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.
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.
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.
I ran yesterday between appointments at work. I needed to get outside. I needed exercise.
When I returned home, I walked through my garden, as I always do in spring when I come home from a run. The only plant in bloom in my garden is the forsythia, but as I looked around, I saw the mint is coming up again. The lavender kept its leaves through the winter. So did the rosemary, and the sage.
I thought about people buying bouquets at Kroger to perk themselves up in this time of self-isolation. I also thought about advice a friend in customer support gives, to keep a self-care kit by your computer when working in support. What struck me about her advice is that the kit should have something for each of your senses, so that when the work gets hard, you can go to the kit to pull yourself into your body with touch, taste, sound, smell, and sight.
I found a jelly jar in the pantry and grabbed the snippers from the garage, and I made myself a self-care bouquet of mint, sage, lavender, rosemary, and forsythia blossoms. The yellow blooms are a joyful contrast against my home office’s sky blue walls. When I need a zing of the outdoors, I rub my fingers on the mint to release its invigorating scent; when I need to be soothed I rub the lavender. When I want to get hungry, it’s the rosemary’s turn. And when I want something pretty, I just look at the bouquet.
The cats like it too.
The garden is is peak bloom right now. Pollinators buzz busily, and the bigger butterflies are starting to find their way to the flowers I planted for them.
These are mostly just the close-ups. I published more photos on Andrea’s Gardening Blog if you like photographs of gardens and flowers.
It just wouldn’t be April without a photo essay of the status of the garden. Here’s where everything stands right now, after last week’s drenching rains: herb blossoms, shrubs in bloom, and perennials building up their flowers.
Butterfly Mind 