We put the top down and drive 55 on Lee Highway to Roanoke. White flowering trees decorate the ribbon of road in cones of cottony blooms. Forsythia erupt in saffron tangles.
Halfway to Salem, where the road is fringed more with forest than farms, the white blossoms fade away. They are replaced with the fuscia-nubbed stems of redbuds. I first see one or two peeps of pink blossoms amongst the naked brown trees of the wood. Then dozens. Scores. I see swaths of hot pink.
We’re out of the woods and back into farmland. Here’s a weeping willow with tender new leaves — the first spring green. Chartreuse strands sweep the ground, like a gnarled crone in a fairy tale, hunched over a pond. So many trees are leafing out as we come down the mountain! Here’s a magenta tulip magnolia opening its apple sized blossoms. Here’s a hedge of golden forsythia, taller than me, wide as a Volkswagen, and spraying strands of gold like firework trails along the full length of the property line. Here are tidy gold mounds of the same shrub, trimmed into bright globes at the entrance to a school.
Now the pale pink of cherry blossoms, presented on delicate airy branches, lifted to the sky, like gifts in the palm of the tree’s hand.
I sneeze from the pollen. Wisps of hair at my ears and neck — the strands that have come loose from my hat — whip in the wind. My husband taps his fingers on the gear shift in time with the music.
We bought a convertible Mazda Miata a couple of years ago, and it is an endless source of joy.
Daily writing prompt
Describe one positive change you have made in your life.
I skipped the pool today, and now I am swimming in time. I’ve got a full hour and a quarter more than I would have had, had I stuck to the plan of swimming laps this morning. I had my swim bag packed and my swimsuit on. I really truly was planning to go. But as I padded around the house in warm, dry sweats and slippers, the thought of getting in water gave me the shivers. If I didn’t go, I could blog instead…
Spring is coming. I walked yesterday evening and saw the leaves of daffodils peek through the soil in a garden bed. When I crested the hill to home, I cut across our lawn to check the patch under the tree where I’ve planted snowdrops and daffodils over the years. Sure enough, there were the white nods of snowdrops, and about 1 inch of daffodil leaves poking through. In only three days, it will be March. Soon after that, garden season will begin.
Over the years, I’ve built a substantial butterfly garden. It is one of the great joys of my life when I have the time to tend to it. I’ve replaced large swaths of grass with flower beds (2016, 2018, 2021). The garden has grown so large, the beds require two truckloads of mulch. Each spring, I take a weeklong gardening vacation to spread it.
This year’s garden season will be glorious for me. I will be on sabbatical. One of the perks of working at Automattic is a 2-3 month paid sabbatical every 5 years, and mine will begin April 14. I’m so excited I can hardly stand it. I’ve worked a cumulative of about 9 years at the company, and I am so grateful for this gift. I feel like one of the luckiest people alive.
I will spend the first week of my time off almost exclusively in the garden. I will cut back perennials and grasses, prune roses, mulch, and fertilize. That will take about five days. My reward after doing all of that, as it is every year, will be to go to the nursery and see what early plants are out and ready for me to buy. I will be craving green and flowers after six months of a brown and grey landscape. I will be (already am) antsy to put green in the ground.
This spring, even after that first week, I will have time to give the garden my full attention. It’s suffered the past couple of years. I’ve been too spent to give it time in the evenings after work, or we traveled on weekends and I had no energy to tend to it on the weekends we were home. This year I can spend full days looking at it, walking it, sitting in it, reading in it, photographing it, drawing it, and filling empty patches with profusions of flowers for the butterflies and bees (and me!).
Daily writing prompt
Describe the most ambitious DIY project you’ve ever taken on.
Temperatures have stayed below freezing for multiple weeks. Most nights last week were in the single digits, with highs in the teens when the sun was up. My husband texted during the week, do you want to hike the Cascades Saturday morning? I want to see it after all this cold.
When we pulled up to the trailhead at 10 am, the thermometer still below freezing but at least in the 20s instead of the teens, the parking lot was full of cars. Everyone in town wants to see the frozen Cascades.
It snowed and sleeted here a couple of weeks ago, and plenty of people have hiked to the falls since. The trail was slippery and treacherous as a result. The snow was packed tight from all the footsteps, and we had to use hands, feet, and butts to make our way without breaking any bones or falling into the frigid stream. On several short descents, we got down to the ground and used the path like a slide. About a hundred times, I thought, I wish I had a hiking stick. That, and hand warmers.
But oh my God, was it worth it. I really struggle photographing snow, and I could barely manage my camera because my hands were ice cubes, so my photos don’t do it justice. And of course, pictures don’t capture the hollow percussive sound of the stream glooping against the crust of ice above it, or the glitter of sunlight on the snow when the trail broke out of the shadows. They don’t capture the sounds of the college kids’ laughter as they slid on sneakered feet and bowled icicles on the frozen pool at the base of the waterfall, or the smell of cold forest air along an icy mountain stream. But they do capture some of the pretty shapes created by shadows, water, ice, and snow.
Stream from above on a trail bridgeSo smooth!The first hint of sunlightStream under iceI love this rock and its shadowCool blueIce palaceOn the waterfall pool
Our back deck is now a neighborhood hangout for birds. With winter here, and the bears sleeping, I set up a new feeding station on our back deck. Within 24 hours of hanging a fly-through feeder filled with black oil sunflower seeds, I sat on the other side of our sliding glass door and watched birds alight on the feeder, or the rail, or the wooden planks beneath.
First the cardinals came. A dusky brown female with a flame orange beak inspected the new feeder from the deck rail it’s attached to. She cocked her head left and right, then hopped onto the wire mesh and dipped her head to pull out a seed. Then another. And another.
Next came a black-capped chickadee, small and round as a smoke grey tennis ball, with a smart black cap and a tiny triangle beak. It watched the mama cardinal from the rail before it hopped onto the feeder as well.
Then a male cardinal arrived and strutted scarlet along the white rail. Then another arrived. A few more males and females lined up on the rail. Their crests pointed to the sky, the black patches on their faces like little masks. They watched from the limbs of the oak that are just a few feet away from our deck. They dipped down to the feeder then flitted back up to the safety of their branches, streaks of bright red, pops of flame orange.
A tufted titmouse arrived, smaller than the cardinals, but longer and leaner than the chickadee. It had a jaunty little grey crest and a secret blush of orange under its wings.
Next came the mourning doves, crash landing onto the floor of the deck, four times the size of the cardinals, and with as much grace as my favorite, goofy pelicans who land in dramatic splashes on the surface of the sea. Once landed, the doves tucked their sprawling wings, bobbed their heads like their pigeon kin, and pecked seeds scattered from the rail above.
I sat at the table for probably an hour watching these funny animals. I don’t know what it is about getting old and watching birds, but it has happened to me, and I will own it. They bring me great joy. I feel peace when I watch them. Calm. The birds are real. They are themselves. They are true and natural. They are striking in their coloring, their body sizes, their beak shapes, and the long history of survival that led to their specific adaptations. I love watching their behavior: how they interact with the feeder, how they position themselves to have cover from prey, how they defer (chickadees) or how they dominate (blue jays, crows), who’s adventurous and will go first (cardinals), who will follow when it seems safe (doves), who will show up when everyone else has left (finches).
Later in the day, after I’d left the table and was no longer thinking about the birds, I saw our cat’s tail swish on our son’s bed as I walked by his open door. I poked my head in to see what Tubbles was flicking her tail about. She crouched on his bed, her front paws on the window sill, riveted to the activity at new feeder, which she could see from his window. I lay down on my stomach next to her and we watched the birds together.
Our Christmas decorations are put away for the year. The only reminder of the holidays are twinkling white lights on the front stair rail and my new Christmas mugs that I’m not yet ready to yield to storage. My fingers fit perfectly in the swoop of their scrolled handles. The mugs are larger than I usually like, but I love the way they feel when I cup my hands around them for warmth: they curve into the exact right shape, and the glazed porcelain is smooth against the skin of my palms. I find myself going for these mugs every time I make coffee or tea; they bring me delight in how cozy they make me feel. I’m not giving them up yet, even though they are painted with Night Before Christmas scenes, with Santa and reindeers, and it is now January 5.
I’ve got a fire laid in the fireplace. We’re expecting a winter storm tonight. Snow should start falling this afternoon, blustery and frigid, before it turns to sleet and ice. We had a load of firewood delivered in early December. I stacked half of it for my exercise the day it came, and Brian stacked the other half. I brought some in the other day to give it some time in the dry heated air of the house. It’s not as seasoned as our previous firewood. We have to start a fire with old wood, then add the new wood once it’s hot. I don’t know what I’ll do when we’re out of old wood; the new wood is hard to get going even when the fire is already hot. I guess we’ll have to use more kindling.
I’m happy about winter, even though the holidays are over. The holidays used to be the only redeeming quality of the season, and once Christmas was done, I was ready for spring. But I’ve come to love the invigorating air and the coziness of being indoors with books and blankets and steaming cups of coffee, of soups and root vegetables, of the quiet of a resting world.
Also, the bears should be hibernating now, and I can give a bird feeder a go again. I’ve been waiting for winter to arrive for this reason. In recent years, bears have discovered the bird feeder hung in our oak tree; the tree is on a slope, and the feeder hung low enough for me to reach it, which means bears could reach it, too. They’ve mauled three feeders, and I gave up last spring after the third.
Bear-mangled bird feeder
This has given me many months to think of a solution. I miss watching the birds. My first and simplest solution was to just wait until winter. Winter is my favorite season for watching birds anyway. There’s nothing else going on outside; all the plants in my garden, all the cute bunnies, chipmunks, and squirrels, all the buzzing bees and fluttering butterflies — they’re all tucked away, out of sight, resting. But the cardinals will come in their brilliant red coats, bright as berries against the bleak greys and whites of winter. Tufted titmice will come, and finches, and black and white woodpeckers with splashes of scarlet on their breasts and crests.
I think I’ve got a longer-term solution now, too, beyond just waiting for winter. I’ll try a bird feeder on the corner of our back porch, which is up a flight of stairs from ground level. I should be able to get a hanger that clamps to the rail. This will put the feeder high enough that bears can’t reach it when they come out of hibernation. And it will be even better than hanging from the tree because it will be closer to where I can see it, and it won’t be obscured by greenery when the oak leafs out in spring. The biggest unknown is this: will a bear climb the stairs to get to it? I guess we will find out.
Fall has arrived, and I am happy. We went south to North Carolina yesterday; the leaves are almost done here in Blacksburg, and we hadn’t gone for a single hike yet. We didn’t want to miss our chance to soak up the warm glow of a jewel toned forest.
We arrived at noon, which is much later than we typically hike, and the parking lot at Hanging Rock State Park was full. Cars circled at a crawl, rolling down windows to ask anyone on foot and near a parked car, “Are you leaving?” We joined the circling line, eventually found a spot, then got in another line to use the bathroom before heading to the trails.
Once we were in the forest, leaves crunched underfoot. My chest swelled with contentment as I listened to them scrape and scuttle. In a sunny spot near the lake, the air bloomed with the aroma of warm pine straw. I inhaled deeply to take in the scent. Here, the trail felt soft with the fallen needles of evergreens, now golden brown.
The light was strong and contrasty, and I wasn’t confident I’d be able to get any good photographs. It occurred to me that maybe black and white would work well in these conditions, so I had fun breaking out of my regular habits to try to look for light rather than color. Instead of looking for red maple leaves or golden beeches, I found myself examining stone instead, and how pretty it looked in the light.
The stone looked pretty in color, too, especially covered in lichen, coppery leaves, and golden November sun, or set against the colorful autumn treetops beneath it.
On our way down from one of the peaks, two outdoorsy college-aged women with braids down their backs passed us on their way up. They looked happy and healthy, one with her knee taped from athletic strain. In their wake, I smelled coconut, like summer at the beach. Like our daughter’s favorite sunscreen. My heart swelled again as I thought of her away in college in Florida, having fun with her friends, even if their activities are swimming and river-tubing instead of hiking.
The trails were more crowded than we’re used to — we forgot it’d be crowded midday, we’re so used to hiking right after the sun comes up and nobody is around — but I liked to see so many people out enjoying nature. I think I’ll go for another walk now while the sky is blue and a few remaining trees gleam ruby.
Butterfly Mind 