Friday, March 24, 2023

Friday Ramble - On Our Way


Beyond our windows this morning are clouds, drifting fog and a forlorn copse of skeletal maples and ashes doing their best to put out leaves, catkins and flowers. Alas, springtime is late this year, and the tree people have a long way to go before they leaf out, but stouthearted wights that they are, they are working on it.

In the street, a west wind cavorts in gutters, ruffles dead leaves and other detritus like playing cards. It eases around the corner of the little blue house in the village and sets the copper wind bells on the deck in exuberant motion. So ardent is the wind's caress that sometimes the bells are almost parallel to the ground.

The air is warmer than the ground below, and the meeting of the two elements stirs up something cobwebby, diaphanous and magical. Somewhere in the early murk, a few robins sing their pleasure, and a woodpecker (probably a pileated from the volume of its hammering) drives its formidable beak into an old birch. Now and again, he (or possibly she) pauses, takes a few deep breaths and gives an unfettered laugh that carries for quite a distance. Even a bird in the fog, it seems, knows the value of taking a break from its work now and again, just breathing in and out for a minute or two and giving voice to a cackle of pleasure and raucous amusement.

I can't see either the caroling robins or my whomping woodpecker, but that is all right. Their voices are welcome musical elements in a morning that is all about the nebulous, the wondrous, the mysterious and unseen.

In the kitchen, coffee is in progress and and a little Mozart (The Magic Flute) fills the air, but something more is needed. Miracle of miracles, the first crocus are up in the protected south corner of a neighbor's garden. The little dears are lit from within, and I swear, they could light up the whole village.