Spring Always Comes

Saturday I trimmed the hydrangea tree that I can see from my office window. Right now it looks barren and dead. But if you look really really closely you can see tiny leaf buds beginning to swell. It’s a reminder that

no matter how slowly. With the forecast of very warm temperatures this week it seems that spring was here fleetingly only to usher in an early summer.

The deep roots never doubt that spring will come.

— Anonymous

But I don’t think that the summer-like weather will last more than a few days (if that). Regardless, I intend to bask in the sunshine and warm temperatures while they’re here.

These are our few live seasons. Let us live them as purely as we can, in the present.”
― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Right now it’s another cloudy morning and I can hear some thunder rumbling in the distance. It’s so dark in my office that I turned on a lamp to give me some light. Rain is now falling steadily. The rain doesn’t stop the birds from arriving outside my window.

“Is the spring coming?” he said. “What is it like?”…
“It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine…”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

Likewise the clouds are not going to keep me indoors all day. I hope to find a time when rain isn’t falling to walk outside and admire all of the electric green popping out in the landscape.

Another Kind of Winter

No matter how hard or long the winter is, spring always comes. Though the COVID pandemic has felt like a winter that will never end, just like spring always comes, the world will change and adapt. Lives have been and will be changed forever. Some of us will bear loss. But like the seasons, life will go on — cycles of birth, growth, decay, and death repeating over and over again. And in the midst of these cycles joy lives, embracing the full circle of life.

“Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.”
― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Wildlife

Last week I researched bird feeders and avian flu with both the Minnesota DNR and Iowa DNR. Both of them agreed that there was no need to take down bird feeders. Song birds are not affected by avian flu. I was happy to learn this and I re-filled the feeders and hung them up again outside my office window.

“…The mockingbird took a single step into the air and dropped. His wings were still folded against his sides as though he were singing from a limb and not falling, accelerating thirty-two feet per second, through empty air. Just a breath before he would have been dashed to the ground, he unfurled his wings with exact, deliberate care, revealing the broad bars of white, spread his elegant white-banded tail, and so floated onto the grass. I had just rounded a corner when his insouciant step caught my eye; there was no one else in sight. The fact of his free fall was like the old philosophical conundrum about the tree that falls in the forest. The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.”
― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

All of the nearby birds and squirrels were happy to see the bird feeders reappear. The squirrels have not yet defeated the squirrel-proof feeders. Still they try again and again. This cheeky little red squirrel tried every which way to get some food from the feeder. Finally he gave up and settled for picking up pieces of food the birds had dropped on the ground beneath the feeders.

Last week I saw five baby goslings with two very protective parents beside a street in our neighborhood. Soon ducklings will hatch and other baby birds will also hatch. Nature continues no matter what else is happening. The seasons of life turn and we watch them. For me watching nature brings me wonder and joy. What brings you wonder and joy?

May you walk in beauty.