When All The World
Here’s to what’s waking up in the yard.
The crabapple tree always surprises me. One day, dry and brown and brittle. The next, seemingly ahead of schedule with small leaves. In a few weeks, midwifing color we all thought long-forgotten.
There there’s the Martha Washington cherry tree. And that little guy who apparently hung on for dear life through the winter. The photo is blurry; I like the colors, though. The wind kept things moving, but I caught just enough to make me want to show you.
The honeysuckle outside our bedroom window. If there’s a more graceful grace than the fragrance of that flower of a summer’s evening coming in through the window after One Of Those Days, I’m sure I don’t know what it is.
It is said that when you enter “the” home, you just know. And it’s true. When we happened upon this house nine years ago, it was after touring the backyard (where the previous owners had over twenty years of Every Plant Planted On Purpose), that I turned around to Cute Redhead when the realtor wasn’t looking and mouthed, “I want this house!” I think it was the grape vines that sealed the deal. I love the twisted ancestry of a grape vine and every metaphor it suggests.
I pruned it way back this year, for the first time since we’ve lived hear. I thought I’d be bundling up the elder parts and putting them on the curb. But then I realized I had what had to be an outstanding batch of kindling for next winter’s fires.
And see the sorry excuse for a fence behind it? In a few weeks I’ll employ the young strength of Alpha Male and his compatriots to install a wooden split-rail fence.
The lilacs on the east side. They have relatives way over on the west side but these three trees are for some reason favorites of mine. I remember growing up in Michigan and mom sending us to the neighbor’s backyard to pilfer theirs. Next to Lily of the Valley and a fragrant tea rose, they’re my favorite.
There’s this one Forsythia right off the back patio that heralds Spring when, as E. E. Cummings said so well, “all the world is puddle-wonderful.” I love that line. We haven’t yet seen the skies surrender the rain, but it’s coming. Right now, March is as windy as is fitting to wrest from winter’s grasp the cold that’s kept us indoors and over Monopoly boards and chess boards and Man, I’m Bored!
And then I come around the other side of the house and see this one doing that thing that flowers up in the high places of the world do: blossom and present back to the Creator the best they have.
Whether human eyes ever behold it or no.
I love spring where the season is a hard, clear distinction from winter. If you’re going to throw down cold and ice and snow and pain, then give me sun and light and wind and rain! (I just made that up lol)
Which reminds me of one of my favorites:
The tree that never had to fight
For sun and sky and air and light,
But stood out in the open plain
And always got its share of rain,
Never became a forest king
But lived and died a scrubby thing.
The man who never had to toil
To gain and farm his patch of soil,
Who never had to win his share
Of sun and sky and light and air,
Never became a manly man
But lived and died as he began.
Good timber does not grow with ease:
The stronger wind, the stronger trees;
The further sky, the greater length;
The more the storm, the more the strength.
By sun and cold, by rain and snow,
In trees and men good timbers grow.
Where thickest lies the forest growth,
We find the patriarchs of both.
And they hold counsel with the stars
Whose broken branches show the scars
Of many winds and much of strife.
This is the common law of life.
Good Timber, by Douglas Malloch
Love that one.
And I love it when all the world is puddle-wonderful.
How’s “spring has sprung the grass has gris, I wonder where the birdies is”?
Nice plant shots, btw.