It's Wick!

Well, we have gone from winter to spring in a few short days. Piles of snow as high as my head have melted away so quickly, that it's a little disorienting to walk Molly around the neighborhood. I'm simply not used to seeing grass and lawns that are level with the sidewalk! 


I have begun a daily circumnavigation of my house checking for "things coming up", i.e. signs of new growth: the bulbs I planted last fall, perennials coming back, buds on trees. (I am holding my breath that my redbud tree is okay; it was looking sick last year.) When I do this, I am always reminded of one of my favorite books from childhood, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Mary, a sickly, surly little girl who has up until the time of her parents' death lived in India, moves to her uncle's estate on the English moors. Her uncle is a bitter and broken widower, and his mansion holds secrets: Mary's invalid cousin Colin and a walled garden that was locked up when the mistress of the house died.


Mary is drawn to the garden, and with the help of Dickon -- a local boy -- the children find their way in to it in the very early spring. I love the part where Dickon roams the garden looking for signs of life and pronounces it "wick" -- local dialect for alive. Of course as the garden comes to life, so do Mary, Colin, and Colin's broken-hearted father. It is a lovely and satisfying book.


I have crocuses blooming, tulips, irises and daffodils peeking out of the ground, forsythia buds swelling. It's wick!

The Merry Merry Month of May

Regretfully, I missed our local annual May Day celebration this year. It happens on May 1st at dawn. The Morris dancers, the Pagans, and other people who are in the know all converge at the end of Picnic Point to ... um, er ... erect a Maypole, dance, sing, leap over a bonfire and other fertility rites, and welcome summer. I love going to it, but it's so darned difficult to get up even earlier than usual, drive across town, then drive across town again to get to work by 7:30 a.m. (not to mention having to explain why I smell like a campfire!)

May is my favorite month, and May Day is one of my favorite holidays of the year. So I bring you The Watersons singing Hal-an-Tow:



And here is the genuine article, filmed in May 2008, in Helston, Cornwall. Someday I'm going to go there.



If British folk traditions are your cup of tea (ha ha, cultural reference intended) you should most definitely read the book In Search of Albion by Colin Irwin.

Welcome To Our Home ...

... in the Great Bayou of the North.

Here is the pass-through between our house and garage. Don't forget your hip waders!


Some of the resident water fowl. It's the spring migration (from the bathtub to the backyard.)


But in all seriousness, yesterday I had my first sighting of red-winged blackbirds at the bark park. Today I saw a whole passel (gaggle?) of robins in our backyard, also a first for the year. I know that spring is on its way.

Spring is Springing!

Our massive piles of snow have been melting quickly in +40˚ temperatures. As soon as the snow was gone, the crocuses pushed up, and yesterday I saw the first ones blooming, right next to the foundation of our house. This morning I saw my first robin. Right now I'm watching a couple of lbj's (little brown jobs, a.k.a. sparrows) looking like they are building a nest. Oh yeah, and the ultimate sign of spring: roadkill possums. They wake up. They go looking for food. They get hit by cars.

Harbingers of Spring

These fellows were in our backyard this week. I suppose that technically, they're not really a sign of spring because they don't migrate, but this is the time of year when I start listening for their calls. We have a pair of cardinals that nests nearby in the summer; no females were about the day I snapped these pictures.