Alexandersmap

    Category: seasons

    • The State of Things

      “For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.” – Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

      I paid a friend to mow my lawn for ten years. I traveled often and didn’t have the time to keep up with it, so I’d simply throw money at the problem and it would be done. Something happens to your yard when you aren’t out in it doing the work. It pulls back from you, feeling shunned perhaps, or maybe reasserting the wild tendencies that were always there, but corralled in suburbia. Walk in the woods and count the cellar holes and stone fences and you’ll know the truth: The land has a longer memory than our lifetime.

      Over the last few years I’d walk about the yard on some gardening task, looking at the state of things. The lawn was cut well, with fine lines at expert angles, but the lawn itself was in a sorry state. So we’re the beds and walkways. In fact the whole yard was feeling a bit worn down and neglected. Sure, I’d rake or spread mulch or pick up the fallen branches after a storm, but the land was slowly returning to a wild state. I’d spent all my time at home on the garden and potted plants, and was getting the cold shoulder from the rest of the yard. No, this won’t do.

      The first step in repairing a damaged relationship is to put in the time building trust back. So I bought a Honda push mower that forces me to walk every step of the land and with the warmer weather I’m out there walking the property. You notice things when you walk every step of the land, things like the quality of the soil in certain places, and weeds you don’t have a name for, and chipmunk holes, and roots and stumps from experiments gone bad. Each step brought me closer to the truth, and forced me to reconcile my decade of indifference to the land. I’d have to do better.

      Eventually travel will return, and weather windows will make mowing an inconvenience. But other excuses like soccer games and basketball tournaments and dance recitals have given back time I’d used to justify the hired help now that the kids are adults. And I’ve found that I enjoy getting to know the land again. It keeps me honest with myself. It’s a form of penance for a decade of neglect, and I don’t seem to mind at all. There’s work to be completed, seasons to mark, tasks at hand, projects to do. A slow march to the infinite, one step at a time. The land might reject me still, but I’m back on it anyway, trying to keep up with the state of things and learning lessons along the way.

    • Rotating the Crops

      A necessary condition of early season gardening in the northeast is having the flexibility to move annuals in and out frequently. After a weekend of enthusiastic planting and placing pots of young flowers and over-wintered topicals all about the yard I moved every last one of them into the garage to sleep for the night. I repeat this any time the forecast calls for temperatures that drop to within ten degrees of a killing frost. I’ve learned the hard way that a forecast is only as good as the microclimate your plants are in. Better safe than sorry.

      So after a weekend of major yard work and roughly 40,000 steps inside an acre, Monday was a day working in front of the computer and on the phone. I can’t say my body minded the rest. In fact, moving the plants back into the garage was the most exercise I had all day. I’ll remedy that today with a long walk to earn the planned take-out taco’s on this Cinco de Mayo. The days of moving all day long are gone, but I was reminded of how much I missed them.

      Overnight temperatures were actually pretty mild. I was overly conservative moving the plants. So it goes. I needed the movement more than the annuals did. I’ll move them twice more today, and tomorrow probably, and so on. It’s a small toll for the body, paying immeasurable dividends for the well-being of the mind. I’m back at it for another season, and I quickly forget what there was to complain about.

      Eighteen containers and pots jammed in here, but who’s counting?

    • For My Next Trip Around The Sun

      For my next trip around the sun, if I may be so presumptuous, I’ll try harder to meet the Aurora Borealis on its terms. Maybe finally catch those evasive Northern Lights, I really do need to meet up with them this time around.  I’ll travel again to faraway places.  Places previously unknown to me that caught my imagination in a travel article or a book.  Places that Google street view hasn’t posted online.  I know these places are out there, I’ve tried in vain to reach them with a mouse before.

      For my next trip around the sun, if good fortune should shine upon me, I’ll rest a hand on the trunk of a Sequoioideae, but first I’ll learn how to spell it without copy and paste.  I once spent a week within an hour’s drive of Redwood National Forest and never bothered to go visit.  Some excuse about work, I suppose.  I don’t recall that mattering in the end anyway.  Touching a redwood tree and looking up to the sky would have mattered far more.

      For my next trip around the sun, if the stars align and I make the full trip, I’m going to celebrate the graduation of my first born and prepare for the graduation of my second born.  The world has changed in ways that seemed fictional not too long ago, and presents challenges that you and your generation will rise up to meet.  I hope my generation and my parents generation does the same and you have something to build on.  The world isn’t fair, we all know that, but a few generations collaborating on solutions to the world’s problems seems a logical next step.  The world is ready for non-violent transformation.  Will it begin with now?

      For my next trip around the sun, should I be so bold, I’ll strive more.  Strive for more meaningful contributions, strive for more engagement in conversation, strive to be more disciplined in the food and drink I take in, strive to be more consistent with the daily habits that make a difference today and for however many trips around the sun you have left.  We all know what we should do, how many do it?  I strive to do it this time around the sun.   You know I’ll write about it, so feel free to poke and prod me should I fall behind.

      For my next trip around the sun, if it should come to pass, I’ll savor more.  Savor the sounds and sights and smells that make up the moments of the day.  Sip a little slower, chew a little more, slow down just enough, look up from the phone and see what’s happening around you.  Savor the time passing by instead of grabbing it tighter and watching it escape anyway, like beach sand in a tight fist.  Savor the long walks and the long talks and the short moments that catch your breath.

      For my next trip around the sun, should the gods look down upon my favorably, I’ll look up more.  Look up at the sky to track our progress over the next year.  Look up old friends you don’t talk to nearly enough.  Look up at the stars and learn to identify them by the way they align with other stars from our unique perspective in the universe.  Look  out, up and out again as the sun rises, warms the skin and the earth around you and drops down again below the horizon, as we all must do eventually.  And so you begin another trip around the sun.  Where will it take you?

    • Spring Chorus At The Edge

      It began with a White-Throated Sparrow, with its extraordinary high-pitched song. It likely wasn’t the first singer of the morning, but it was the first to draw my attention. Soon I was sitting outside in the cold, dim light, sipping coffee and wondering at the divisi chorus rising with the lux level. I’m no expert on the songs of the forest, and cheat with an app to help me pick out unfamiliar singers. I mourn lost opportunities to learn such things as I grew up, but I push that aside and double down on learning now. Instead of mastering the songs of forest birds growing up I mastered the catalog of music spanning the 50’s to the 90’s. It’s a trade-off I can live with.

      But that doesn’t mean I can’t learn now. An active, engaged mind is the best student. And I’m quickly noting the various singers amongst me as I slowly walk around the edge of the woods: Robin, Carolina Wren, White-Breasted Nuthatch, Mourning Dove, Purple Finch, Black-Capped Chickadee, Cardinal, Northern Flicker, Crow, House Wren, Blue Jay, Eastern Towhee, Bluebird, Wild Turkey, Red-Bellied Woodpecker… I hear or see each of them in the span of an hour. There are others I don’t recognize and the app fails to decipher them amongst the dominant voices of the Nuthatch, Cardinal and the White-Throated Sparrow who started it all today. So it goes. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and I’m happy to add another couple of singers to my catalog of favorites.

      The morning progresses and the hum of leaf blowers and lawn mowers and some form of pumping truck create their own chorus. The sounds of suburbia. I live on the edge of the woods, but the other edge is getting on with their weekend chores. All good things must come to an end I suppose. Until tomorrow, woodland chorus. Save me a seat up front, won’t you?

    • April Snow

      Normally I’d react differently to snow in April. Normal years I’m thinking about spring and hurrying along in life. But normal seems quaint in 2020. So when I looked out the window in the early light of morning and saw a snow globe I shook my head in mock indifference. Whatever. I slipped on some boots and walked out into the snow fall. There’s magic in early morning snow, whether you welcomed it or not. It’s not like I’m commuting somewhere, or worried about clearing the driveway. My commute was over when I walked downstairs.

      So out in it, I soaked up the silence as the world shrunk to snow-coated trees and grass and soon me too as millions of flakes drifted out of the sky like salt from a shaker and clung to every surface. I inspected the bluebells and daffodils and saw they shrugged indifference to the affront. Let it snow. Indeed. The northern hemisphere has tilted back to the sun and this won’t last forever. Nothing lasts forever; not snow or pandemics or daffodils or us. Take what the day brings you and embrace it. For this too shall pass.

    • An Infinite Expectation of the Dawn

      In the dimmest of early morning light I watched a deer slowly work its way through the fallen branches, stones and muck out beyond the fence. White tail flickered and drew attention, just as a squirrel’s tail does, and I wondered at the similarities of these mammals who coexist in these woods. Each are seeking the same food – an abundance of acorns that relentlessly fell last fall. Each are prey for carnivores. The tail draws attention, but you could also say it distracts a carnivore long enough that perhaps the prey might get away. The deer feels my presence just as I felt hers. We coexist in these woods too, and I silently nod and leave her to her travels.

      “The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour.  Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers the rest of the day and night…. To be awake is to be alive.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      How quickly the morning progresses now. The birds erupt early, filling the woods with their chorus of song. New voices appear frequently now as the migration continues in earnest. At least the birds can travel. Were this a normal time I might be traveling now too. But then I wouldn’t be here rapt in the audience listening to the symphony. There’s a silver lining in everything, should we look for it.

      “We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.  I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      In a few weeks the trees will start blooming in earnest while the perennials slowly climb from the cold earth to the sky. I welcome the time of year, even as I dread the pollen that accompanies it. Small price to pay for flowers and fresh herbs growing in the garden and the return of the bees and hummingbirds. I think about these things as I walk in the cold early spring garden. I’ll be barefoot out here then without the creeping cold that prods me back inside. Warm days and cold nights. Sap weather. I glance at the maple trees and down at the red buds they’ve shed on the yard. I ought to charge them a toll of syrup for their messy habit, but I realize the folly of me boiling sap for a few ounces of maple syrup. No, the trees remain untapped.

      I remain transfixed by the world around me, and the writing helps draw it out of me like cold sap boiled to something sweet and digestible. Well, you’ll be the judge of that. But I’m the better for the process, and for these journeys out into the awakening hour. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor… these words echo in my mind, as they have for years. And maybe my time out here in the earliest moments of the day spark something deeper inside me than I previously realized.

    • Wet Snow Decisions

      The snow came down heavy and wet all afternoon and into the night.  There’s so much water in the snow that you can’t pick up a complete shovel full without risking injury to the shovel or your back.  Only three inches, maybe, blankets the driveway and lawn.  This is snow blower snow, running slowly and deliberately so you don’t clog the chute.  I took the shovel down to the street and cleared some of the plowed snow piled up at the end to give the rolling trash barrel a stable base.  Then I walked back up to the garage, wondering to myself “I suppose this might melt if I just let the sun work at it”.

      Nothing tests your work ethic like late spring snow.  In January there’s no question I’d clear the driveway.  In late March?  Well…  I walked inside and checked the weather report on my phone.  Sure enough, the temperatures are going to warm up enough to make a real dent in this slip with the consistency of wet cement.  I took an inventory of who is going out and who is staying in during this pandemic.  Nobody is going anywhere.  Are we getting any deliveries today that would require me to clear the driveway?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  That’s the wild card, isn’t it?  It’s not about me at that point, it’s about the FedEx guy or the person delivering propane.  Yeah, they’d appreciate a clean driveway.  Might not even deliver if it’s a mess…  damn.

      Well, I could use some fresh air, right?

       

    • Living Heartily

      “I’m not the river
      that powerful presence.
      And I’m not the black oak tree
      which is patience personified.
      And I’m not redbird
      who is a brief life heartily enjoyed.
      Nor am I mud nor rock nor sand
      which is holding everything together.
      No, I am none of these meaningful things, not yet.      ”
      – Mary Oliver, I’m Not The River

      I walked outside barefoot to a chorus of woodland song early this morning. Robins and cardinals and even those clever rascals the crows were all singing to each other at the edge of the woods where humans begin. Birds don’t give a thought to human worries about COVID-19 or mortgage payments or how many steps show up on your watch. No, they go on living heartily, not thinking about the briefness of the duration but working hard to ensure this particular moment isn’t their last.

      It’s Spring in New England. The world wakes up similarly to the way it woke up yesterday, but there’s a slight shift in attitude. The mild winter and a pandemic cancelling everything normal in life and Mookie Betts dumped for money and Tom Brady moving on all make this Spring feel different from any other in my memory, but walking out into the morning chorus you see it’s all the stories we tell ourselves. We’re all just living this brief moment and trying to live another day. Stoicism offers a guide to living more powerfully.  To accept fate (Amor Fati) and our ultimate fate (Memento Mori), and to apply this knowledge, this understanding of the world, to embrace every moment.

      “It’s time you realized that you have something in you more powerful and miraculous than the things that affect you and make you dance like a puppet.” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      I’m working on things just as we all are. Holding things and people together, working to be patient with this world around me, working on small, daily improvement. Living heartily might seem a challenge right now, but it’s more important than ever. I’d think it was a lot more challenging a hundred or a thousand years ago. No, we live in relative comfort compared to those before us. They’d surely laugh at the things we call hardship. We can hold it all together and get beyond this too. Walking barefoot out to greet this first day of Spring and embrace the chorus seems a good first step. But there’s so much more to do with this day, isn’t there?

    • February Tomatoes

      February is when I really start missing the smell of tomatoes. Ripe tomatoes for sure, but also the smell of the vines as you tie them off on stakes. Market tomatoes have never captured the essence of fresh summer tomatoes. Better than nothing? Sometimes nothing is better. This was all triggered by a Caprese salad, with the basil dominating the senses, the olive oil and balsamic drizzle playing complimentary roles, but the tomato was a silent partner; like white bread it had no soul. Such is February in New England: the senses get shorted.

      A mild winter so far doesn’t translate into the garden. There’s still 3 inches of frozen snow clamped down in the lawn, the garden and the pool, like a hand over the mouth whispering ominously; not yet. Precipitation forecasted for the day includes the “wintry mix” we all hate. Rain or snow? We’ll deal with that. Wintry mix? Make up your mind already!

      But there’s light at the end of the tunnel. The days are longer, there are lawn mowers and seeds on display in hardware stores, and the first day of Spring is four weeks away. February is flying right by, the way the rest of life does. It’s only a matter of time before the soil warms up and unlocks the smells of spring. In the meantime, there’s always a greenhouse or two to explore to get that flower fix. But tomatoes are going to be awhile here in New England. Part of living here, but that doesn’t mean we have to like it.

    • Truck Day

      It hasn’t been a normal winter. Temperatures are milder, early winter snow has largely melted, ponds are at best unsafe to walk on. If Australia is burning, New England is experiencing one of the warmest winters on record. The world is unsettled… but small signs of familiar are out there if you look for them. Even if these too have an odd twist to them.

      Yesterday was Truck Day in Boston. That probably means nothing to most people in the world – and why would it? Truck Day is the first sign of spring on a normally cold and relentless winter, when snow storm after snow storm batters our very souls. And while the winter hasn’t spun into soul-crushing yet (there’s still time), Truck Day still highlights the rite of passage from thinking of winter to Hey! It’s almost Spring!

      Truck Day is when the Boston Red Sox roll their trucks full of baseballs and uniforms and God knows what from Fenway Park to Fort Myers, Florida to be unloaded and ready for Spring Training. It’s a light at the end of the tunnel, hope for better days ahead. Dreams of green in a brown, monochrome world. But even Truck Day feels different this year. The Red Sox fired their Manager in the midst of a cheating scandal, there’s talk of trading star players instead of excitement about the pitching rotation and the outfielders. No, it’s an unsettled winter on Causeway Street, which makes Truck Day just like everything else this winter; a bit off. Like waking up the first day you have symptoms of the flu off. And this winter, of all winters, comparing an event you normally look forward to to the flu isn’t the kind of light at the end of the tunnel that you want to see. It might just be that speeding train barreling towards you.

      But that’s pessimistic talk, and Truck Day, even with the chaos in the world and on the Red Sox, is a good sign. Maybe this will once again be their year. If they can find a Manager anyway. And then it hit me, this is how we used to think before the Red Sox started winning World Series. Jaded optimism disguised as pessimism after getting beaten down year-after-year by the Yankees or (going way back) the Orioles. Yeah, that’s the feeling I was trying to place, the feeling of dread hiding behind hope, as another season begins for The Olde Town Team. Buckle up everyone.