Wordless Wednesday - Little Green

Wordless Wednesday - Little Green

Sequestered, week 208(CCVIII)

Trout lily and Dutchman's breeches

Green is the Colour of Hope

Wordless Wednesday - Puddle and Light

Wordless Wednesday, Little Green

Wordless Wednesday - Unfolding

Wordless Wednesday - Little Green

Happy Easter

Wordless Wednesday - Shining Through

Sequestered (XII)

Wordless Wednesday - Little Green

For the Vernal Equinox (March 19)

Tomorrow marks the Vernal Equinox or Ostara, one of two times in the calendar year (the other being the Autumn Equinox or Mabon) when the Earth and her unruly children hover in perfect balance for a brief interval. Humans had nothing to do with this day - it's a pivotal astronomic point ordained by the heavens, by the natural order of things in this magnificent cosmos where we live out our days, spinning like tops in the Great Round of space and time. Although the spring equinox is often celebrated on March 21st, tomorrow is the actual astronomical date this time around.

If I lived further south, tomorrow might be a day of greening and enchantment, a day when Eostre, the old Teutonic goddess of greening and fertility, wanders wild places with her arms full of spring blooms, bestowing blessings on everything she sees. Flowers would spring up in her footsteps as she passed, and she would be attended by hares, her special animal,. The air would be filled with birdsong,  with the heady fragrance of rich dark earth and wild springtime herbs.

Alas, the only snowdrops blooming here at the moment are those in a glass jar here in my study. It will be several weeks until Lady Spring makes an appearance in the northern landscape, but rumors of her imminent presence and the arrival of the greening season persist. It has been a long winter this time around, and Eostre can't show up to soon for me. Our winter birds feel the same. Every feathered visitor to our sleeping garden seems to be declaring its lofty status as a messenger from the sacred, a harbinger of abundance and new life.

Last night Beau and I went outside into the garden for a few minutes, and a cold going it was. As we shivered in the star spangled darkness and looked up into the cauldron of night, it seemed to us that this month's full moon on March 9th had (as it always does) borne more than a passing resemblance to a great cosmic egg - a perfect expression of this turning of the wheel with its verdant motifs of warmth, light and new life coming into being.

There is blooming in our thoughts this day, but it is too cold for outdoor celebrations. I will spend a few minutes outside this evening, perhaps light a celebratory candle on the deck, but the festivities are indoors for the most part.  This will be my first Vernal Equinox in more than forty years without my soulmate, and it will be difficult. There will be no grilled salmon, risotto and Chablis this year, but Beau and I will celebrate his presence in our lives, and we will send him our love, just as we do every day.

Happy Ostara everyone, a very happy Vernal Equinox to you and your tribe.

Spring has sprung

One day there is snow, and one is going around in boots and parka.  The next day, we are in short sleeves and sandals. Temperatures are well above freezing, skies are blue, and dazzling sunlight turns everything in sight golden.

In the village, starlings are donning their warm weather plumage and putting on bright yellow beaks, and a pair of crows is building a nest in the big pine behind the little blue house. At intervals, they take a break from flying in and out of the old tree with nesting materials, sing their pleasure in the season, preen each other, do a little dancing and execute brief "flurry flights" over their territory.

In the Lanark highlands, early butterflies (Compton tortoiseshell or Nymphalis l-album) are already fluttering about, and we saw our first snake yesterday. An eastern ribbon snake (Thamnophis sauritus), it slithered quickly into a thicket when I approached, sunlight turning its head and stripes a vivid, iridescent green as it moved away.  Nearby, a pair of brown creepers (Certhia americana), is building a nest high in a brush pile and singing as they go about their work.

This is the season of greening and first things, and how sweet it is. When the first dwarf iris lifted its purple head out of the earth in a sunny, protected garden alcove a few days ago, I felt like kneeling down and kissing it.

Hallelujah, spring has sprung.

Just a Little Green

Jacks are dancing

Jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum)

In winter, snow covers the shady ground down by the creek for months at a time, and the little tributary's voice is silent under its blanket of ice. The sheltering trees on the hillside above are bare and silent.

In springtime, the lovely, crumbly, dark earth is revealed in all its elemental fragrance, and the water sings a raucous ditty as it gambols downhill with its tumbling freight of winter detritus, broken twigs and and dessicated leaves.

Hallelujah, now the "jacks" are dancing there in all their stripey magnificence. Wood ducks are nesting on a pond nearby, and the forest is a towering green cathedral again. Sunlight flickers through the leaves, and choirs of grosbeaks hop from branch to branch in the overstory, singing their hearts out.

Winter was all right, and we got through it, even managed to do a little inward blooming now and then.  Spring was late, brief and rather wet, but sunlight and warmth have returned to the Two Hundred Acre Wood at last. We can do this, verily, merrily, we can do this, oh yes,we can.