freeze. thaw. repeat.

freeze. thaw. freeze. thaw. the rhythm of late march. soon the red winged blackbirds and robins will be snacking on these over-wintered crabapples, and getting lightly drunk from their fermenting fruit. i hear the sound of tinkling meltwater everywhere, but still see mostly snowpack. we have more snow than usual this year if the spring rains arrive before the ground has had a chance to thaw, the rain cannot be absorbed by the soil and we will have run-off and flooding. my basement does not typically get water in spring, but this year i am preparing for it–getting everything up off the floor, and using it as an opportunity to do a little clutter clearing in the process. everyone is doing spring cleaning.

ice-covered crabapples

surprise!

i really do like surprising you all. but you probably weren’t as surprised as i was when i went into the root cellar today and found these monsters reaching for me. i wish i could have photographed them  standing up on their sprout-legs like some star wars inspired interplanetary beings. if we didn’t have two feet of snow on the ground still, i would have planted them outside. so, what do you think, beautiful or creepy?

there comes a time

every march, there comes a time when i just can’t. i can’t tromp out into the snow looking for one more subject amongst the same twigs and stems. so, i inevitably turn toward the houseplants. while i like to keep STILL seasonal and local, the more important priority is to not break the chain. have i shared with you the jerry seinfeld quote about not breaking the chain?  even if i have, it is worth repeating again:

Brad Isaac was a young comedian starting out on the comedy circuit. One fateful night, he found himself in a club where Jerry Seinfeld was performing. In an interview on Lifehacker, Isaac shared what happened when he caught Seinfeld backstage and asked if he had “any tips for a young comic.”

Here’s how Isaac described the interaction with Seinfeld…

He said the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes and the way to create better jokes was to write every day.

He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker. He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day.

“After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job is to not break the chain.”

You’ll notice that seinfeld didn’t say a single thing about results.

welcome home

today my son arrived home for a one-week spring break visit from nyu. he’s been away for his first semester of college since january. i am not sure i can put into words the transformation that has occurred in only two months. i feel as though i sent off a boy, and a man returned home. it sounds melodramatic, i know, but still the change has been significant. our friend erik, who knows our son well, said he was a pilot light waiting to be lit. it’s the perfect metaphor. i am so excited to spend this week with him–he is the same person he has always been, and still somehow entirely new at the same time. not unlike these winter stems–wholly themselves, yet different.

liking lichen

lichens are miniature ecosystems made of fungus and an algae and/or cyanobacteria. these different life forms work very closely together, with the algae or cyanobacteria sitting inside the fungus. the algae or cyanobacteria provide the fungus with sugars made from sunlight, and the fungus provides the home for both of them. lichens get their nutrients from the air. because lichens have no roots , they cannot filter what they absorb, so whatever is in the air is taken straight inside. if there are pollutants, it can accumulate in the lichen and can become toxic very quickly. next time you are on a walk, take a look around for the types of lichen that grow in your area. as a rule of thumb, the smaller the size and the fewer the variety of lichens in an area, the more polluted is the environment.

common sunburst lichen (Xanthoria parietina)