We Have Achieved April

This is the month of awakening. And of watching what is tired, rest.

I raked out the oak leaves from the vegetable garden beds, and from the beds wherein slept the hyacinths, tulips, jonquils, which are now standing tall (jonquils), stretching tall and beginning to be the flower they are, every year meant to be (tulips), standing, some, and leaning on each other as they become too heavy for their legs (hyacinths), and wherein just rolling over and thinking of rising, sending out arms to check the air, irises awaken. And from the grasses that comprise my back and front yards, a couple of rogue crocuses have emerged and past their time, and dandelions pop up willy nilly, and violets are beginning their spawn, across free spaces, and all manner of wildflower is pushing upward at their various paces to show face tomorrow, next week, next month, three months from now. The dirt under the grasses is so busy.

The hostas under the dogwood tree are standing tall already. I am never sure when they will begin to take precedence over the dirt under that dogwood. Some years it seems like they sleep late, this year I think they were up before dawn. I would say the same about the jonquils, except my phone gave me one of those unbidden memories from previous years “on this date” and last year, 2021, they were up in great number by April 12th, and this year only began to pop out of their green top-of-stem cocoons six days ago, April 16th.

Sometimes technology, which flourishes on so many “precious” metals and perilous labor to come to being, offers the unexpected that can send one’s mind wondering. There is, I guess, nothing on this earth that is purely anything. Every item alive has a dark side.

Even glorious, many-hued, lovely to touch skunk cabbage. Oh how smelly.

And the trees. Ah the trees. The weeping birches are greening.

What will spring out today? Tomorrow? The dirt is so busy!

I wanted to go somewhere else with this post. But I could not.

I will stay here, remembering a poem I have quoted in a previous blog, e.e. cummings: the first lines:

in Just-

spring          when the world is mud–

luscious 

I wish you delight.