solace

It's a hard time of year. My late mentor's birthday is less than two weeks away; it's also the anniversary of his death. He's only been gone three years. Grief has been surprisingly durable. I hate the way late April casts a shadow over everything now - as we get closer to the date, the events of that morning suddenly spring to mind: how I looked out the kitchen window as I got the news and wondered - hoped - if he'd seen that beautiful sunrise. How thin and airless the atmosphere felt in the days and weeks after, a sort of surreal unmooring from gravity. How, for many weeks, it still didn't seem possible. The flowers I'd brought over 2 days earlier. How I'd asked him to eat one of them - a sacrament. How I refused to say farewell, and instead offered love and gratitude.

Any one of these memories - to say nothing of a flood of them - and I'm suddenly weeping. It happened to me this morning during my workout! It's very hard to finish an aerobic workout on an elliptical when your breathing suddenly becomes gusty with sobbing.

But I finished. I stepped out into the morning and sat on the porch step to cool off, my feet on the concrete, still wet from last night's rain. I looked to my left and saw this: one of the Giant Solomon's Seal plants we just added to the garden, sparkling with raindrops. And my tears stopped, just like that. I grabbed the camera so I could share it with you.

I don't understand this strange power that the natural world has over me, but I also remember that when I finally said, "Enough!" and demanded a weekend off to grieve (my mentor died just weeks before my dissertation defense, during the final editing push and my advisor had insisted I could NOT stop to grieve until it was done - fearing, I'm certain, that I would lose momentum and miss my deadline), I spent that weekend in my garden. And it was the first time in weeks that didn't cry - not once. I just worked, quietly and steadily, in the sunshine - weeding, watering, pruning, tending.

I don't understand it, but the natural world makes me whole - even when I am most broken.

two of a kind

 

Uf, this month. I still feel like I'm shaking off some kind of fog called too much work. But on the upside, I think things are settling down for the summer season (which is quieter for me), and the good weather is helping me feel like I can get more done.
 

Lots of pink and coral and orange in my world right now: from peony tulips ("wedding gift") opening up and making me realize that yes, there is a tulip out there that excites me (most tulips just don't wow me, to be honest - I love the big fields of them, but I find them unsatisfying except en masse like that. THESE, however, are different!) to a pinky-coral-apricot quilt of cute little fox-faces for friends who are about to have their first child.

I'll get you a better picture of the full quilt top when the sun come back - or maybe even if it doesn't; the only shot I have of it right now was taken quite late at night (just as I finished it, of course, and was oh-so-eager to document and share IMMEDIATELY).

 

It's supposed to rain this weekend. Ho-hum. I don't quite know what to do with myself. Perhaps we'll go about setting up the garage - FINALLY - and getting closer to wrapping up the end of the moving-in. (I'd say "I can't believe we haven't completed this process yet!" but that would be an outright lie! I knew we were going to drag our heels on this final stage - oh well. We do need to just get it done, though. We really do.)

treasure

On Monday we went for a walk north of our neighborhood for several miles. On the way we came across a Little Free Library. I was curious and peeked in, and found this gem! It's a hardcover facsimile of an English naturalist's journal from the year 1906.

It's just beautiful; look at these illustrations and hand-written observations. The whole year's in here, too; I think I'll ration it out month by month, working through it over the course of a year.

Finally

Ah, it's been awhile. Wish I had an excuse, but I don't - not really, nothing other than the standard: life got in the way. I've been terribly tired lately. So terribly tired. Falling asleep on the bus ride home, dragging myself through the motions of a workout, then eating and crashing on the couch each night. Finally, sometime last week I had an idea: maybe I was low on iron. I petitioned Cass (who was in the middle of making a salad dinner) to head out and get me a steak from the local grocery store; he did - and I ate the entire thing (after a cherry smoothie), then curled up and went to sleep.

The next morning, I finally felt like myself again for the first time in weeks. What a relief. I'm trying to make sure I'm eating a bit more protein (plant and animal) now, just so I don't dip back into exhaustion.

I also gave myself a three-day weekend this weekend, taking some vacation time today to get a break from the workplace. That freed up my weekend (from the usual routine of housework - recovering from the past week and prepping for the next work week) so we could go on some lovely long walks in the spring sunshine, and see everything abloom.

It is finally, really, the full flush of spring here in the north. Thank goodness. Oh, thank goodness. Our wettest winter on record had even me (who normally doesn't really notice these things) grousing about the rain by the end of February. And then, even as it began to finally taper down, it still seemed the temperature would never rise. Some years it's harder than others, getting through those last weeks of winter. I'm always itchy, anticipating next season, but this year it was more difficult than normal - perhaps because I haven't yet established a mature garden, and so I was missing those early plants (salad burnet, sorrel) that help get me through 'til the rhubarb and morels arrive.

Of course, now we've had a few sunny days (even one gloriously sunny week!), I want nothing but summer warmth all the time. I keep reminding myself how sick I was of the heat by the end of last summer, to temper the cravings a bit - but it doesn't help much. I want to wear sandals and lightweight skirts and feel warm breezes brush my skin.

Soon. Already the cool days have something of a round softness to them; the edge has come off the cold. The hillsides and ravines are flush with the most brilliant new greens - of big leaf maple blossoms, of fiddleheads, of bright, immature leaves that have yet to settle down into the fullness of their summer emerald. Everything is new, and I am giddy with it all. Spring! Come again! At last!!