THE SEASONS TURN

One season follows another.

The season for weeding and clipping is now in full swing in my yard.  Everything needs to be done at once.  Done now.

In these perfect days of springtime I try to notice everything.  To be in tune with the seasons.  To drink it all in.

Why try to be observant and notice everything?  Why not?  I sure don’t want to miss anything.

I try to notice each and every flower.  If I don’t know the name for a flower, I make one up.  In recent days I have noticed these flowers:

Bluets, yellow flowers of false strawberry, pink phlox, periwinkle, yellow sheep sorrel, lily-of-the valley, dandelions, strawberry flowers, wild asters, buttercups, dogwoods, six-pointed yellows, barberry, violets, bugle, southern blue flag, rose-of-Sharon, Siberian iris, pea plant flowers, peony, masses of white, pink, and red azaleas, more than a hundred daisies. 

What have you noticed lately?

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I found the first bit of poison ivy.  I’ve found deer ticks on my clothes.  (Ticks carry disease.)  Sometimes it is critical to be observant.

I remember, vaguely, reading about an exercise in being observant.  A teacher gave her students the task of visiting a nearby museum, selecting one display item in the museum, and then spending what, an hour? each week for many weeks, just observing that one item, and recording observations.

Can one sharpen one’s observation skills?  I don’t know.  One can always observe more.

In these perfect days, I notice how the temperature is perfect.  No need to heat or cool the house.

I notice how some plants prefer to grow in my driveway rather than in my garden.  Perhaps because of the moisture accumulated under the gravel.

The daisies grow profusely alongside the large stones bordering the front circle garden and near the brick border by the sidewalk, where their roots can be sheltered and moist.  They grow so well because I weed around them.

I notice how the plants respond to the rain.  How fresh and lush everything looks after a rain.

I notice the pitter-patter sound of rain as it begins.  I notice the fluorescent electric green glow of the forest in the cloud-dimmed light.

I notice the lovely shade of green of the moss in springtime.

The season for planting seed has come and gone.  One of the most difficult tasks.  I remember noticing how the sun lit up the green grass while I planted.  Made it look like it was lit from within.

I noticed the wind tossing the leaf covered boughs of the tree in the front center of my yard.  When did the tree buds become leaves?  It all happened so quickly.  I forgot to notice.

How quickly everything grew up this year.  Are the seasons turning faster by any chance? 

I didn’t notice the clematis until it was knee high.  Now it is more than six feet high on its trellis.  Seemingly grew overnight.

I notice every glorious, rare and precious moment of complete silence, when there is no distant rumbling of trucks on the highway, no screeching of neighbors’ heat pumps, no dog’s incessant barking, no weird music being broadcast from the next subdivision, no morons setting off firecrackers, no adolescent males roaring up and down the road on their motorized scooters, etc.  A silence punctuated only by the welcome calls of birds, the sound of a gentle breeze in the leaves of the trees, and the joyous shouts of children.

I used to try to distinguish the bird calls.  But didn’t have much success with that.  I could differentiate a few dozen I suppose (mostly I had to make up names for the different birds), but gave that up.  The call of the pileated woodpecker is distinctive though and easy to remember.  I like to notice that.  And the drum-roll of pecking.

I notice the buzzing and twittering of the insect and amphibian chorus – seems to be getting less raucous.  Why?

I notice the march of weeds across my lot.  New species yet again this year.  Why?  Climate change?  Or just the progression of succession – this lot was cleared only ten years ago. 

I’ve noticed how the snow line is moving past us to the north.  Easy to notice climate change from this vantage point.  I notice that the pea plants can more easily self-seed.  The parsley didn’t mind the winter this year at all.  In the past couple of years, the season for weeding has lingered on through the season of winter.  No rest for the weary now.

I noticed where a deer has nibbled hosta leaves.  Strange – usually they only go for the hosta flowers.  Are the deer getting hungrier?  

I drink in every butterfly.  My impression is their numbers are dwindling, and I am just stunned by how few there are now.  The garden seems so sterile without lively butterflies flitting about.

Life is a merry-go-round, but the reoccurring event of springtime is one I don’t mind re-living again and again.  I’ll notice every little thing.

Slide show and music on my main page.

-2008-

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