simple.green.organic.happy.

Tag: signs of spring

Signs of Spring: Snowdrops

I began
My story early, feeling, as I fear,
The weakness of a human love for days
Disowned by memory, ere the birth of spring
Planting my snowdrops among winter snows

-William Wordsworth

I was so upset I missed our snowdrops two weeks ago while I was sick— saddened I’d missed this first sign of spring returning. It’s like Christmas Day having fallen asleep during It’s a Wonderful Life the night before. Nice and all, you’re not going to opt out or anything, but it’s just not the same. I’ve marked the emergence of the snowdrops for a lot of years now and it’s a harbinger of sunshine, happiness, contented chaos.

Luckily the preserve trail down the way has virtual drifts of snowdrops… waves of white and shocking green standing out against the leaves, swaying and saying cheekily Spring is here, Spring is here, Spring is here.

I feel much better, now.

I’m thinking I should really plant some more early spring native flowers around our house. Such an easy way to ensure gladness in my heart, one year from now. Why haven’t I done so already?

March 2, 2016
Wordless Wednesday: 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.

March 13, 2013
In Like a Lion…

The sun is brilliant in the sky but its warmth does not reach my face.
The breeze stirs the trees but leaves my hair unmoved.
The cooling rain will feed the grass but will not slake my thirst.
It is all inches away but further from me than my dreams.

-M. Romeo LaFlamme, The First of March

If this is tiger weather, I’ll take it.

The sun is shining, the snow is finally melted from the ground (we’ve been blanketed in white since Christmas). The wind is chill but the air warm.

And keep in mind please, that last year on March 8th— only a week away!— I posted fully bloomed snowdrops:

The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

-Oscar Wilde
(quoted by Willy Wonka in Charlie & the Chocolate Factory)

There is light at the end of the tunnel! The endless winter is coming to an end.

Green things should be uncurling, unfurling from the ground any time now… keep an eye out for fresh, tender life.

Just because it happens every year doesn’t make it any less of a miracle, one of Emerson’s “wayside sacraments,” and to miss it? Feels like sacrilege.

This is the moment worth waiting for; the catching of breath before the landscape explodes into color and buzzing and sunshine on your shoulders. It’s like Christmas Eve for grownups.

Please don’t let it pass you by in a blur of tax documents, parent-teacher conferences, and grocery store runs.

To learn to appreciate winter you need to see the spring come.

The March wind roars
Like a lion in the sky,
And makes us shiver
As he passes by.

When winds are soft,
And the days are warm and clear,
Just like a gentle lamb,
Then spring is here.

-Unknown

To me, the arrival of spring is heralded quietly by the snowdrops and the appearance of snakes in the bushes sunning themselves; makes itself more obvious with the sound of peepers in the creek; until it bursts and overflows with the glorious bubbling cacophony of the house wrens returning to build a nest in their birdhouse.

How does spring sneak into your neck of the woods? What do you look forward to?

March 1, 2011