In the before times, I would swim laps at 5:30 am while my daughter was at swim practice. I’d get my exercise and shower in before the work day began. Then, like the rest of the world, the aquatic center closed its doors.
When swim practice tiptoed back into our lives, practice times changed to afternoons and evenings, and the aquatic center had limited capacity. I no longer swam while our daughter swam. Instead, I walked on a nearby nature trail in the evenings while the swim team swam at the pool. Then the time changed, and it was dark during practice. I no longer walked while our daughter swam.
My scenes became the inside of our house, the views out of our windows, the views out of the car windows in our small town, and the yards, trees, and hills in a two mile radius of our house where I’d walk or run on nice days. I took up drawing. I sat in different chairs at the table. I obsessed about the garden and killed more grass.
Now, the time has changed again, and days extend to 7:30pm. I can walk on the Huckleberry trail while our daughter is at practice. Now, I have another place to observe the plants, watch the sky, and look for signs of spring. There’s not a lot of color out there yet, but it will come.
I wanted so badly for this nest to have eggs in it.
Old railroad ties along the Huckleberry trail.
My mom, blogger at Wandering Dawgs, is hosting a Lens-Artist photo challenge this week. This is my entry for her prompt, A Change of Scenery. Thanks for a fun prompt, Mom!
FINALLY. The first day of spring has arrived! Daffodils pop all over town, forsythia canes begin to bloom, and I even saw a dogwood show some white blossoms in our neighborhood. Chartreuse leaf buds fatten on trees and shrubs, and bright green goldenrod leaves shoot up through the leaf litter. I have awaited this day since the first cold of November.
My new narcissus Forsythia starting to bloomHappy daffodilsFlowers in the first light of spring
Robins have suddenly appeared, pretty much on March 1. The sun shines, birds chirp, sparrows pull coconut fibers from the flower baskets for their nests, the sky is blue, my Mexican sunflower seeds sprouted, robins hop around pulling worms, and I want to rearrange my office right now so I can look out the window. But I have a ton of meetings, and I want to take a walk between my meetings and my coaching call, so I can’t do anything about it today. I’m taking our daughter to Richmond this weekend for a swim meet, so I have to skip gardening and office rearranging over the weekend as well.
I need to get to work because I have a bunch of stuff I need to do before my first call. I don’t want to though. I spent my workout time this morning drawing pictures in my garden journal: Mexican sunflower sprouts, the rabbit that ran across the top of the back hill, a robin in the rose bed. I want to throw responsibilities out the window and go outside, breathe it all in, and soak up sunlight. I have a meeting in 20 minutes, though, and I need to do some prep work. I’ll guess I’ll get to work now so I can take my walk this afternoon. It will be warmer then anyway, and maybe the extra few hours will give the first daffodils time to open.
I bought a used Fujifilm X-T30 a couple of weeks ago. It will take some time for me to learn a new setup after 15 years with my previous camera. A friend advised me to put it in full manual mode to get used to the settings, light meter, and the shape and weight of the camera in my hand. I did that, and I’m starting to get a feel for it. I’m still not there with exposure and white balance, but I’ll keep practicing.
I carry my little camera with me more frequently when I go places now, way more than with my previous camera, and I go out of my way to be able to photograph stuff. Like the first flowering trees I saw on my route to and from the aquatic center where our daughter has swim practice. In a landscape of nothing by gray twiggy branches, I saw something — a large shrub or a small tree — with yellow on it. I couldn’t see what this blooming tree was from the road, so today I pulled into a parking lot and trudged over spongy wet ground to get a closer look: witch hazel.
I adore my new Fuji. Now I just need days with sunshine for decent light. Either that or I need to learn how to best use the light of overcast days. I’d rather have sunshine, though. I’m still working with the 15-45mm kit lens that came with the camera, which I love for wide shots, and which works well for closeups, like the bee butt below, but I want a wider aperture. I’m saving for the lens I really want (a 35mm f 1.4), and I’m hopeful I’ll have it for spring’s full arrival.
First pollinator of the season on the first flower: bee in crocus. With sunshine! XC15-45mmF3.5-5.6 lens on Fuji X-T30. 15mm – ISO 160 – 1/200 – f/3.5
First flowering shrub: witch hazel. XC15-45mmF3.5-5.6 lens on Fuji X-T30. 20mm – ISO 200 – 1/280 – f/4.0
First flowers (along with crocuses): snow drops. XC15-45mmF3.5-5.6 lens on Fuji X-T30. 15mm – ISO 200 – 1/210 – f/3.5
In addition to my new camera, I’m also excited to try a new (to me) open source photo editing software, Darktable. Thanks to Donncha for that tip in our photography channel at work, to Paolo for talking to me about his Fuji, and to Brie for helping me through my first days of a camera I had no familiarity with. I’m lucky to work with a lot of talented photographers.
Once I decided to kill more grass, I called my mulch guy to ask if they delivered top soil. He said yes. I got excited, and I asked him for three cubic yards, as soon as possible. That was two weeks ago. A snow storm was on its way at the time, and his dirt was still wet from the last snow. “I’ll call you when the weather is okay to deliver,” he told me.
Thursday afternoon, I was on a run on our second consecutive warm, sunny day — the first sunny days in what seemed like weeks. My phone rang when I was about 10 minutes from home. It was my mulch guy, so I stopped to walk, and panting, I answered the phone. Maybe he could deliver that day!
“Hi! I’m calling about your top soil, the weather finally is clear – ” he said.
“YES!” pant pant. Very excited. Grinning.
“We’re about to get another six days of rain -“
“Can you deliver it today?!” I said. In my excitement, I kept interrupting him.
“Yes. Today is the only day. I’ll be there in 30 minutes. You want it at the top of the hill, yes? I’ll meet you there.”
He delivered it in the late afternoon. I covered it with a tarp as the sky clouded over. With six more days of rain on the way, I wondered when I’d get a chance to spread it. If only I could get the cardboard down and the dirt on top of it, the rainy days would be perfect to water it in and get the cardboard good and soggy so that it will start breaking down at least a little bit before I want to start planting. With potted seedlings, I can dig through the cardboard for their roots to get into the earth. I’m worried about sowing seeds though; if the cardboard is still too stiff and new, and I sow seeds in the dirt on top of the cardboard, their new roots won’t be able to penetrate it. The sooner I can get the cardboard over the grass to kill it, and under the dirt and rain to start breaking down, the better chance my seeds will have.
Planting plans: flat-leaf parsley, basil, milkweed, Mexican sunflower, and jalapeños I can start indoors then transplant the seedlings. Zinnias, chives, cilantro, and dill I will want to sow directly in the bed.
Yesterday, I couldn’t stand not taking advantage of the coming wet weather. So despite gross gray skies, rain, and a constant drizzle, I decided to go ahead and lay down the load of cardboard I’d collected from a nearby recycling dropoff. The soil was sodden and heavy, and I’m lucky I didn’t throw my back out as I shoveled, wheeled, dumped, and spread. It was pretty grueling work, and I was glad when I was done. Today, I sip coffee at the window and watch with glee as rain soaks my work.
I need maybe one more load of cardboard to finish off the area for my bed. Hopefully by the time I get to that final load, the soil will be drier. And spring will be that much closer by then!
Cardboard over the grass I want to kill
My wet dirt
Halfway there
The deck on the right is where I sit in spring, summer, and fall to watch the garden
Done! For today. This took about 2.5 hours. One more session should do it. Except I need more cardboard.
Just after lockdown began, I went for a run. I burst into tears as I ran by tulips that had just opened, and cherry trees in bloom. Their beauty was more than I could bear as I wondered, “Are we going to run out of food? We don’t have a survival plan. Are we all going to die? What does this mean for humanity?” Pink blossoms quivered in sunlight, and I wept.
That was almost a year ago. Flowers and sky, sunshine and water got me through a lot of the pandemic in 2020. When fall arrived, and flowers dropped, and leaves dropped, and temperatures dropped, we moved indoors. I watched the world turn brown. We got snow, which is pretty, and ice, which is pretty, but the winter world is cold and desolate, and after nearly a year of no socializing, no meals in restaurants, no coffee dates with my husband, after nearly a year of all four of us being in the house together, after a year of watching terrible things happen to Black men and women and immigrants and their children, and people dying by the tens of thousands, and ugliness and lies and meanness and vitriol coming from our president, I felt cold and desolate too. And in winter, there are not flowers and sky, sunshine and water to get me through.
Until yesterday. After four weeks of snow storms and ice storms and temperatures consistently below freezing, the sun came out and shone warm. It melted the snow and ice. It warmed the ground. I put on short sleeves to run, and I felt sun on my skin. I smelled the scent of thawing dirt as I ran. I felt heat radiate from the asphalt. I ran under blue sky.
When I returned home, I walked across our lawn, still panting from my run, to check on the bulbs our mail carrier gave us from her garden. Last year they bloomed February 13. I’ve checked them every week in February, through snow and ice, and finally, yesterday, they bloomed.
First flowers of the year ♥️
With these little flowers, I feel a release. I feel like I can make it now. The world around me is thawing. We have a kind and compassionate leader who acknowledges the hurt of the world and wants to help heal it. In a few weeks I will have my annual gardening vacation, where I spend an entire week outdoors, cutting, pruning, shoveling mulch. Soon I will be able to sit on the back deck in the sunlight and watch the world come back to life.
Butterfly Mind 