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Archives for April 2017

The Courtship of Spring—Love Letters to Us

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Courtship consists in a number of quiet attentions, not so pointed as to alarm, nor so vague as not to be understood.  –Laurence Sterne

Downstairs there are two cardboard boxes full of hundreds of letters from our courtship—one marked Letters to Denise, the other, Letters to Chris.  In this era of smartphones and other technology, who can even imagine such a thing!?  We met one May night, one one-in-a-million chance meeting, one would-you-like-to-dance swirl around the dance floor.  He was headed back home to Missouri from a northern fishing trip with his Dad, and I was out with my friend Patty talking about her upcoming wedding.  He gave me his temporary fishing license with his name and address on it and said if I’d write to him, he would write back to me.  So I did.  That began our two-year, 400-miles-apart courtship.

Letters are slow—slow to be written with pencil or pen and slow to be delivered by the US Postal Service.  But I still recall the excitement of opening the mailbox to find a letter from Chris, unsealing the envelope, reading his words and turning over the pieces of paper in discovery of this man.  Many things we wrote about were mundane—the weather, what we ate for supper, what tv shows we watched.  But letter by letter, slowly and surely, his character and values emerged.  Most of the time when we did see one another in person, we stayed at our parents’ houses.  I spent time washing dishes with his Mom, held the ladder for his Dad as he put up Christmas lights and told stories, met his four older brothers, their wives and children, and spent precious time with his sister.  Chris went duck hunting with my Dad, brought gifts of plants for my Mom, and made my siblings laugh.  Our courtship was slow and lovely and difficult and richly exciting as we anticipated each new discovery and the life we would have together.

The courtship of Spring is also the slow emerging of a wondrous season.  Weeks after the calendar Spring, tiny, golden leaves unfold from a Ninebark shrub.

Rhubarb, the delicious, tart fruit of the North, is pushing its way up out of the ground…

…while seeds of abundant greens wait for warmer weather and germination.

Setbacks happen in even the best of courtships—we were smiling from the warmth until a wave of cold air moved in this week, icing over the birdbath and constricting the leaves and flowers that were intent on opening.

Even the bluebird, all poufed up from the cold, was wondering what had happened to Spring.

Setbacks are temporary, and early bloomers like Epimedium and Lilacs can tolerate the cold better than others.

Day by day, Spring reveals new surprises—blooming Vinca vine and fairyland Mayapples.

Ferns unfurl tête à tête…

…and Mourning Doves and other birds pair up in courtship.

 

Spring delivers a plethora of quiet, slow unfoldings as each tree and plant comes ‘back to life’ after a dormant winter, as each pair of birds and animals prepare for mating and raising young ones.  The courtship cannot be one-sided—it takes the attention and appreciation of a beloved for the other to be seen and understood.  Each Spring we are privy to thousands of tiny miracles right before our eyes.  Do we see them?  As we swirl around the dance floor of Earth, tête à tête with Spring and with the beloveds of our choosing, it behooves us to remember that courtships include more than just the pair.  We are part of a family, a friend group, a community of like and unlike, and finally, a small part of the entire Whole.  While in our mundanity, during our chilly setbacks and mistaken attentions that alarm, let us notice the quiet miracles, the revealing values and character, and the discoveries that let us know we’re on the right track, that’s there’s no turning back, that we’re all in this together.

 

This Huge Nest Called Earth

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Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher.  

–William Wordsworth

Last weekend I was off the internet for three and a half days, and I feel ridiculous for even saying that like it’s some big deal, since I have lived two-thirds of my life on Earth without that technology.  (And having lived two-thirds of my life without it, I can honestly proclaim that the internet is a-mazing!)  I didn’t miss it; though along with not having tv, I did have a slight feeling of missing out on what was going on in the world.  But since most of what’s on the news right now gives me a sinking feeling in my stomach, I was better off not knowing.  So what did I do?  I visited with my Mom who came for the weekend.  I cooked food for our Easter celebration.  I laughed with my family around the dinner table.  I read a little bit of the Sunday paper.  And we all went outside to hike, to take pictures, to walk the dog, to bask in the warm sunshine on a wind-cooled day, and to revel in the emerging signs of Spring.

We hiked at our nearby Eagle Park and were disappointed when we saw no movement of gray fluff or adult guardian in the huge eagle’s nest—the second of three years now with no viable eaglets.  We wondered whether it was the age of the parent eagles or if the nearby Sauk River food source was contaminated with something that interfered with the egg development.  (Happily, the other nearby eagle’s nest did have a couple of gray fluffy babies and a watchful parent.)  The bright-light sunshine cast shadows on the tomb-size boulders scattered throughout the park.

A clump of Pasque flowers, also called Easter flower and prairie crocus, bloomed along the trail.

Golden stands of last year’s prairie grasses waved in the wind with hints of green growing up between them.

Nodding heads of Prairie Smoke flower buds hung from early Spring foliage.

We saw the first Bluebird of Spring at Eagle Park, then later delighted that our pair had returned to the yard to check out the houses Chris hastily put up.

Our Spring crocuses were an absolute sight for sore eyes, a shocking display of regal purple, pure white, and purple striped color after a winter of gray, white, and brown.  I couldn’t help but smile and marvel at the sight of them!

Every year, as we come forth into the light of Spring, we are inundated with marvelous, amazing examples of creation, renewal, and transformation.  The old, golden grasses give way to the growing green.  The birds return to their northern breeding grounds and prepare for raising their young.  The miraculous perennials push through the chilly soil for another year of growth and flowering and bearing fruit.  We are just another part of Nature’s transforming miracle.  We are Easter people.  We come together with family and friends.  We prepare nourishing food to share with one another.  We commune around the table with prayer, talk, and laughter.  And then we are drawn outside to commune with Nature, with that from which we come and whom sustains us.  In September of 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a bill establishing the Assateague Island Seashore National Park with these words, “If future generations are to remember us more with gratitude than sorrow, we must achieve more than just the miracles of technology.  We must also leave them a glimpse of the world as God really made it, not just as it looked when we got through with it.”  Through the miracle of the internet, I commission all of us to become guardians of our little parts of this huge nest called Earth.  Happy Earth Day to us all!

Peacock Feathers and a Divorce

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While we’re waiting for Spring to show up (the grass is getting a little greener, and there are tiny leaves on the honeysuckle), let me tell the true tale of peacock feathers and a divorce.  In our first year of marriage, we were house-sitting for friends of friends.  It was a wondrous mansion of a house on acres of land in the middle of the city—I had never stayed in a house so grand!  There was a barn, a carriage house, and beautiful gardens with intricate iron lawn furniture, fountains, and interesting stone statues.  We cared for their three dogs and tended the gardens—duties we were familiar with and comfortable doing.  In the large expanse of lawn and garden lived a number of peacocks who needed nothing from us.  They grazed their way through the yard during the day with their graceful, flowing tail feathers following them like a bridal train.  At night they would perch in the trees and sound the alarm if anything untoward entered their domain.  One evening we drove back home to check on things at our old farmhouse.  While there, we got a phone call from my Mom and Dad with the news that they were divorcing.  I literally fell to the floor when I heard those words.  In shock, I rode back to the mansion—my world had changed.  I can’t remember if I slept that night, but I do remember getting up the next morning to do the only thing I knew how to do when things around you are collapsing—chores.  I got on my hands and knees and washed the tile floor in the large kitchen, dining area, and laundry room, scrubbing the stained grout with a scrub brush until it looked white again, tears falling into and mixing with the dirty water.  After hours of scrubbing, I baked a pound cake, heavy with eggs, sugar, and butter.  Heavy cake for a heavy heart.  While the cake was cooling on the counter and I was outside, the young Husky dog jumped up and ate a large chunk out of it.  I threw the cake in the trash—tears upon tears.  Chris got back from work, and we walked in the gardens, trying to process the news.  I picked up peacock feathers—the female ones with subtle color and the male ones with the exquisite, jewel-toned eyes.  I took them home and put them in a vase.  I’ve been picking up feathers and making feather bouquets ever since.

 

Hope is the thing with feathers

that perches in the soul

and sings the tunes without the words

and never stops at all.   –Emily Dickinson

This last sapphire blue-tipped feather is one I picked up at the bridal luncheon when our oldest daughter Emily got married in the fall of 2015.  It was from one of the peacocks that roamed the acreage surrounding the mansion where the luncheon celebrating love and marriage was held.  Hope never stops at all.

Minnesota Micro-Springery

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A microbrewery makes small batches of specialty beers that showcase particular ingredients, a certain season, or theme.  The craft brewery in our little town, for example, makes a seasonal beer called Sugar Shack Maple Stout, made with maple syrup that is harvested by the monks and others at Saint John’s Abbey Arboretum and Forest just a skip and a hop from here.  (We helped tap trees a couple years ago—Welcome to the Sugar Shack—for the making of that syrup—Sap to Syrup.)  Whereas traditional breweries make millions of barrels of beer each year, US regulations permit microbreweries to make no more than 15,000 barrels per year.  Microbreweries concentrate on quality, flavor, and techniques.  According to www.hopandwine.com, “Every day is a delicious science experiment at a microbrewery.”  I love that!

On this 2nd day of April, Central Minnesota is a Micro-Springery.  Small batches of Spring can be found if one looks closely.  Later Spring will be lush with greenness everywhere, overwhelming the senses with millions of Spring things.  But for now, Spring is slowly unfolding in a delicious awakening.  Join me for a tour of the neighborhood Micro-Springery.

Aspen tree catkins have emerged, like fuzzy caterpillars hanging from the branches.

Common Yarrow, with its fern-like, aromatic foliage is one of the first perennials to grow in a sunny location.  The leaves can be used for a hop substitute and preservative for beer-making! (ediblewildfood.com)

Beautiful, iconic Spring Pussy Willow!  If we don’t protect this shrub with fencing, the deer will eat it right down to the ground.  Luckily it is resilient and grows back quickly.

The buds are just breaking out of the beautifully-barked Serviceberry.

Wild geraniums with hairy, red-tinged foliage from last year and pristine new green leaves are a shade-loving perennial that blooms early in the growing season.

Blue Flag Iris, another early bloomer, pushes out its triangular leaves through last year’s debris.

Hazelnut catkins hang like dangling earrings, adorning the shrub in Spring splendor.

Pungent Allium, with their frost-tipped leaves, will bloom in the middle of summer with their distinctive purple-ball flowers.

Red clusters of Maple tree flower buds will open before the leaves develop and appear.

 

Henry David Thoreau wrote, “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”  Microbreweries don’t brew beer just to have beer, they want it to taste amazing.  Mother Nature doesn’t give us Spring just for aesthetics, but to teach us how to fly in the wind like the catkin pollen and seeds, how to be a common human being and do extraordinary things, how to be beautiful and resilient, how to have a splendid protective covering and let your gifts emerge, how to bloom early, in the middle, and late in your life, how to push your way through last year’s debris, and how to adorn yourself with loving splendor.  Mother Nature shows us, with all her seasons, that life is one delicious science experiment after another.  I love that!