Tag Archives: Spring

Magnolia Tour 2012: Everyday Magic, Day 518

Posted on March 16, 2012 | Comments Off

Every year, they explode open too fast only to be killed by some midnight frost that comes in mid March. Most years, I tell myself I will stop whatever I’m doing and walk among us, marveling at their color, shape, scent while there’s still time, but then the time evaporates, and I only find pools of fallen petals, browned at the edges.

Not this year, however. Thanks to a non-winter winter and a shockingly early spring (I mean, some redbuds are coming out already!), the magnolia trees are a blaze of pink and white, daintily unfurling all over time. So I took my camera and my feet and headed out yesterday through East Lawrence.

The tulip magnolia as well as others obviously aren’t, or at least weren’t, so suited for Kansas extremes, but I still fell in love with them when I first discovered this extraordinary blossoming tree. I could go on and on about magnolias, but my poem about them speaks most to how I feel and why I love them so much.

Magnolia Tree in Kansas

This is the tree that breaks

into blossom too early each March,

killing its flowers. This is the tree

that hums anyway in its pool of fallen

petals, pink as moonlight. Not a bouquet

on a stick. Not a lost mammal in the clearing

although it looks like both with its explosions

of rosy boats – illuminated, red-edged.

Not a human thing but closer to what we might be

than the careful cedar or snakeskin sycamore.

It cries. It opens. It submits. In the pinnacle

of its stem and the pits of its fruitless fruit,

it knows how a song can break the singer.

In the brass of its wind, it sings anyway.

Tree of all breaking. Tree of all upsidedown.

Tree that hurts in its bones and doesn’t care.

Tree of the first exhalation

landing and swaying, perfume and death,

all arms and no legs. Tree that never

learns to hold back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Posted in Bioregionalism, Weather

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Big Wind, Big Weather: Everyday Magic, Day 513

Posted on March 7, 2012 | Comments Off

All night, the big wind blows. At times, the whole house seems to lift a little as the wind finds its way through every slat and crack. The trees are rocked hard, the dirt flies in the distance, and the animals sleep unperturbed.

Living in Kansas means living in big weather: large gestures from the sky as change passes through. Yesterday’s 70+ degrees will be tomorrow’s freezing rain. “Nothing lasts,” the weather seems to sing, shout and whisper, but all the same, I love listening to this wind that surges and drops, halts and powers on again.

While big changes can happen any time, there are months when such happenings accumulate to a screeching point, and March is such a month. Whether it’s lamb or lion, elephant or amoeba, March days and nights turn on a dime. Because of our non-winter winter, this March feels especially volatile. Why, there were tornadoes in February, and we’ve already had one prairie burn and may have another one later this week, a month ahead of schedule. Daffodils are springing upward, not yet blooming thankfully, but I did dream of hyacinth in blossom, large and fragrant in their timelessness. Yet the weather — always the weather — can deep-six anything that bursts forth or just lull along as if the air is always quiet and balmy. We never know.

Natalie walks by and tells me, “It’s getting pretty wild out there, Mom.” Yup, it is, the sky preparing itself for a 40-degree drop later today as it reminds us that it’s pretty wild in here too.

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Little Darling, It’s Been a Long Cold Lonely Winter: Everyday Magic, Day 283

Posted on April 29, 2011 | Comments Off

Turning from 9th Street to walk north on New Hampshire St., I found this sign, which stuck me as truer than true weather. Winter’s not just been long, but relentless this year, at least in the places I traveled: excessive snow and ice in Vermont in April, bitter cold rain just last week in Iowa, and bouts of wintry mixes in Kansas when least expected and most unwelcomed.

Now that it’s spring full-on — blossoms curling up into nothing while the trees leaf out, temperatures in the 70s with a rollicking spring wind, and heat building everything — I feel a little like I’ve just been rescued from being lost in a snowdrift. I mean I love snow, really, but after a while a gal just needs to come in from the cold. Plus, who doesn’t like to be called “Little darling”?

So in celebration of spring, and the daringly wise individual who put this sign out, thank you to all that is unfolding, unfurling, blossoming, feathering out and showing its vibrant warm heart.

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Lightning Bolt In Rearview Mirror: Everyday Magic, Day 267

Posted on April 15, 2011 | 2 Comments

After rushing home with the three boxes of flowers to plant — bought on whim (as always for me each April, inevitably propelled by the promise of a big storm) — and then getting the flowers into the beds around the house and trying unsuccessfully to scrub the dirt out from under my fingernails, I moved quickly through a litany of little errands. The last of these was to drive back to town to pick up Forest, the first big drops of rain hitting the windshield. I turn right onto Hwy. 458, looked ahead, glanced and the rearview mirror, and there it was: a single stand of lightning, pouring down at, well, the speed of light.

I kept driving, but told myself about the storm as well as about the big bright green, alighting on every branch except for those ones heavy with redbud blossom, “See this.” Spring comes at such a heartbreakingly fast pace, and always during a crazy-busy time, that in a glance, it’s suddenly summer. Yet right now, at this moment the next day when the rain brings out the resonant color of all new growth, it’s right here. Don’t miss it.

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What IS On My Mind?: The Lunacy of Spring Fever: Everyday Magic, Day 265

Posted on April 11, 2011 | Comments Off

Not much evidently. It’s a crisp day interspersed with big wind gusts, heartbreaking bright, pale green all directions, and the explosion of red tulips at 23rd and Massachusetts St., the fields of purple clover, redbud (actually purple) at every edge, and the falling white blossoms of ornamental pears make it hard for me to keep my mind on anything. Of course the convergence of several in-person and on-the-phone meetings, helping my daughter figure out her housing situation in St. Paul, packets arriving from my students, and kitten all over me when I try to work tends to get the better of me too.

Spring fever does, at times unfortunately, really feel like a fever, but then there’s another kind of spring fever, an enlightened mixture of ecstatic poetry, fatigue, big dreams that seems utterly attainable, more fatigue, chocolate as the only thing interesting to eat and a great attraction to pull weeds in a leaf-covered garden bed. That’s what has overtaken me today, and it would be lunacy not to follow the call out to the backyard, chocolate energy bar (aka dinner) in hand while my mind flutters and crashes all around, and the colors brighten and deepen with their spring collage.

Sometimes it’s enough not to hold anything in mind too tightly or too long.

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Last Winter Snow (We Hope) In Spring: Everyday Magic, Day 248

Posted on March 26, 2011 | Comments Off

Lake snowflakes tumble down, diagonally past the window. The daffodils endure it as do the just-opening hyacinth and the boat-like pedals of the flowering magnolias. If there’s such a thing as a false spring in the January thaws, then this is a false winter in the early days of spring.

Yesterday, about 160 miles south, I walked through budding trees, having rolled up my sleeves because of the heat and sun. Tomorrow I may be pulling dead things out of the garden and putting in potato and onion starts instead. It all turns on a dime in March and April, and right at the cusp of these months, even more so.

Meanwhile, there’s something a little sad about seeing what will probably be the last winding snow drop straight down or rush sidewalks behind the large cottonwood, holding small buds on its branch tips while the birds of spring look at each other in confusion but also in song.

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From a Hidey Hole in Eighth Day Books: Everyday Magic, Days 246-247

Posted on March 25, 2011 | 2 Comments

I write this from a small triangularly shaped hidey hole in the attic of Eighth Day Books, a Christian Orthodox bookstore with one of the best selections of books on poetry, spirituality, religion, philosophy and memoir. I’m in Wichita after a sudden leap into the car with my guys who live at home to help my guy who lives at college. Turns out Daniel, in nearby Newton, needed a little help gathering field samples for his senior study, and since Forest and I were already planning a spring break jaunt to Wichita, we made an executive decision (influenced heavily by the incoming weekend of rain) to drive.

How does a Jewish girl get to hang in this core of the Wichita Lebanese Orthodox community, and in the sweet attic offices no less? My good friend Victoria works here, and over the last few years, I’ve gotten to know the store’s owner, Warren Farha, who (like so many independent bookstore owners) creates and holds the space for the miracle of interaction between humans and shelves of words that can change your life. There’s also a lot about the Orthodox that just feels kind of Jewish to me (except, of course, the whole Jesus part): the elaborate rituals, robes and hats, emphasis on food and community, and way people have of reaching out and wrapping their arms around you to pull you right in.

In any case, out the window behind me is the first blossoming Bradford pear I’ve seen this season and before me are piles of books with titles like Longing for God, The Broken Body, The Joy of Reading, The Nature Principle and Sung Prayers. Whoever you are and whatever you believe, I encourage you — if in Wichita — to visit this store where three levels of books, lots of hidey holes, fresh coffee and interesting people abound.

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Happiness: Everyday Magic, Day 245

Posted on March 23, 2011 | 1 Comment

The cold front powered through, the abnormal summer weather gave way to true spring, and the days of persistent sinus/ear/whatever pain in my head dissolved away. Thanks to the weather and some very strong antibiotic, I’m back in the saddle again and riding (virtually at least) through a beautiful day: big, bright clear sky, and temperatures in the 50s promising to cross over 60 later.

The late great poet Jane Kenyon once wrote:

There’s no accounting for happiness
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

But I think there is some accounting for it at times that has to do with the end of suffering, discomfort, confusion or trauma (although it’s possible to find happiness even in moments of ditzy and exhausted pain). There’s the happiness of release and arrival, the happiness of connection and freedom, the happiness of seeing again after being distracted for a long time, the happiness of coming home to some semblance of balance. For any and all of this, I am grateful and also amazed.

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I Live In Big Wind Country

Posted on March 24, 2009 | 1 Comment

Kansas is windy, often, and not just a little. When spring comes, the big wind comes with it, and yesterday was a vivid illustration with gusts up to 90 mph in some parts of the state and ordinary old 45 mph gusts regularly around it. It’s hard not to tilt a little when you walk, and when we did balance poses in yoga — in a room in the country, second story, windows all around — it was hard not to fall over (but then it’s often hard not for me to fall over).

Yesterday, semi-trucks overturned on the turnpike, mailboxes left home, our bird feeder flew the coop, and the top of a hard-plastic child playhouse unfurled itself. It was the kind of wind that made me and everyone around me feel a little crazy, off-balance, agitated, confused and overwhelmed.

It reminds me of a good wind story too — and in Kansas, many of the good weather stories (and most of the good stories do involve weather) are obviously wind-related. When Ken, my husband, was but a lad, his family had a mean attack rooster named Chip-Chip, who attacked (using his nasty spurs) everyone but Ken’s grandpa, who had basically trained him to be a the rooster equivalent of Cruella DeVille. One day a tornado, with accompanying big winds, came to the area, and Chip-Chip mysteriously disappeared. Days later, his wasted body was found a few miles away. When humans didn’t, out of decency, exact revenge from Chip-Chip, the wind did.

So now the wind has settled down, and it’s good to be back in the saddle, crossed over to spring with the grasses seeminly scribbled bright green and the trees budding. Yesterday’s big wind is today’s sky all bright baby blue and pristine white clouds, all the debris blasted free from our minds.

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Iris Season

Posted on May 24, 2008 | 3 Comments

Each year it amazes me. Irises spring from their tight vertical buds into a blossom delicate as breath, and both intricately ruffled and simply spun open at once. Years ago, someone told me that irises smelled like the color they were, and since that time, I’m constantly testing this theory to find it true. Yes, the purple ones smell like grape, the peach ones like peach, the yellow ones like lemon, and the brown ones like chocolate. Or maybe all these smells are more similar than we realize, but who cares? Whatever it is, it smells like heaven.

The colors are both watercolor and oil paint at once. The hues are saturated with depth. The shine shimmers up close and from a distance.

Social flowers, irises tend to blown in groups, spending their winters rooting themselves horizontal to grow more friends for the spring. Partying against a broken faucet in an alleyway, or landscaped into a luxurious yacht club cocktail party near the marble stairs to the manor, irises defer class, looking completely at home whether admired by the monied or the local racoons.

They break out the champagne all at once, but linger a bit more than the peony, the ultimate party flower (all at once and then all spent). They turn quick to translucent paper and die on the stem while their sturdy flat leaves shoot happily on all summer. They’re here in such vibrancy, a cabaret for the senses, and then they’re gone. Against the wind, against the rain, they carry on — dancing like there’s no tomorrow and holding tight to that gorgeous bundle of blossom, alive and filling the air with that scent that can only be iris.

Each time they come around, I’m in love all over again.

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