March 11 and it’s still snowing, seems like it’s been forever snowing, and feels like winter will never end. But I remind myself, the temperatures are warming, ever so slowly. The light is returning. Much of the snow that falls melts immediately. Unfortunately, today, the snow is sticking again. I could complain (again) about the snow but I won’t. Today I prefer spending my time
Considering Miracles
like the birds flocking to the feeders outside my window. I can see the male goldfinches are getting a bit more yellow in their feathers.
A molting goldfinch last spring
Isn’t it a miracle that so many birds don bright plumage for parts of the year and then replace it with duller colors for another part of the year?
Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.
—Mary Oliver, It Was Early
Though the trees still look bare, look closely, the willows are beginning to develop a brighter color in their graceful falling fronds. And the dogwood twigs are getting redder. I imagine that if I got up really close to the branches of our trees I would see leaf buds beginning to swell. The sap is rising in the maple trees and the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum has begun collecting sap to create maple syrup.
Willow tree last spring
Three weeks ago I planted herb seeds in tiny seed starters, added water, a bit of heat, and a bright grow light, and now I have beautiful plants beginning to grow. Tiny seeds, given the right conditions, burst forth into life.
Eat, drink, be happy.
Accept the miracle.
Accept, too, each spoken word
spoken with love.— Mary Oliver
Consider murmerations of starlings…
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How can this be anything but a miracle?
Remembering
I looked through March photographs that I made in the past few years and noticed that snow was falling in mid-March or still persisting in mid-March then too. Reason enough to hope. This too will end. Wishing you a lovely weekend despite the snow.
I leave you with words from Walt Whitman on miracles…
Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.— Walt Whitman
May you walk in beauty.
March 15, 2022
Last Spring
March 16, 2021
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