The spring thing

In keeping with the erratic weather we've had for the past two years, this year's transition to spring has been, well, erratic.

The big surprise was the heat wave. Mid-March, temps in the 60s and 70s! A full month early! Dry and gorgeous, day after day. It was a gift for everyone who like to be outdoors -- or, like us, who needs to be outdoors, in order to take care of huge yard and garden projects. We got a month's head start on what's normally a cramped season. We also put our canoes in the water on a record early date.

(That was weird . . . after the paddle, we went for lunch at a pub at the base of the local ski hill, where we sat inside in wetsuits with canoes and kayaks on top of the cars outside, while people trooped by in boots and parkas carrying skis and snowboards. The ground was brown, the hill was white, and all bodies of water were mixed ice and liquid. Typical March!)

Anyway, during this heat wave, the first perennials broke through and the earliest migratory birds returned and most everyone went nutty with spring fever. Meanwhile, while celebrating wearing T-shirts and shorts before equinox, we never stopped looking over our shoulders, haunted by the five feet of snow we got in the last ten days of March some years ago. Another year, an April blizzard. And another year, a killing frost on June 1 after everyone had planted their gardens.

And so it goes. We haven't gotten any blizzards yet, but we've swung back to "normal" weather, three weeks now of mixed precipitation, biting blustery winds, and blazing sun. The emerging perennials put on the brakes and are hanging in a state of suspension, waiting for the warmup to resume (though one crocus dared bloom and got away with it).

Real spring is just around the corner, and both mud season and maple sugar season are definitely over. Now gardeners are eyeing their plots, wondering if the seeds they've started can go out under cover, or if we still have to wait until Memorial Day to be sure . . .

Pagan holiday

It saddens me that the old nature-based holidays have been replaced by institutional ones, at least in this country in this era. I would much rather celebrate the seasons than gods or anniversaries of people and events, because those seasons are intensely real and current, whereas those people and events are long past or, in the case of gods, debatable.

Four holidays exist on my personal calendar: two solstices and two equinoxes, which divide the year into birth, growth, maturity, and decline -- just like life. This cycle is universal, unlike institutional holidays. The important people, gods, and events in, say, China, have nothing to do with same in the United States. How can we ever hope for universal peace if we have nothing in common to celebrate?

Regardless, right now is the three-day window that comprises my personal high holy day, the summer solstice. Fifteen-and-a-half official hours of daylight at this location; unofficially, more like 17 hours -- 4:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. -- if you count being able to see while outdoors. I’ve often been tempted to move farther north to enjoy the spectacularly long days that go with higher latitudes; however, those are balanced by spectacularly long nights, so I remain in place. For someone who measures hours of light and darkness all year long, it would be the wrong plan to seek out more darkness!

Lacking the ancient rituals that went with pagan holidays, I don’t do anything specific for this one. It would be nice to have a big bonfire or a bacchanal or some sort of celebration with fellow light-worshipers. There aren’t too many around here, so I satisfy myself by just being as awake and aware as possible, spending as much time outdoors or looking out the windows as possible, and startling people by wishing them Happy Solstice. It won’t come around for another year; meanwhile, we begin the long slide back toward 9 hours of daylight.

The decrease will become noticeable by August. The plants seem to know this, timing their birth, growth, maturity, and decline around the equinoxes and solstices. It wasn’t until we moved to Vermont that I caught a real sense solstice-as-climax. Garden perennials that grow in my home turf of Connecticut break out 1-3 weeks later here but have caught up by this date in a spurt that makes the air crackle with energy, as if the solstice is the target they all share. Up north, it’s probably so accelerated that you can see the growth if you sit still and watch. Here, you notice it the next morning, when something you observed 24 hours ago is suddenly 2 inches taller.

Then there are the birds, the sky, the colors, the position of sun and moon, and all the different indicators of the season. This year we’ve been fortunate in having good weather concurrent with the holiday, making it doubly special. I’ve been making sure to be up at 4:30 and not in bed before 9:30 so I can enjoy every minute of it!

Sounds of spring

The transition from winter to spring around here is a sputtering business -- a few steps forward, a few steps back, with a few steps sideways thrown in for good measure. You know spring has truly arrived, however, when suddenly the world gets loud.

Especially at dawn and dusk, opening the door presents a wall of sound. Peepers trilling at the ponds, accompanied by quacking frogs. (Yes, it's a quacking sound -- I keep thinking they're a flock of distant ducks.) The mallard ducks arrive with a splash and announce themselves with a real quacking, almost a honking, which in fact is made by Canada geese flying overhead. Wood ducks make a little stifled scream.

Meanwhile, robins are singing, sparrows are chittering, chickadees are dee-deeing and peeping, nuthatches are beeping, woodpeckers are drumming. The woodcock first peents in the underbrush then hurls himself into the air for a whistling spiral in hopes of attracting a mate.

Phoebes call their own name in a raspy voice while tree swallows squabble. Mourning doves emit their haunting cry, seeming almost owl-like until you hear the barred and great horned owls hoot in measured patterns. Crows caw, ravens squawk, hawks kree, blue jays blare. And always, underneath it all, the water roars.

It's a muffled roar of the hills emptying themselves of almost daily rain and the last of winter's snow, galloping down through well-established channels and into full ponds and rivers. Eventually these channels dry out, refilling briefly after summer downpours. We're a long way from that still, though the promise of the next season lies in the first thunderstorms flaring and booming during the night.

It's a happy cacaphony I look forward to all year long.

The annual giving of thanks

Every year at this time, people across America ritually gather to give thanks for what they have. I try to do the same thing mentally every day, counting my blessings -- difficult to do when times are tough, but always worth the effort because it revives appreciation of life and all that is good therein.

My personal thanksgiving ritual occurs at a different time of year. I wrote about it in the introduction to my book, Open Your Heart with Gardens:

"Each year, it happens afresh:

"After months of brown and gray and white . . . cold and hard and dark . . . the day comes when I step outside and behold a tip of green protruding from the ground.

"The first daffodil!

"The sight of it drops me to my knees, mentally chanting, Thankyouthankyouthankyou! Then I leap up into The Happy Dance because there at my feet lies proof that the world has kept turning, the invisible forces of the universe have kept churning, and Mother Nature has again fulfilled her promise despite everything I doubted and feared.

"Thankyouthankyouthankyou!"

No daffodils now, but the promise of rebirth associated with them is what I most give thanks for as the year draws down and cold and darkness pervade.

Carolyn Haley

Books at: http://carolynhaley.wordpress.com
Editing business at: www.documania.us

Stick season

Here in the hilly section of Vermont, there are a lot of jokes (and complaints) about the weather. They're all true, by the way. It's the most weather-dominant place I've ever lived, which doesn't help with gardening!

Nevertheless, despite my own complaints, I like the weather here. It's dramatic and primal -- an Event, almost every day. And very rich with color. I've taken to determining seasons by color, since the calendar doesn't seem to have anything to do with it. Right now, rolling into November, we've entered Stick Season.

Stick Season is primarily brown and gray. With all the leaves down (except coppery beech and rusty oak), the landscape is a mass of brown and gray vertical lines overlaying brown and gray undulations. The skies are myriad shades of gray, usually roiling, reflected back by gunmetal gray waters. This monotony is punctuated by the aptly named evergreens, and given contrast by beige and mustard grasses, plus the surprising gold of larches and even more surprising shafts of golden sunbeams slanting through holes in the gray clouds.

In all, starkly beautiful. Soon to be blanketed with white. But it's nice to see the bones of the land for a little while, and to glimpse homes and other features normally masked by dense foliage. We get Stick Season in reverse during April, when the white blanket retreats and reveals the world naked before greens reemerge to clothe it.

So Stick Season is brown and gray. Winter is white, blue, and lavender. Not-Winter is green with fiesta-colored accents. Foliage Season is just the party colors. Some folks add Mud Season to this roster, but I lump that under Stick Season. The spring and fall are always wet and yucky underfoot, and in our immediate area we don't get the dissolving, rutted roads that suck vehicles in up to their floor pans (for which Mud Season is named), so I'll stick with my nomenclature.

The only problem is, Winter is 5 months long, Not-Winter is 4, Stick Season is 3, and Foliage Season less than 1. According to the calendar, each season is supposed to be 3 months long. Hah!

Carolyn Haley

Books at: http://carolynhaley.wordpress.com
Editing business at: www.documania.us