Snowdrops

The first flower of the year appeared two days ago in a city garden, a rarity at this early northern date.  Tiny snowdrops are showing off next to a circular pathway and I am going to get a picture tomorrow as a way of cataloguing the seasons of bloom.   The flower looks like a tiny white lamp hanging from a green post, a  wee flower lantern for the mice.  It is only mid-March, and there is more snow to come, but here from under last fall's brown leaves the first shoots of spring arise.  Never this early.

Each year I count the time as the flowers open, not just by the calender marked on the wall.  After the snowdrops, Siberian squill follows, and then the crocuses.  Crocus are revitalizing in the colors of Easter, the colors you see on a church altar heavy with Lenten purple and golds.  Early daffodils and then the funny looking tulips that look like jester's crowns.  Forsythia. Dandelions and violets, pheasant's eye narcissus, and King Alfred daffodils.  Lilacs and lilies, then the warmer weather really sets in with poppies in May and the blossoming trees of crabapple, cherry, and peach.

Out in the woods, spring comes with trillium and bloodroot, Jack-in-the-Pulpits and Dutchman's breeches.  Wild leeks go into Mayapples, and all the while the spring peepers are yelling their froggy heads off anywhere a scoop of a puddle lies.  Grackles are back, turning over last year's leaves in search of early worms and insect larvae; and today the geese came, heading north in v-shaped formation towards the swamps near Lake Ontario.  I hear robins have returned, but none to my own eye yet.

Vegetable gardens put out a quantity of radishes first, and peas, and lettuces.  The first growth of catnip will be found in scrapyards and roadside plots for it does best in poor soil; after it bolts to seed in the heat, a second, scraggily crop comes and lasts till frost.  It grows everywhere once you learn to recognize the leaf, and makes no sense to buy the packets in the stores, when it can be had fresh and for free.  Just wash your hands afterwards, for it often carries tobacco mosaic which can wreak havoc with tomato plants and orchids.

Asparagus and most wonderful: rhubarb.  One of my best pies has an orange custard base with rhubarb and strawberries between two crusts.  That is spring in a nutshell-pieshell-verywell.  More old yards have a rhubarb plant or two, for it has been used as a tonic by country folks for hundreds of years.  I need to find one of these yards, as the grocery store thinks they can put one over on you and charge over three dollars a pound for a few stalks.  Makes a good jam, and once established--it takes three years--the plants will produce for half a century.

Pussywillows come slow, leave quickly; lilies of the valley fill any room with their fragrance as do hyacinths.  Well, I'll tell you, I can't wait for the show to begin, the flowers, the early greens, the mouse eared leaves sprouting from buds, the miniscule flowers put out by maple trees, the columns of horse chestnut blooms, the catalpa trees waxy white blossoms.  There is always something to take the place of the previous show all the way through to the orange gourds of fall, but there's no hurry.  I haven't taken you up to strawberries yet as they are the first part of summer, nor the sour cherries or peaches.  Spring it is, even though this is an unusual date for things to begin.  What were those snowdrops thinking?

Long day.  Night is here, and the lights of the city are the same in snow, in rain or warm summer evening.  Traffic runs faster with dry pavement, tires hum against asphalt at a higher pitch descending into a far away sigh.  I am tired, did some work at the college.  Looking forward to letting go, to that time between prayers and sleep, when you think of supposed things, of wishes, of purpose; there are seeds to be planted, and roots to be laid under earth.   Rest those long bones yourself, you'll need them for hauling, roiling, tossing forward this life knowing that nothing is as sweet as something you have produced yourself.   Good night, green shoot, spring moon.