Here are the crocuses by my back door that began to emerge six weeks ago, coinciding with the baby's birth. There's something magical about these first heralds of spring. They have a fragility in their petals. I wouldn't dream of picking them because they are so short and tender. Yet year after year they appear and withstand the lingering freeze and final snow storms of winter, bursting in bold color.
I hope I always live where there are crocuses.
Today I finished cutting back the 16 or 17 rose bushes lining our 80-foot driveway for the winter. I started trimming them the second to last Saturday in October, but because of finicky weather and my schedule only allowing me to work on them on Saturdays it has taken this long to finish the job.
As I was trimming them, I could smell the rose fragrance lingering on the leaves and in the green stems. I thought about the several 70- and 80-something couples on my street who also have roses. The older men will take care of almost anything in the yard, but their wives tend to the roses. My next door neighbor told me that the woman who planted the roses in my yard decades ago was very proud of them and bought some very expensive prize bushes. Tending to these roses, I felt I was carrying on a feminine legacy - that maybe this woman (who has passed on) might be glad that here was another woman who cares for these roses just as she had.
Cutting back roses in a significant way requires some physical positions which can be awkward when you're two months away from having a baby, but I eventually became used to bending, squatting, and standing again, which I figure can only be good preparation for labor. Thinking of these feminine acts, both of preparing for labor and nurturing gardens, brought me to think of my own female ancestors. My grandma on my dad's side has always loved her roses and brought their scent into her home. During the summer, she always has some cut to show her guests. My mom's mother had a green thumb and took great care over her magnificent flower gardens. I remember that she could take a cut and put it under a bottle in her garden and somehow grow a rose bush from the stem.
As I thought on these memories, small in their way but miraculous when you consider the beauty and life force behind earth, plants, and caretakers, this work became more like a ceremony for me. As I cut the roses back, I prepared them for late spring when they will again take off magnificently. By then I hope to show my new baby the beauty and brightness of these blossoms I have nurtured like the many women who have come before me.
And, for a classic story about cutting back roses, check out last year's post.
When I had said I'd eat caprese every night for dinner, I didn't know how true that would be. Our garden is packed with tomatoes! We finished this bowl up tonight, and we've got another one overflowing.
Anyone up for a few delicious heirlooms?
When I look at the xeric gardens we have, it's amazing to think they were ever anything but spectacular and huge. I remember this post I did last year when I was very frustrated that my garden was not coming along as I thought it might. Here are the pictures I posted.
Here it is in April 2008:
And in July 2008:
And here it is now (if you look you can see the blue polka-dot chicken):
It's almost in full bloom (the oregano is just starting to flower), but already it's covered in small orange-striped bumble bees.
And, just because a certain 17 lb, 8 oz cat always brightens my day, a garden view (with the other chicken on the far right), and Aja's wide belly.
Why does it look like she's scowling? Well, she's a cat. And I just made fun of her weight.
The flowers we have in our garden attract a lot of life—particularly bumble bees and hummingbirds. If we attracted more butterflies, I'd consider the fauna to be about perfect.
I just spent five minutes watching at least six hummingbirds drink and rest in my garden. From nearly the size of an insect to the size of a sparrow, it seems to me a miracle that these birds were created to hover and shift in the ways that they do. I thought about grabbing my camera, but you know, sometimes nature just wants to be observed by the human eye.
I love teaching my night class. Interacting with students is far more rewarding than staring at a computer screen superimposed on gray cubicle walls. But at times it can get to be a little much, with the time commitment and the grading. These summer months I've been teaching six credit hours (two three-hour classes) in addition to my full-time work. It can be difficult to postpone my after-work routine for hours and make sure I get the grading done quickly.
Which is why I am so grateful for the parts of my day built around decompressing and relaxing. Like watering my flowerbeds. I should put in drip lines, but the manual nourishing of my garden is so soothing and natural. Same thing when I interact with those two rascal cats of mine. Or go on a jog, or a long walk with Kevin. Or eat dinner on the patio on our bistro table. Or watch the bees at work on our coneflowers and hollyhocks.
Yes, hollyhocks have bloomed this year. My brother tells me that this is the second year growth, so they must have appeared last year and I was too lazy - or too busy - to pull out these "weeds." And I am so delighted now that these naturally-springing whimsical stalks are beginning to bloom. Something about that makes me set aside all obligations, and stand quietly in the suspended moment awhile longer.
Every summer, I become absolutely convinced I could eat this salad every day for dinner.
Flickr photo credit: StormySleep
And were're going to have a lot of tomatoes, both traditional and heirloom, this year. Thank you, rainy June, for making them grow like crazy.
Kevin and I have his and hers flowerbeds. I don't know how it worked out the way it did, but one of us would come up with a plan for a particular spot in the yard, and the other one would be OK with that.
This is Kevin's water-wise and native plant bed, chosen around our lamppost where he ripped out the lawn because the sprinklers never hit there. Beautiful, if you ask me. And I didn't even pull up any weedy-looking early penstemons or poppies this year.
A lot of my out-of-state students tell me how ugly Utah is. Sometimes I see what they mean. You know, the freeways. I'm always surprised when I drive somewhere and there's not a bunch of tumbleweed growing in the median. In some states, flowers grow there instead!
I encourage these students to look up at our mountains. They are impressive. They are gorgeous. And you can't beet the sunsets over the Great Salt Lake.
Lately I have been almost giddy with being outside. I broke my body weeding my gardens over the weekend, but I guess the strenuous nature of the work paid off, as I'm now jogging my route like I'm gliding through the evening air. Being outside in the freshness of spring, looking at the sunset burning toward the east mountains, I am amazed at the beauty of my Utah home.
Then I enter my yard, full of native and other wild-ish plants that I love. Shunning annuals, Kevin and I focused on water-wise perennials that bloom or are known for an attractive aroma (mint - tons of different mint - oregano, sages, thyme, lavender, lamb's ear, and rosemary). It's so encouraging to see things come back 2, 3, or 4 times bigger than they were a year ago.
Now it's dark. Touching back to reality. On to grading papers.
Does a fleeting, dying moment make beauty? Is it something that only happens if you happen to catch it on the way out, and therefore it becomes precious? If it could last forever, would it truly be beautiful? Or is it that it is something that points our attention to the present moment and its transience that makes us sense the fragile, careful qualities of the passing nanoseconds?
Here are raindrops on my favorite tulips, new this spring, taken today in such a moment.
although this poet said that the writing pen was
a man's persuit of the virgin page
never dreaming of instruments suggesting
strokes, clicks, taps, and rolls
his words draw me out for celebration
because he said GLORY be to God for dappled things
and Ah! bright wings
It's 7:45 p.m., and the snow and rain have ceased enough that I am able to take inventory of my spring garden before twilight completes its magic.
And to my amazement: peach blossoms!
As I look at these blossoms on my peach tree, I reflect on my thoughts of canning and cobbler while we planted this tree last autumn. As I look at these tenderly blooming buds, I realize these blossoms will bear fruit in early autumn.
Each turn of the day, each moment of the seasons mean so much more to me now, knowing that our time here with loved ones is limited. But I hope there will always be time for peaches.
This crocus variety is brought to you by one of Kevin's flowerbeds. It's a smooth, buttery yellow: more timid than the bold announcers I planted. I love them in their subtlety.
Post title by Pablo Neruda
I don't have much to add to this poem, other than a delicate picture from my backyard and an emerging realization that intuition, insight, poetry come at the strangest times, searching for us.
POETRY
And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.
I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.
And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.
- Pablo Neruda
Because I simply cannot resist the beauty that manifests each new day in my garden:
By this time, like one who had set out on his way by night, and travelled through a region of smooth or idle dreams, our history now arrives on the confines, where daylight and truth meet us with a clear dawn, representing to our view, though at a far distance, true colours and shapes.
- John Milton
Look what I found this morning when I moved the snow shovels out of the flower bed by the back door:
I planted these a few months ago because yellow was the first color I wanted to see of spring. Sunny, springy yellow. I think I chose wisely.
For about two months I've been breaking a favorite habit of mine: public radio. I can't stand to listen to the obsessive reporting on the financial crisis. Although I've been listening regularly for eight years now, I find that the last thing I want to wake up to is news of more helpless people everywhere, everyday. Seriously. I've had enough.
This leaves a big gap in my life. What do I use in the mornings to wake me up and accompany my morning routine? What about my 20-30 minute commute each way to work?
I've taken refuge in my iPod, especially since my commuting car has an iPod hookup. Thanks to several generous iTunes gifts we received for Christmas, I've found great refuge in music and audiobooks, and I've discovered they leave me in a much better mood than our current news.
Here are some of the artists or bands I've newly found in my search for distraction from depressing news:
OK, so nothing too shocking on the list, but I'm going for escape and not the deepest, weirdest cuts. Anything else I should add for a happy distraction?
Celestial white winter's light
Slippy, drippy
Stopped, ossified
Surfeit and superabundance
Fixated, roaring in static
This week I am aspiring to be what I've been wanting to be: a woman of leisure. I took off work and it feels wonderful! I spent the morning in the warm sunshine seriously cutting back my roses for the winter.
As I knelt down with each of my 16 rose bushes today, I couldn't help feel a little apprehensive with all this cutting away. It was a tangly, thorny job. Thank goodness the garbage man came in the middle of my pruning because I filled the garbage can twice. I almost didn't get the first full garbage can to the curb while the truck rumbled down my street, but had to go running down my 80-foot driveway with an awkwardly full can crying, "Wait! I have garbage!"
I'm told that roses love nothing more than to be cut back, that essentially my hacking away at them down to the wood today will make them blossom even more come June. Taking a break myself this week, I couldn't agree with them more.
Kevin and I just finished planting 100 some odd bulbs, including 50 crocuses, 10 white daffodils, and the several varieties of tulips. It's not the kind of thing where you plant a seed and expect results in 2 weeks, a month, or anytime soon. I figure the crocuses are five months out at least, but I am excited to plant them because crocuses are the first spring flower I remember from when I was a kid.
Here's to hope to last through two seasons.
