Spring storms
The other night we had a few thunderstorms. By this morning, the heat and wind were both up, and the weather service had posted an advisory about burning outdoors. I don’t know if there’s a wildfire nearby, but it smelled like a campfire.
I have begun working in the yard again, pulling a few weeds, checking to see which perennials made it through the winter, which trees and bushes might need help. I have already dropped off a cutting from one azalea at extension service. Its leaves are brown and curled. Nonetheless, it is the first to bloom of the three azalea bushes.
One of the two dogwoods began blooming today too. At the restaurants and souvenir shops along highways and interstates in Georgia and South Carolina, postcards describing the legend of the dogwood and its connection to Easter were popular back in the day. I have one or two in my collection, I’m sure.
There have been plenty of other signs of life in the yard. A couple of butterflies, enough bees (carpenter, not bumblebee, I think) to warrant a traffic controller, and at least one grasshopper. The voles made it through the winter and are working on a large hole near the gate to backyard for reasons I don’t understand. I put rocks in it as a temporary measure.
The mockingbirds continue to monitor my comings and goings as if I’m on probation. I feel as I have gained some measure of their approval, however, since today the pair watched me together.
In the backyard, a pair of downy woodpeckers have settled nearby. They visit the suet I hung from the board by the shed. My first lawn mowing of the season did not bother them at all.
One of the benefits of being out in the yard is hearing the sounds of the neighborhood more clearly — the yard equipment, the occasional yell — and seeing more — the father carrying a child on his shoulders, the mother chasing a son down the street. I saw one of my neighbors for the first time in a while today. She is having a baby in late summer.
A childhood friend of mine texted me today. She is headed this way around Easter and plans to stop so we can have dinner and catch up. It has been ages. Our last couple of attempts at connecting haven’t worked out.
During our text chat, I joked about my attempt to give up dairy for Lent. (I can’t give up meat because I already don’t eat it.) I eat a lot of potato chips and pretend there’s no dairy in Andes mints. Crosses myself.
She asked if I was on a religious journey.
I figured I’d save that conversation for dinner.
But whatever faith you are or aren’t, watching the blueberry bushes bloom and the leaves unfurl on the fig tree, waiting for the dianthus buds to open while dandelions pop like corn kernels, all of the spring traditions seem miraculous.
