first signs of spring

for most of us, perhaps all of us, the first signs of spring arrive in our grocery stores or corner flower shops weeks before it arrives outside our front door. my mom’s 86th birthday was last week, so i bought her a bunch of pink lilies and pink tulips. she’s been trained, always an eager learned, to save her spent flowers for STILL blog. this morning she handed me a bag full of pink petals. so, even though i woke up to fresh dusting of april snow (😑), i was able to offer up a little spring color today.

pink lily petals

sort by kind

i have a flat file cabinet full of bits and pieces of found nature.  the botanical drawers are sorted by color. the reaming drawers are sorted by kind: seed pods, dead insects, bones, shells, and feathers. pinecones and nests are too large to fit in a flat file. i think i will start a drawer just for tendrils soon. i have no idea what i will ever do with these collections.  but it makes me happy to know they are there. and keeps me living in s state of heightened attentiveness–always on the look out for another treasure to add to the others. STILL is a blog. and a daily creative challenge. but it is also a way of living in the world.

collection of insect wings

on strangeness

i have strange collections. i like strangeness. i like people who have strange hobbies. and strange interests. who read strange books. and take strange vacations. but, i know what you are thinking…you are saying to  yourself  ‘but what is strange to me may not be strange to you. what is strange is unique to every individual.’ and i would agree. but we also all have our own definition of beauty, and yet there is also a shared understanding of what is beautiful. strangeness is like beauty. these wild thorns are a strange thing to collect and save. but they are also beautiful.

wild rose thorns

yine up

when my son was little (he’s now 18 yrs old) one of his favorite ways to pass time was to do “yine up”, aka line up. he would take all his cars, or all his dinosaurs, and line them up head to tail in descending order of size. it was a quirk. we had him tested for o.c.d. he does not have it. he was simply a kid who liked to create order in an otherwise chaotic world. the apple does not fall far from the tree.

ruffed grouse tail feathers

in the unlocking

in 1978, Kurt Vonnegut gave the commencement speech at Fredonia State College in upstate New York. in the speech, Vonnegut suggested to the graduating class that the traditional four seasons don’t make sense for northern areas of the country. i agree entirely with the sentiment and his description is perfect too. here’s what he said:

One sort of optional thing you might do is to realize that there are six seasons instead of four. The poetry of four seasons is all wrong for this part of the planet, and this may explain why we are so depressed so much of the time. I mean, spring doesn’t feel like spring a lot of the time, and November is all wrong for autumn, and so on.

Here is the truth about the seasons: Spring is May and June. What could be springier than May and June? Summer is July and August. Really hot, right? Autumn is September and October. See the pumpkins? Smell those burning leaves? Next comes the season called Locking. November and December aren’t winter. They’re Locking. Next comes winter, January and February. Boy! Are they ever cold!

What comes next? Not spring. ‘Unlocking’ comes next. What else could cruel March and only slightly less cruel April be? March and April are not spring. They’re Unlocking.

ice covered crabapple branch