their cover already concealing the understructure of limbs and branches. Of course the innumerable sycamores, which lean thoughtfully over the freshet-darkened water like white-robed druids, have barely begun their annual transformation. Sycamores always wait, as if watching to make sure they aren't being fooled by a trick of weather…though perhaps they simply choose to exercise the dignity of a more sedate pace—the pace of a tree whose leaves, when finally fully formed, will sometimes measure a foot across. You call those paltry little green flaps leaves? Nahhhh…these are leaves!  

Now, too, the chorus of feathered songsters begins well before dawn—robins, sparrows, cardinals, titmice, and warblers who've stopped by for rest and refueling on their journey north. In fact, yesterday I chalked up another first-time visitor when a dazzling orange-and-black bedecked male Blackburnian Warbler slid down the cable holding the hummingbird feeder and proceeded to drink his fill of sugar water. He was gone before I could get my camera, but returned a half-dozen times throughout the day, and I managed to snap enough images to be certain of the identification—though not one is usable for posting.

I don't think I've mentioned it, but the hummingbirds showed up hereabouts last week. The first one I saw appeared on a cold (40˚F), dark and drizzling mid-morning. Not at one of the feeders, but hovering just beyond my windowpane, as if miffed at this large fellow hunched over the keyboard in the warm and dry. Since, I've had hummers—mostly males—at the feeders almost continuously.

There's a lot more to report, but I'll save that for other posts. Moreover, I've just noted a very yellow warbler flitting about the big box elder near the front door. Duty calls…

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REASSURING ROBIN

I wish I looked and felt as bright-eyed and cheerful as this robin I found practically at my feet this morning. I'd stepped out onto the deck to check on the river and allow Moon-the-dog to make her usual investigation of the cedars over by the board fence, when the bird flew down from a nearby box elder and landed no more than three feet away. After giving me a moment's close scrutiny—Does he look the sort who'd relish robins-on-toast for breakfast?—the bird apparently decided I passed inspection…and in the usual robin fashion, tilted and dashed forward even closer, stopping about a foot from the rock upon which I stood. 

I switched on the autofocus, held the camera at knee-level, and pushed the shutter. The friendly robin didn't flinch.

Robins are the personification of spring, a harbinger of the season itself. Their sudden en masse arrival on local lawns in late-February or early-March is newsworthy—a message of hope and changing times to be related to neighbors you meet at the mailbox, the cashier at the corner market, or the old gent down at feed-and-seed store. And such info will doubtless become the morning's premiere conversation topic among the breakfast bunch down at the local café. 

Even non-birder types incapable of naming a half-dozen common backyard species can usually manage to recognize a robin. They know what the robin's annual return implies, too—though you, being privy to such secrets, know that for many robins, their overwintering destination was often no farther away than the nearest woodland thicket. No matter—the facts and folklore don't have to match. Besides, you're as glad as they are to see robins on the lawn again…even if they've been hiding quite nearby these past months.

As winter turns to spring, robins sing in the season. How many mornings in March and April have I stood in the pre-dawn darkness and listened to a robin belting out his ebullient melody from some nearby treetop? It may not be the most complicated tune in the bird world, but it's catchy and swinging, filled with the bright green joy of spring, and the robin sings loud and clear with the lusty verve of his lark heritage. 

These past few days have been cold and often cloudy. Nothing out of the ordinary; just spring doing its usual seasonal two-step. But I've had enough. I'm weary of gray skies and heavy jackets. The grass is green…but not much else. I want to look through the woods on the islands and see that fine green "mist" among the skeletal limbs and intertwined branches that tells me things are beginning to leaf out. I want to amble a forest hillside and search for wildflowers. I'd like to plant a few bulbs in the garden. Or sit on the bench beside the river and warm my bones in the sun. My back and knee still ache. 

I want to stand by the cottage pool, cast my fly, and again feel the sudden electric weight of a smallmouth bass on the end of my line.

Yes…I know—all this will come in time. Maybe that's why this morning's robin came so near…to reassure me that all I have to do is wait.

———————                        

DAFFODILS…I THINK

My first daffodils bloomed yesterday—though they could have been jonquils. Daffodils?Jonquils? I've never quite grasped the difference. I know that all jonquils are daffodils—that is to say they are both narcissus—but not all daffodils are jonquils. Which is which, I dunno. But my mother did. She always said her daffodils bloomed first. The ones she called jonquils sported smaller blooms than the flowers she identified as daffodils—and were very fragrant.

Whichever these are, they're located on the steep, rock-strewn hillside between the cottage and the road—a sort of tangled border, almost a thicket, with lots of trees, which I allow to remain wild and do nothing to maintain other than lop out some of the honeysuckle. A few bloodroots grow here, and even fewer jack-in-the-pulpits, along with the ubiquitous blue violets. But I wouldn't have expected these daffodils to bloom first. Instead, my money would have been on a small planting of the same species near the south side of the cottage. Usually it's these bulbs, protected from winter's winds and warmed by heat radiated from the cottage's stone wall, that poke up the first green shoots—sometimes amid patches of snow—and later, unfurl the first butter-yellow blooms.

This year, however, for whatever reason, the rowdy hillside bunch took the honors, gleaming like shards of sunlight come mid-morning. The laggardly cottage patch didn't show their yellow blooms until late afternoon.

We've had a a bit of rain before dawn, as well as a few light showers throughout the morning—though none in the last hour. In fact the sun is now out. I don't think we'll make it above 60˚F today; certainly we'll not enjoy a repeat of yesterday's 72˚F high. However, after a long winter—with rain expected for tomorrow and snow flurries predicted for Thursday—none of us riverbankers are keen on wasting such outside time. A song sparrow is whistling merrily. The squirrels are busy chasing about and squabbling over sunflower seeds. A couple of kingfishers are working the river. And just a few minutes ago a pair of Canada geese plucked their way through the corner of the yard visible from my workroom window.

I need to get out there and take advantage of whatever good weather the day serves up—doing more raking and clean-up in the back yard or in the small patch beyond where the drive slants down the hill, and which has been sorely neglected for too long. It's part of this year's yard plans to get this landscaped and planted. Who know? It might even happen.

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SPRING HAS SPRUNG!

Spring has sprung, 

the sun has riz,

the grass is green

…and I'm glad I is!

——Bubba Shakespeare

                             Drivel Scribbler Extraordinaire 

Spring is here! Hip, hip, hooray! 

And you of little faith said we'd never get here! Ha! Got outsmarted by time and season again, didn't you? 

Yeah, I know…belief was tough back in February when snow and ice threatened to take over forever and bury us in winter. The power went out, roads were closed, and we had to huddle by the fireplace for several days with no Internet or cable. Couldn't even make a decent cup of cappuccino. Why, we were practically reduced to becoming Neanderthals—evolution in reverse. How could anyone possibly believe in spring's inevitability?

But come it did, just like always. The old earth spun its way merrily along the familiar path through the dark heavens. That 23.45 degrees of tilt began to work in our favor. The ice and snow melted. Temperatures climbed from single to double digits. February gave way to March. And once more, our little corner of the world began to reawaken from another long sleep.

The turkey vultures returned to their roost on the island across from the cottage. Robins started singing their morning song amid velvet dawns. Skunk cabbage stuck their mottled gnome-hat spathes up from the boggy muck, yellow crocus appeared along the stone wall, and bees somehow found their way to the blooms. Even the river seems to be burbling with excitement.

Is there any wonder more marvelous than spring's resurrection? 

Yes, officially speaking, if you insist on being a stickler for details, spring doesn't arrive hereabouts until approximately 7:30 p.m. when all the astronomical alignments are in their place and you can scientifically say the vernal equinox has passed. But I say spring is more a matter of the heart than of science. Like love, spring can never be quantified or reduced to a mere formula. Spring is deeper, more meaningful than a notation in an almanac or a few words at the bottom of a calendar's date box.

Spring is hope and faith and belief personified into reality. It's a journey fulfilled, a destination reached…a longing in the soul satisfied. No wonder birds sing so sweetly in the spring! 

What a wonderful day! Spring is here. And I'm so very grateful to bid it welcome!

———————  

    

GROUNDED

A rather damp, dreary day here along the river, with light showers, off and on, since sometime before dawn. Heavier rains are predicted for this afternoon, tonight, and early tomorrow. The temperature is going the wrong way, too; 39˚F currently, which is four degrees cooler than it was at 6:00 a.m.

Actually, this might prove a blessing in disguise, since I won't be able to get out and work in the yard. I'm not sure my back can take another day of raking up winter's debris, restacking firewood, moving stones, or digging new planting beds. I'm already to the point where the pain pills have no effect whatsoever. A weather-induced rest, and time to heal, may be God's way of forcing common sense on an otherwise hopeless case.

The yard geese have just ambled up the bank to see whether I tossed them any tidbits from breakfast. (Nope.) I will give them a scoop of cracked corn as soon as I finish this post. In the meantime, they can pluck at my grass and give me the evil eye through the window all they want—but I'm not going to become their flunky.

An hour ago I looked out the front window and saw a treetop full of turkey vultures. So late in the morning, it was obvious they'd been grounded by the weather. While not exactly early birds, most days the vulture contingent is up and away by mid-morning.

Actually there were several trees with vulture-littered crowns—I counted 73 sitting birds total, among four adjacent trees—plus more in the air, flapping from limb to limb or tree to tree, sometimes making a quick glide circle over the river or around a few additional trees before settling back down among the clan. Occasionally one of the vultures would spread it's wings into a classic drying/sunning pose…but only for a moment, since there was no warming sun and no hope of drying out damp feathers; all a poor buzzard could to accomplish was to chill his wingpits and appear even sillier than normal.

My funereal-cloaked neighbors looked bored by their forced rest—restless, anxious to get a'wing and off, soaring high, on the lookout for a tasty morsel of ripe roadkill. I know the feeling. I'm also anxious to get out and about myself—though I'm hurting too badly to do anything useful. I still want to be on the move, driving along a rural backroad, looking for wildflowers or spring buds, birds, critters, stopping to peer over bridges spanning country brooks and seeing if I can spot fish or tadpoles in the pools.

Spring has sprung, even if the weather has taken a backtrack. I don't want miss a moment.

———————

SIMPLE MAGIC

Time. Heat. Light.

How simple the formula. And all produced by a few hours of March sunshine.

Yet with these three ingredients comes something wondrous—a splash of color amid the brown leaves that instantly fills the eyes and warms the heart. A flower! Specifically, a purple crocus striped with white. Not just any crocus, mind you, but The Crocus—the premier bloom, the initial flower, the awaited first of its kind of the year.

Whether it's a daffodil or crocus, or something else. It's the first! Is there any garden flower more welcome, more anticipated? Nope, not in my book. There may be yellow winter aconites blooming up the road. Or white snowdrops in a neighbor's rock garden. But this fledgling crocus is special because it is yours—planted by your hand, grown in your soil, a gleaming spring-bright child of your loving labors. A gift of natural magic.

A vernal blessing which gladdens your heart.

——————

A WET-BUZZARD DAY

It’s a “wet buzzard” day here along the river. One of those drippy, drizzly, dark, damp, dreary days that I find delightful, though the aforementioned turkey vultures who roost on the island across from the cottage don’t look nearly so pleased. Rainy days aren't good for soaring, so a hungry buzzard looking for a tasty bite of breakfast roadkill sometimes has to sit idle and soaked, hoping for drier times. While the majority of their dark-robed clan have taken refuge by huddling on limbs of various large sycamores, close to the trunks, a handful of birds have found perches in the tops of a tree or two. Since these trees afford a good view to the west, maybe the birds are supposed to be acting as lookouts, scanning for a glimpse of clearing weather. However, they’ve all turned their backs toward the prevailing winds, which is also the direction of any possible storm relief. Rather than attentive, they simply look miserable. The rain began yesterday evening around 8:00 p.m. with a lot of lightning and thunder histrionics, which continued throughout the night. But the drama was more flash and sound than actual substance. A dawn inspection of the river revealed no more than a 2-3 inch rise in water level, though I expect that to increase some as the day progresses and the rain that fell north of here gets fed into the mainstream by the tributaries. When you live on a river, you have to remember it doesn’t matter how much rain falls on you and your portion of the drainage area—it’s the upstream rainfall that counts. Sometimes the water rises several feet here, although we’d never received the first drop of rain. Frankly, I’m glad to have this rain. The moisture will help bring out the wildflowers—of which, there’s been a dearth so far—and might, with luck, induce the delectable morel mushrooms to begin popping up in the greening woods. Most of us hard-core outdoor foragers rank these “sponge” ‘rooms near the top of our list for toothsome wild treats. The rain’s one downside is that I’ll probably have to buy that new lawnmower soon. My pair of Canada geese are doing their part, and they’ve even sublet a couple of corners of the yard to some noisy mallards…but the grass appears to be winning. I had high hopes [here] but the female Canada is now nesting over on the island, so her contributions to keeping my grass in check have been greatly reduced. Still, a bit of spring rain is a good thing…unless you’re a buzzard.

SOLEMN PROMISE

(For Francis L. Snare, 1920–2009)

It is finished, old friend.
We have gathered and wept,
listened to sermon and song,
prayed, eulogized, remembered.
Said our final good-byes.

An uneasy assembly
seated first in a hushed room,
laden thick with flower scent,
then standing amid a field of stones,
with ragged sky overhead,
doves murmuring in the eaves,
wrens and sparrows singing
in the hedgerows beyond.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
We gave you back to the earth
you once worked and knew
by the sweat of your brow.
On this cool March morning
when spring’s hope begins
to fulfill its joyous promise,
a bit too early for wildflowers,
though purple crocus bloom
and red maples glow crimson,
we have done what we could,
what was necessary and right.

You always loved the spring,
would have delighted in this day.
I tell you, the creek down the hill
looks fishable! Clear and low,
riffles sparkling their secret pledge.
Smallmouth bass would surely
be stirring in the emerald pools,
responding to the ancient pull
of warm and increasing light.
Your laughter would be booming,
exhilarated by the sight, eager,
confident of the vernal potential.

Instead, a nearby workman leans
on his shovel, waiting patiently
for those who linger, reluctant,
slow to turn away and find their cars.

Where do we go from here?
After we’ve wound our way
along the few miles of rural backroads,
to the little country church where
a meal is being served to those
desiring food and fellowship.
What can we do after that?

We’ve bid you fond farewell,
though the gesture seems inadequate.
Yet those who knew your faith would not
call you back—even if we could.

Still, I make this solemn promise…
though seasons pass one into another,
so long as one of us standing here remains,
you will not be forgotten.

THE GREEN EYE

Tiz again St. Patrick’s Day. And since we Irish are a friendly, generous lot, just for today we’ll grant the rest of you—Irish wannabes, the heritage impaired, anyone who'd like to join in the fun—naturalized citizenship, and thereupon temporarily claim you for our own. You can put on a funny green hat. Eat green spaghetti. Quaff green-tinted beer. Even surprise your mate with a pair of dancing-leprechaun under-shorts—and all the while, pretend your veins contain a wee drop of Celtic blood. But should you elect to participate in the “wearin’ o’ the green,” when choosing your shamrock, I make this request…please draw the line on the side of authenticity. I say this because I stopped recently to browse a local retailer’s display of St. Patrick’s Day merchandise. The selection included everything from tee-shirts, to party hats, mugs, balloons, greeting cards, rolls of streamers and bunting, bumper stickers, pens, and metal badges with funny sayings. What suddenly had me seeing green wasn’t the fact that most items incorporated a shamrock into their design, but that many of the emblazoned shamrocks sported four leaves. Four-leafed clovers aren’t shamrocks…they’re simply a sham. No wonder banshees wail! Whether this represented a case of artistic license or botanic ignorance, I couldn’t say. But—and I emphasize—shamrocks are not four-leafed clovers. In fact, the whole point of the original shamrock was the plant's trifoliolate (three-part) leaves. According to history, sometime in the 5th century, St. Patrick—the missionary bishop who later became Ireland's beloved patron saint—paused during a sermon and plucked a shamrock from the verdant ground. The Christian church was newly arrived thereabouts, and some of its notions were puzzling to the Emerald Isle's pagans. Patrick used the shamrock to illustrate theological teachings regarding the rather puzzling Doctrine of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Three separate elements existing as a single entity. Just as the shamrock had three leaflets on one stem. That’s how the shamrock came to be venerated in Ireland and by Irish people the world over. And why on St. Patrick's Day—March 17, the day St. Patrick died in A.D. 491—Irish folks celebrate and remember by the "wearin' o' the green." The identity of the actual shamrock remains something of a mystery. Plants most often cited as the "true shamrock" are the white clover (Trifolium repens), the black medic (Medicago lupulina), a hop clover (Trifolium procumbens), and wood sorrel (Oxalis acetosella.) All four are trefoils—plants with leaves composed of three leaflets—and fairly similar in appearance. Any one makes a fine and arguably authentic shamrock. I favor wood sorrel, simply because there was a good stand growing beside the south-facing basement wall of my boyhood home. As a kid, come St. Paddy’s Day, my mother would send me outside to pluck a sprig for my lapel before heading off to school. Moreover, I've always liked the sour-tart taste of sorrel and often nibble on a leafy stem during walks, or add a handful to salads. How many other lapel decorations do you know that are good to eat? Here along the river, I’ve not yet found a handy patch of wood sorrel from which to pick a stem or two. No matter, I’m not in a party mood anyway—what with the fact of a funeral yesterday. I opted instead for a visit to a certain pool—a small spring hole which wells mysteriously from the earth in the middle of a nearby wood. The pool never freezes, remaining open throughout the coldest months. I go there often during the winter because the pool is filled with watercress, thus offering a vision of needed green when all the rest of the world appears otherwise bleak. I think of this place as the Green Eye. What always strikes me is how intensely green the watercress appears—not the velvety emerald green of new grass, or the electric yellow-green of the willows, but a bright, vibrant green, which even on the darkest morning, fills me with the absolute certainty of resurrection. So today—this morning—I celebrate by standing quietly beside the Green Eye, reassured in the knowledge that spring will come, that life will go on…that faith and hope are not in vain.