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Green living, playful parenting and the pursuit of happiness

Wordless Wednesday: Crocuses

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crocuses

 

It takes courage to be crocus minded.

God, I would rather wait till June, like wise roses,
when the hazards of winter are safely behind, and I am expected
and everything is ready for roses.

But crocuses? Highly irregular.
Knifing through hard-frozen ground and snow, sticking their necks out,
because they believe in Spring
and have something personal and emphatic to say about it.

―Jo Sorley

 

Not sure how I’ve never seen this quote before, but I love it very much.

May we all be brave like crocuses.

 

 

Of Marsh Marigolds and Cowslips: Signs of Spring

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March wildflowers

I will be the gladdest thing under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.

―Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

Today was the snowstorm that wasn’t. The forecast called for anything from 0-16 inches, and we pretty much just got WIND and some rain.

I mourned the loss of John Bolaris, our ex-weatherman who once predicted another storm that wasn’t, prompting schools to close, salt truck drivers to work overtime and households to stock up on bread, milk and eggs for no good reason. It’s bad enough to be promised a foot of snow and given a smattering of rain; it’s downright insulting when you don’t have a personal love-hate relationship with a local weatherman to blame it on.

If I’m being very honest, though, I don’t mind at all the lack of snow. I’m ready for winter to be over. Ready for the sun on my face.

 

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One of those freak warm days in January, 
when I got to run in a tank top.

Check out my pit sweat. Nice.

 

I missed the emergence of the snowdrops last week, right on schedule, those wonderfully pale noddings of warm weather to come. Jeff brought me one while I was still shivering with fever, but I didn’t get to see or photograph them outside.

On Sunday I saw these yellow flowers while on the trails. I’m not sure what they are; the timing suggest marsh marigold but the leaves are wrong; cowslip seems right but if so they are quite early. Professor Google has let me down, so if you know please share 🙂

I’m glad to know they’re still there, not wilting under a layer of melting snow. Waiting for me to run tomorrow and see them again.

Everything is reawakening. Including me.

Is spring stirring in you?

 

 

 

 

Wordless Wednesday: Great Blue Heron

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heron

 

When despair for the world grows in me,

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be—

I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water,

and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought or grief.

I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.

For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

-Wendell Berry

 

 

The great blue was one of my dad’s favorite birds, along with the similar white egret. They always fill me with a sense of awe, of magic and stillness, even when they aren’t spectacularly framed by fog.

They are graceful, stately, BIG, and immensely soothing to the soul…

and observant.  Infuriatingly camera-shy.

I chased this one back and forth, back and forth, running the muddy trail and creeping down the briar-filled banks.

 

It was, if I am being quite honest, one of the most enjoyable hours I’d spent in quite some time.

 

Meditation wears many faces…

a church is where you find it.