Three short tales of springtime glimmers buzzing, flapping, chirping and clacking their way into my heart this month as we celebrate Autism and Earth Day, both.
The Honeybees
The first truly warm morning this month, I was about to head out the door by our south facing garden to drive our youngest to work, when I heard our daughter, already outdoors, call me to hurry to see something.
“Look ma, the pollinators are back…look, I see four!” she excitedly squealed, phone in one hand, water bottle in the other.
I tugged on boots, popped outside and crouched low beside her for a brief moment and counted not four but six honey bees busy in a blooming riot of purple crocuses in the front bed.
Dazzled by this early representation of warmth and abundance yet to come, we both got in the car to drove up the hill to drop her off for her first day of work for the season.
“Wow—so nice to see them back…and how is it that work is starting up again for the season…it feels like I never left?” she enthused, her eyes as twinkling blue as the sunny sky above her.
My queen of calapitters and rescuer of ladybugs, no longer four and yet still welcoming me to pause and see what the warmth of a bright spring morning can offer and her just a few weeks shy of eighteen.
I came back down the hill with a wonder song in my heart, pulled in our driveway, got out and squatted awhile in the garden and watched the honeybees as they dazzled the crocuses' orange stamens with such vigor and enthusiasm I was almost blushing yet completely transfixed by the mad glory of the moment then at hand.
I stayed and stared as though there was nothing else in the world to do though I couldn't imagine anything I’d prefer to be doing more than that, right then, when it suddenly occurred to me that I should go call for my photographer son to come and see and take a picture, which he happily did. Look at the pollen sacs on the honeybee's legs below!
The awakening of honeybees to gardeners and nature lovers is something to make much of. The sheer magic of their little bodies buzzing, half- suspended above the first of springtime's open flowers is always nothing short of a miracle to me.
Ah, the splendor of nature’s resurrection!
But that was just one of Tuesday, April 11th’s many gifts to me.
The Clothesline
Another was my triumphant return to hanging out towels on the clothesline in my side yard. If you know me at all, you know that hanging out wash is a favourite pastime of mine. Some might call it a chore. I call it a dream come true.
Tree lover that I am, when I climb up on my tree stump and flop a bunch of wet towels or shirts or leggings onto the outstretched waiting limb of the Maple tree east of our house, I feel like a kid again. Shaded from the sun, yet deliciously close to the tree trunk, I am ready to pin up wash.
On Tuesday morning, I knew when I awoke that it would be a hanging- out- wash day with the warmth and sun and gentle breeze setting the stage along with thoughts of the module on energy I am studying for my online course on Systems theory and Just Transition reminding me to use my dryer less.
What better way to honour Earth and self as one, than by celebrating that my right shoulder, which I seriously dislocated this time last year, while not completely healed, is healed enough to hang out clothes?( Last summer was a long one spent feeling sorry for myself, when spying someone else's wash flapping in the summer breeze left me pining for pinning up my own.) Sigh.
Wisely, I started small with only a half dozen or so towels but oh how sweet my return when I stood upon my tree stump again, the Maple barely budded, let alone leafed and I was queen of wooden laundry pins and sodden towels. The glory!
The Woodcock, Yay or Nay?
And then in evening time after groceries, we headed on an outing to Crown Point Rd for our first of season walk as planned by Lucas, our twenty year old son. For two evenings running we failed to make our way so we set a time for Tuesday, post errands and headed out to see what we might see and hear what we might hear as the day drew to a close.
The intention was to walk to the field beyond the marshland while there was still daylight. We drove the car part way down the deeply rutted but quite dry, red clay road in Alexandra but stopped where the woods began and the more sheltered road became pure Island muck. We parked and made our way, walking the raised center clay left by tractor tire tracks, like double- width, low balance beams with red mud puddles on either side of us, down the wooded road.
Better yet said, the road that was once wooded, as it is now mostly stumped following the destruction that Fiona wrought on the trees here. Sigh again. The air, a bright rich blend of newly sawed wood and cinnamon, was soft as the evening quiet. We were the only noise as we squelched our way, chattering like squirrels, to the marsh.
Once there, Clara exclaimed “is that spring peepers I hear?” and lo and behold, Lucas proclaimed she was right! It only sounded like one or two, not the chorus they will rise to in a few weeks time but oh, it was music to our winter weary ears. That and a White- throated Sparrow that our birder, Lucas, caught wind of and kindly reminded us of its “Oh Canada, Canada, Canada" call which he had patiently taught us last year on this same stretch of road, though the roadside burgeoning with springtime green and heavily treed back then.
A Mourning Dove’s mournful coo matched what my heart was feeling at spring rising again within and around us even amid such woodland devastation. I wondered how full of song these woods will be when migrants all return? Will there be the habitat and food they need when they arrive? Oh this world of hunger and abundance, both.
We walked on the road that somehow and just barely, divides the marshland onward to the field beyond the marsh to stand in silence as the light around us continued lessening. The reason for the outing which Lucas welcomed us to; to see if we might witness the American Woodcock’s magical twilight, spring courtship display. The territory we might hope to see or hear them, he told us, is typically by a field at the edge of a forest.
Though it wasn’t quite dark enough, we stood awhile in the lovely calm and let the quiet center and soothe us. As night began to pull its shades a little further down we turned to head back to the car. Still light enough that we could see but having fallen to the point that it began to play tricks on us as our eyes as we searched for clarity where edges were beginning to blur, we made our way.
As we walked along, our boots thick with red mud, Clara decided to stop to wipe some mud off on a low bank of rotting snow roadside. She sank so that her boot almost got swallowed in a great gulp of snow and muddy water and shrieking, she jumped over to where we were with her then wet- socked feet.
“Clara--be careful! The place is full of sinkholes.” Maria reminded her, laughing.
Not that we ever forget when walking here. No matter what might try to lure us into the marshland we always stick to the road, though a memory of last fall just after the hurricane when we found a narrow opening on the road and stuck a stick in and then let it drop and could not hear it or see it anymore came quickly to mind. And cascading from that fear, another-- that coyotes might be nearby, which we’ve heard howling off in the distance at dusk when we walk here.
“All fear”, said Lucas “and not overly concerning. Too much fear in us still.”
And he is right.
I’m not surprised, as there is much not healed in us post- pandemic and not yet healed from a family member's trauma. Yes, often there's still fear but on a day like this there is also space for joy and wonder and sharing in the goodness of being alive as spring greets us like chipmunks leaving their burrow to greet blue sky or like honeybees fresh to newly opened flowers. We are healing through immersion in nature.
Nearing the car, we turned around and saw that Lucas was stopped on the road a distance back. His face, featureless and ghost-like, glowed eerily above his red plaid coat and tan hoody and pants, which had disappeared, by way of the dimming light, into the red mud he was standing on. Though we had waited patiently, no woodcock display that night. Thankfully the only things that sank were our hopes and Clara's boot.
Before he joined us Lucas whistled to a clacking frog the girls and I thought was a Woodcock. We laughed because we had thought we heard the Woodcock up where we stood but he soon told us it was the frog he was whistling to.
There was no arguing though we tried to poke at him the whole way home. And no matter anyhow, as to this middle- aged heart, the evening's frog songs were princely kisses of springtime that set my heart aflutter.
Always so much to be grateful for.
Happy Spring!
Thanks for reading!
Jill
Images snapped thanks to Lucas MacCormack
Thank God for the beauty of nature and the seasons changing to help us be ever grateful for the abundance that exists in spite of all that is being lost all the time....thanks for showing us both sides, Jill xxxooo ma