When I was a boy, my childhood room looked out over an enormous thorny Hawthorne tree. Its branches softened that corner of the house; its thorns deterred would-be climbers, not that there were any lower branches to gain such a climb. In late spring, it would be filled with white flowers, not unlike the pear tree blooms seen here. Those petals wouldn’t last very long, especially if the weather turned too warm. At those moments, and on those precious days, the petals would flutter to the ground like falling snow – a magical effect that never failed to enchant me. Sitting beneath a flowering tree just as it is giving up its show is always a brush with the sublime.
Spring’s enchantments are usually fleeting – that’s an integral part of their charm. We chase them for their elusive nature. When caught, they are always worth the work, even when we know they won’t last, because beauty makes this world bearable.
Electric yellow sends a forcefield of energy through the spring air from the sun-reflecting Forsythia blooms. Indelible harbinger of the season, Forsythia doesn’t bother with subtlety or softness. Like its angles and sprawling form, its flowers are almost brutally glorious, shining like a hundred little suns, seen from even great distances, especially at this somewhat barren time of the year.
The palette of spring is not always pastels, and sometimes the most electric yellow combines with the powerful punch of violet, as in the pansy below. That’s when things really get lit.
Not to place any validity on astrology, but here’s something that came over my Virgo algorithm:
“The planners can’t plan, the fixers aren’t fixing, they stopped over explaining themselves, so if a Virgo in your life seems unhinged, honestly they’re not. They just realized they’ve been doing everybody else’s job this whole time and quit without notice.”
Astrological mayhem aside, these past few weeks have been a rollercoaster to match the fluctuating weather. Rather than rising to take the bait of getting riled, I’ve mostly managed to stay steady, staying true to the direction the universe has been nudging, and relying on comfort reading and daily meditation. The gardens have done their part too – my time spent in amending the soil and tidying up the backyard has been a type of meditation too.
I see the lilacs are finally in bud – the promise of beauty and perfume in the near future, while all the peonies have grown inches within days – more perfumed beauty in store. The ferns are already fast unfurling – once that first spell of warm days hits, followed by some rainwater, they quickly become unstoppable. This is how spring unfolds, very similarly from year to year, give or take a few days, and I’m reminded that there is no need to overthink everything.
Has anyone else ever pulled a pair of pants from the dryer and in complete exasperation realized they’re too wrinkled to iron or steam, and then just chucked them?
Comedian, songwriter, and unicorn lobbyist Shawn Hollenbach is crowned Dazzler of the Day on the eve of tomorrow’s performance at Rocks in Albany, NY as part of their Happy Place Comedy show. As a practiced host and storyteller, Hollenbach uses wit and a way with words to captivate audiences and put on a scintillating show. Check out his website here for the full story.
When the rain arrived at the end, or very beginning of the week, I found solace and escape at the local greenhouse, where this strikingly-shaded Mandevilla straddled that scintillating section between purple and pink, not quite committing to either, an teasing both out depending on the light and one’s angle. Before the rain, there were a few days of summer teasing – on with the weekly recap of that rollercoaster…
Whenever the day and the spirits turn to gray, the world turns upside down, and everything you once thought you knew reveals itself as something different, it’s the ideal opportune time to pause and take stock of what’s really at work. In my experience, the bulk of problematic ickiness that descends on certain rainy Sundays is largely a matter of perception – of perceived grievances and false attributions that our worst instincts re-enforce and perpetuate, our own minds actively working overtime to become our own worst enemies.
At such times I take to writing to make whatever sense I can of the moment. Putting it down on paper and working it out in words helps me organize and analyze – but even more simple and basic than that, it gets it out of my system. I literally let it pour out of my head, into my hand, then out through the pen and the paper that now holds a written testament to whatever is going on at the moment.
Sometimes all the universe wants is acknowledgement – a nod of recognizance that none of this is normal, and that all it was seen, and felt. Sometimes – at the most lucky times – this is enough to move beyond the muck of a gray Sunday.
My garden work is paused and I’m not ungrateful for the break.
Instead, I write this post, a rare in-the-actual-moment capture of what’s going on rather than a pre-populated and sanitized version to make everything pretty. In the soft hazy light of a cloudy morning, a more raw, and at times tender, truth comes out. Spring often has that effect – it breaks open what was hidden all winter, exposing what might have only heaved a time or two in the winter before we push it back down into the earth. A poor mix of metaphors, that, and I’m too exhausted or lazy to modify it or make it better. Sometimes it’s best to let the world see you as you are, the way lovers glimpse you first thing in the morning. Such an intimate reveal, such a frightening concept. When you’re brave enough to show all your darker shadows, all your hidden recesses, something akin to freedom arrives, and you forget what ever made you afraid to reveal yourself in the first place.
If I pour your cup, that is friendship If I add your milk, that is manners If I stop there, claiming ignorance of taste, That is tea
A quiet wisp of a song is all the heart and head can take right now. Like a cup of tea.
And maybe even this is too much, with its expectant tongues and measured sugar.
But if I measure the sugar To satisfy your expectant tongue Then that is love,
After a stretch of sunshine and warmth, the cold rain and overcast dimness of the day have conspired to bring me back – to winter, to contemplation, to a life before the spring – and to a life after the summer. There, the danger of such a day in an overthought and overwrought nutshell. We are only a month into spring and my mind is wandering off to what happens after summer. None of that. Not now, not yet. All we need to do in this moment, on this Sunday morning, is raise a cup of tea gently to our tongues, sharing in this ritual, enjoying the gentle patter of rain on the roof.
But if I measure the sugar To satisfy your expectant tongue Then that is love, Sitting untouched and growing cold
This is one of the fern stages I love best – when the fiddleheads are just starting to unfurl and their feathery show is about to begin. On a sunny Saturday (at long last!) I waded into the Ostrich fern stand and inspected their progress. It was a good day for garden work, and I’d just amended the soil with 240 pounds of cow manure and compost – like Prince said, this is the glamorous life.
The big pots of bamboo (the only safe place for a running bamboo) that I overwintered in the garage were also brought out – they’re on their own for whatever frosts may be left to the season. I’ll clean the deck on the next sunny day and then the backyard will be just about ready for pool season. We need it early this year.
“Nervous, but in a happy way.” Is this a description of falling in love or a tenderly anthropomorphic rendering of spring’s assessment of its own arrival? The days before the ‘safe’ frost-free date (nothing is ever guaranteed when it comes to weather in the age of global warming) are sometimes stricken with the queasy nervousness one can only liken to burgeoning love – and the earliest days of a romance with summer.
Don’t you notice how I get quiet when there’s no one else around? Me and you and awkward silence Don’t you dare look at me that way I don’t need reminders of how you don’t feel the same
Harkening to our Coquette Summer of a couple years ago, Laufey is a lovely musical selection for this lilac spring – an idyllic starting point for the blooms and perfume about to start popping.
Effervescent and fizzy, with Laufey’s trademark melancholic undertones, tempered by a sumptuous romantics, here is how we slip into a Saturday evening in spring.
That when I talk to you, oh, Cupid walks right through And shoots an arrow through my heart And I sound like a loon, but don’t you feel it too? Confess I loved you from the start
Confess I loved you Just thinking of you I know I’ve loved you from the start
“… he had yet to acknowledge the romantic fever it was his gift to inspire, and the inflammatory dreams and misunderstandings he could ignite with his silences.” – Laura Argiri, ‘The God in Flight’
Old books are like old friends – when they’ve played a pivotal part in your formative years, it feels like they know you in a way that only an old friend could. Currently I’m re-reading one of my favorites, ‘The God in Flight’ by Laura Argiri, an indulgence I partake of every few years, the same way I return to the more mainstream ‘Great Gatsby‘ just for the cadence of words, the depictions of longing, and the sense of romantic abandon that has always privately called to me (and that I always had the reckless determination to foolishly act upon).
Born with a viciously romantic nature, I had it beat out of me – as much by my own hands as the metaphorical hands of wicked men whose only wickedness was in not being interested. Anything but apathy seemed bearable; how unfortunate that disinterest was what I most inspired due to my own petrified countenance among those men who captured my attention. Eventually I embraced apathy as well, as much for emotional survival as from the wear and tear of having gone through it so many times; an unhappy collision of forced and natural modification to a romantic soul not quite designed to navigate the fickleness of human beings.
“Even if he had not been beautiful, he would have been the first person in any crowded room whom the others looked at first, the one whose motions they tracked with fascinated eyes… My God, he smells wonderful.” – Laura Argiri, ‘The God in Flight’
When I think back to the first time I read these words, and the young man whose romantic yearnings were just being kindled, I feel a tenderness and ache for what he was about to put himself through. If I could speak to my younger self I’d say something like, “Relax, enjoy, stop overthinking everything and simply inhabit the moments and days of youth. If it’s meant to be, it will be. If it’s not, it won’t. The rest will fall into place.”
The only thing I wouldn’t change would be his willingness and overzealous desire to fall in love. To that I would only say, “Do it. Whenever in doubt, choose to love. Even if they don’t love you back – keep on loving them. Even if they don’t deserve it, love. There is a nobility in that no matter whether the sentiment is returned. And don’t ever apologize for loving.”
Granted, the actions and craziness that often accompanied such emotions are a different thing entirely – those should definitely have been modified, but the folly of youth was strong and, for me, insurmountable.
“He was a dandy, a beauty, an actor, a fabulist – your canting puritan might say a liar – and he loved to make trouble for deserving parties, including himself. He did all this in a spirit of cheerful despair, being one who experienced sadness in the guise of intolerable restlessness rather than in its raw form.” – Laura Argiri, ‘The God in Flight’
No matter how inconvenient or disruptive, no matter how much it hurt, I never gave up loving. Whenever I felt it, I proclaimed it, unabashedly revealing feelings I hadn’t even fully processed. It’s an essential component of what made me into the person I am – perhaps one of my only saving graces – and I would most certainly need grace, and perhaps a bit of saving in all the years that followed.
Now when I read this book it resonates differently, the way the past no longer hurts quite as keenly, the way infatuations no longer sting, the way I’ve moved beyond losing myself to such wild abandon.
While I don’t grow pansies myself, I enjoy them whenever and wherever I see them. Such pretty smiling faces almost seem to rise up to say hello. They symbolize the earliest hope of spring, standing solidly against late snows and cutting winds, and absolutely laughing off rain. On the day I caught these beauties at the nursery, some rare sort of planetary alignment was knocking all of us for a loop (scheduled to last through tomorrow, I believe) and I leave into my daily meditation a little more, reminding myself to be mindful and present in the moment so as not to overthink things.
So many lessons can be learned from the plant kingdom, and gardening has taught me many things over the years. How to be patient, how to nurture, how to prevent death, how to accept death, how to appreciate life – all the major lessons in being a good human being can be culled from the garden. I see that whenever I find a pansy’s happy face in the spring.
