Beware the Ides of Sassafras

Last weekend, we turned our clocks forward and, in my mind, that should signal the start of Spring.  I long for the ease of warmer days.  Uncharacteristically, I’m not even looking to be unreasonable here; I’ll settle for temps in the 50s and a little sunshine.  All told, I’ve reached the point in March where I am over Winter.  As is so often the case, however, Winter isn’t quite over us.  I carry on in the chill, increasingly resentful of the need to wrestle with Winter coats, gloves, and scarves.  And don’t get me started on dealing with Winter tights… You’ve served your purpose, Winter, and I appreciate all that you do.  But it is time for you to go.

The time change and consequent sunlight that lasts into the early evening has been a nice tonic for my Winter malaise, though I still feel like Mother Nature is involved in a scheme to test my patience.  My Spring Break begins this Friday, and though temperatures aren’t expected to rise above 40 degrees and there is snow in the forecast for the first week of break, I am thinking of declaring the start of Spring and dressing accordingly.  If I can’t have the actual beauty of the season, I can at least pretend. 

Amaryllis Tuesday: March 13

On Friday afternoon, we’ll start Spring Break.  JT has been counting down the days and I’ll admit that I am also looking forward to a few unscheduled weeks.  In the back of my mind, I believe that Spring Break will bring Spring temperatures, though the forecast is not at all cooperative with this desire.  There may be snow on the ground but the amaryllis is looking prepared to oblige my daydreams of Spring blooms.

Some morning soon I will come downstairs to a flower.  

That’s happy!

Witch Hazel

There was a snowstorm this week, a rather major event that brought us more than a foot of snow.  School was cancelled, which JT celebrated as if he’d never be expected to return to class.

I enjoyed sleeping in and our cozy days but it is March and I am ready for Spring.  While we shoveled ourselves out from the storm, I couldn’t help but think about the previous Sunday  That day was sunny and T and I set out for a walk to leave some nuts and peanut butter pine cones for the wildlife along the D & R Canal.  Here and there, when we looked closely, we saw tiny signs of a green Spring.  Most of the blooms will take several more weeks to arrive so the witch hazel in bloom was particularly lovely.

Clocks spring forward tonight; each day brings a little more sunlight.  I’m looking forward to Spring and as I wait for the snow to melt and reveal blooms, I will admire the witch hazel and the promise it brings.  

Snow Days

On the heels of JT and I declaring our own "snow day" last Friday, Mother Nature revealed a certain amount of envy.  A few days later, she sent a Nor’easter that buried New Jersey in snow and bought us two days off from school, yesterday and today.  The day of the expected storm dawned cold, but not frigid, with a temperature just above freezing.  For the the first half of the day, there were cloudy skies and a light rain, but little signs of the massive storm being forecast.   Just when I began to give up the forecast as a bust, the light rain converted to giant, wet, snowflakes.  

Soon after, accumulation began.  By the time the snow had ended, we had more than a foot of heavy, deep, wet snow.  Just after 4pm on the day of the storm, JT and I headed outside to clear a path to the driveway.  We shoveled out to the road but the snow fell as fast as we could shovel and all around us we could hear the cracking noise of tree branches falling.  In our backyard, Old Man tree lost branches.  As darkness descended and the storm would down, the frightening sounds of the branches cracking began to fade, replaced by the noise of plows making their way through town, pushing the snow to the edge of the road (and packing in everyone's driveways).  We got the call we'd be off from school for a second day and I was grateful. 

Thursday dawned sunny, clouds blew past in the morning and melting continued apace, with temps in the 40s.  JT and I went outside to shovel out our cars and move the broken tree limbs to the driveway.  The snow was heavy and it took us about an hour working together to clear the sidewalks and driveway.  By the time we were done, the roads had dried.

This is the second year in a row we've had a March snow of the deep and heavy variety. Our shovels are pretty worn out and we'll need new ones for next year.  It's also clear that I will need a heavy-duty snow blower to replace this kid.

Overdue, Lost, & Now Remembered: On Overlooked Women

I didn’t learn to read until I was 8 years old and in the third grade.  As if I understood that I was a late-bloomer, I embraced books from then on, reading all the time.  I read on the school bus, during recess and lunch, secretly in class when I should have been doing math, walking home from school, floating on an air mattress in the pool, stretched out on the sofa, and in bed by the street light at night.  I read as if to make up for lost time.  I can remember looking at the stacks and stacks of books in the library and thinking with a shivering joy of the books yet to be read. 

I was thrilled on the day that I found a uniform collection of historical American biographies in the Weldon Elementary School Library.  I stood in front of the rows of books and gloried in the happy hours of reading ahead of me.  And then I read about these Americans, in alphabetical order, so that I wouldn’t forget a single one.  From John Adams to Daniel Webster and every person in between, I devoured these books over a two year period, fearful that I wouldn’t finish before I completed 6th grade.  I read quickly and only slowed my pace when the biography was about a woman.

There weren’t very many and they were mostly 20th century women —- Babe Didrikson, Amelia Earhart, and Eleanor Roosevelt stand out in my mind today.  I remember that the Harriet Tubman volume was thin, leaving me many unanswered questions.  For every woman featured in these 1970s-era books, there were more than 10 men.  I know because I counted and felt the unfairness of it.  I felt then that there were women in our past who had done amazing things that I would never learn about.  Now, 40 years later, I realize that for all the stories told there are countless women who never even got the chance to be great.

I thought of all of this when I opened the New York Times this morning to find that they would be writing obituaries for the women they have overlooked in the past 160 years.  It's a fitting choice for International Women's Day, a treat I would have loved as a girl.  I devoured the first 15 stories, grateful for a snow day that permitted the indulgence.  The NYT has promised to tell more women’s stories and I will watch carefully so I don’t miss a single one.  I will direct the children I teach, girls and boys, to these stories.  I will be grateful for amazing women now being remembered.  But I will still wonder at the talents lost to a time when women were always marginalized and excluded.  I will miss what they would have accomplished.  And I will re-double my efforts to ensure it doesn’t continue to happen.

Amaryllis Tuesday: March 6

Every day, the amaryllis stem grows taller and it’s clear that a flower is on its way.  The progress marches us ever-closer to Spring.

Spring, with blooms, new green leaves, lush grass, and mild breezes.  That’s a lot for one small bulb to promise.  But the promise is there and closer every day.

  

That's happy!

All Bunnies, All the Time

Unrestrained, I’m the sort of women who would likely devote an entire room of her home to her collection of something childish.  At this point, the only thing stopping me is a sense that I don’t want to be known as fully insane added to genuine uncertainty about what would be in the collection…..dolls? stuffed animals?  cats? bunnies?  It’s only indecision that helps me to hold the line.

But I have a soft spot for bunny rabbits and there are quite a few in my world.  It started with this collection of carved wooden bunnies that I acquired when I lived in Nebraska.  I set them out for the month of Easter and still remember when toddler JT would grab one and jam it in his pocket to admire.  

I have an assortment of bunny prints from various Etsy shops.  

Each season, I swap out the one that hangs in my dining room.  For the next few months, these bunnies will cheerfully dance their Springtime celebration.

I have a bunny sculpture.  Or two.

There are bunnies on the front porch, known to me as Flopsy and Mopsy. I am naming inanimate objects....that fact alone should be a warning sign.

There are bunnies in my office, on both the Racey Helps postcards T has given me (and there are a dozen more where these came from) as well as these prints given to me by my friend TO.

Soon enough, there will be backyard bunnies eating their way through my yard, and likely taking a snack from my garden.  I’ll bemoan them when they eat my carrots but most of the time I will be utterly enchanted by them.  Bunnies are cute, they signal the coming of Spring, and otherwise charm me all year around, but especially now as I await the next season with barely contained anticipation.  That’s happy!

March Front Porch

There is a point in February when I grow weary of Winter and eagerly look for evidence of its demise.  This year, the arrival of Easter items in the craft store was that moment when I first began to daydream about warmer, easier days.  For Valentine’s Day, T gave me some Easter items for the front porch.  From then on I was planning the March porch.  My brain knows that there are several more cold weeks to endure but my heart announces Spring on the first day of March.  This year, the month will be filled with Easter bunnies, baskets, eggs, and flowers..  There is an egg wreath on the front door.

And a bunny flag to welcome the lengthening sunlight in our days.

On the table, there’s an Easter basket with speckled eggs and some silk flowers to brighten the day.  Flopsy the iron bunny is there, joined by a new rustic bunny who goes by the name Mopsy.

I was all ready to set things out on March 1.  Then a cold and rainy Nor’easter blew in with three inches of rain and plenty of wind.  Saturday arrived with clearer skies and sunshine and, in the afternoon, as the wind faded, there was time to set out the porch.   March came in like its proverbial lion and the forecast promises more stormy cold in the coming week.  As I wait for some warmth and blooms, my porch will greet me with Spring’s promise.  That’s happy!

Nor’easter Day

At some point in December, JT and I reminisced about snow days from our past, days when school was closed because of snow and we were home together as the storm passed through.  There was sleeping in, card games and TV watching in those days.  We’d play in the snow, JT always lasting longer than me because someone had to go inside and start the hot cocoa.  At night, we’d go for walks in the snowy darkness, to listen to the quiet and celebrate the found time.  Early this Winter, we looked forward to a few last snow days in this, his Senior year.

Mother Nature never cooperated.  Though we had plenty of cold and some snowy weekends, there was never enough weekday snow to give us the day off.  As January transitioned into February, JT and I began to fear we’d not have our last snow day.  We were loathe to give up the transition and so we declared today our very own snow day.

There was a rainy, windy, and wet Nor’easter, but this one didn’t bring snow.  We slept in, went out to lunch, and watched Netflix.  We enjoyed one another’s company and laughed a lot.  I lived in the moment, because that’s what I need to do these days.  The moments were fun and that’s happy!

March 1: Garden Hostas

In the third week of February we had two days of unusual warmth, with temperatures over 70s.  JT and I nearly lost our minds soaking it up.  Then it was gone, replaced by days and days of chilly rains.  But that warmth and the rains that followed set off a chain reaction all over my garden.  The grass is beginning to turn brighter and there are shoots of green everywhere. In my excitement when I discovered the small green shoots, I thought I saw the start of my hostas.  I nearly lost my mind with excitement.

It turns out that wasn’t hostas, a fact I realized when I went outside in the cold to make pictures and looked more closely.  But I did see the daffodil and tulip bulb growth that signals the start of the a warmer season.  These bulbs are planted all around the hosta beds.

The hostas are still quietly underground but they are gearing up for Spring and this weekend's Nor’easter rains will provide some rain to help things out.

I see you, Spring.

That’s happy!