Spring Blooms, Breathes, and Blows Recklessly

Spring Blooms, Breathes, and Blows Recklessly

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

            Two weeks ago the neighboring trees out my east window were naked sticks. Today the same sticks are tricked out in every shade of leaf, heavy with green.    

Most trees here shed their leaves in spring; the old brittle leaves pushed off the branch willy-nilly by the new sprouts. The Jacarandas are still naked, just budding into flower. By next week a giant purple umbrella will fully cover the northwest corner of my yard. The Prima Vera wear great daubs of primary yellow. And over to the west I see sky-reaching stalks holding hunter-orange bouquets.

Around the perimeter of my yard, bushes, blue, purple, pink, yellow, orange, red, white. Flowers in hues un-named, combinations which shout, “Look at me.”

Perfume: jasmine at my door, roses in back, a cinnamon-vanilla scent from a purple flower, name unknown. The air is heavy with scents, ever changing with the heat of the day.

Sounds like paradise, doesn’t it? Don’t you believe it! There is a snake in every garden.

I’m not prone to allergies. I’m not. A couple morning sneezes clear the passages and I’m good to go. But every few years . . .

Maybe it started at the Monday night weenie roast around the open fire-pit. Fire equals smoke equals dry membranes. Wouldn’t have missed it for anything. Good food and good neighbors.

Tuesday morning Jim and I loaded rocking chairs, water and snacks and drove to a clearing on the way to Piedras Las Bolas, up the mountain.

We took my metal rocking chairs because there is something about a rocker. Once you sit down and lean back, the cares of life simply fall away. The chairs were his idea.

Poetry was my idea. Jim had said he’d like to hear some of my poems in my voice. He’d read a few but hadn’t heard me read my own work. The mountain seemed the perfect setting.

We unloaded the rockers, moved through our morning Qi Gong, then sat and alternated a poem or two by me with stories by Jim, punctuated with stretches of silence, rocking, listening to the rustle of the dry oak leaves.

I read a couple poems. Jim, who is smitten to insensibility by a mutual friend, told me his latest story in his saga of lovelorn romance. We ate an apple. I read a couple more poems. Jim told me the story of when he was kidnapped. His life is much more exciting than mine. And so the day went, alternating confidences.

When the breeze came up, the oaks rained leaves. These particular oaks grow only at this higher elevation. The air was golden with sunlight reflecting through the pollen. Yes, pollen. Exactly.

Back down the mountain, cane fields were burning prior to the following day’s harvest. Dust clouds rolled across newly plowed fields.

We are surrounded. Our air is filled with particulates from farming, cane burning, construction dust, pollens high and low.

Whatever the cause, this morning I woke sneezing, coughing, dripping, swollen-eyed, raspy-throated, and thoroughly miserable.

You may wax rhapsodic about Spring if you wish. I don’t have the energy. I’m going back to bed.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

March 22, 2018

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Ode to Spring and The Nesting Syndrome

Ode to Spring and The Nesting Syndrome

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

            Spring lurks around the corner patiently waiting to burst forth into kaleidoscopic glory. Down here in Mexico, while daily temperatures peak in the perfection of the lower eighties and bougainvillea weighty with color drape over every upright structure, who can tell from spring! Not much to go by but a calendar.

            If one has a calendar. When the New Year approached I could not find a new calendar. I’m an old hand at making do. My much-scribbled 2013 calendar is filling the gap. For example, January began on a Wednesday this year. I flipped through last year’s calendar to May, where the first of the month fell on Wednesday. I’ll conveniently flip the page to June to represent February but the months are muchly messed up thereafter.

            In the sub-tropics, familiar clues to the approach of the magical season which unlocks the icy grip of winter are sadly lacking. (The icy grip of winter is also lacking but that breaks my heart not one whit.) In mailboxes all over Montana, garden catalogs are showing up, luring Montana gardeners to order seeds and seedlings which never have and never will grow in our too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry country. But along with green beans and beets, we order the more exotic with all the faith of parishioners who perennially put their hopes in the “next-year” basket.

            What is going on with me? I’ve been here three months, a notorious “red flag” time for those who’ve signed up for any major life change. I wanna go home. Oh, not permanently. I want a “Montana fix”, a shot of perhaps two weeks. Spring seems like a good time for a visit. I could migrate back with the robins.

            My daughter tells me that since I obviously don’t have cabin fever, I must have spring fever. She says things like, “Get a grip, Mom.” She thinks it makes perfect sense that I want to migrate. “After all, Mom, you are a nester. Fixing up your nest has always been a priority for you. Concentrate on your nest where you are.”

            It is true. I am a nester. This is the first time I’ve moved anywhere and did not immediately fix up my house to suit myself. The studio is temporary, I told myself. I’ll find a house in short order and let the fixing begin.

            I’ve not yet found the house I want. I am re-thinking the whole house thing. This studio, which I found on my very first day in Mazatlan, is quite adequate, or would be if I finished unpacking the boxes that line the walls. Maybe my landlady will store some of the furniture. I already know what I want to have built.

            Ouch! That reminds me of an embarrassing financial faux pas I nearly committed in the interest of feathering my yet-to-be-found nest. A woman I met on the street told me that a man who works for her told her that a woman down the way had a houseful of furniture she was selling at outrageously good prices and I should at least take a gander.

            The very old Concordia style furniture (a style which has been made by craftsmen in Concordia, south of here, for hundreds of years) was just what I had in mind. When I went to see the furniture, I didn’t have money with me. But, after a few minutes of requisite haggling over the price, I said I’d take it. The woman on the street, the man who does jobs for her, the woman selling the furniture, all assured me I was getting a great bargain.

            That night Common Sense dropped by for a chat. “You don’t have a house sweetie. What if that pile of furniture doesn’t suit the place you find, for find it you will. What about those two rocking chairs you dreamed of having made in Concordia?”

            So I did what I should have done in the first place. I took Lupe to see the furniture. I knew instantly that I was in trouble. Lupe just shook his head. I backed out of the deal, glad to leave with a little dignity and no hard feelings. When the time comes, I’ll go to Concordia and order exactly what I want at half the money i nearly shelled out for old dry twigs and me with no nest in which to put them.

            Spring is around the corner. The orioles on my back patio are exhibiting disgraceful behavior. I might or might not make that migratory journey north. Or I might finish unpacking boxes in the nest I’m in, temporary or not, and arrange to gather my own twigs.  

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

January 30, 2014 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Spring Hopes Eternal

Spring Hopes Eternal
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


With the exception of one friend, an avid winter sportsman, every person I talk with is desperately seeking, searching, and praying for signs of spring. Such signs are sparse to non-existent. We’ll take any sign—and here’s my list.



1. Increasing hours of sunlight: Personally, I am an enthusiastic hibernator. This is an embarrassing confession. In winter darkness, I want to sleep. In the wee daylight of December, fortified with a good mystery book, I force myself to stay awake until 6:30 or 7:00. The sun and I both sleep in. By March I have added three and a half hours to my day.



2. The flipping of the calendar pages from winter, winter, winter to March, the place holder for spring: This year in northeastern Montana , this unruly month roared in like a lion on the prowl. One hopes we’ll see signs of the lamb but I’m not holding my breath.



3. Seed catalogs: I’m on every mailing list, but prefer to buy locally, mostly petunias and geraniums, which are content to grow without fuss. Yet I indulge myself, lingering over each page, in a greedy feast of floral abundance, air brushed to perfection, sure to die in zone three. .



4. Spring birds: Yesterday, gazing out my south window which frames my poplar trees, I saw a flicker flutter in, settle on a tree, and tap, tap, tap looking for bugs. I got hopeful. Oh, first glorious bird of spring. Then I remembered that I’d seen this same flicker on the coldest day of the year. Thirty seconds in my bird book verified that he is a year-round resident. False alarm. The only birds I have spotted are clothed in the grays and browns of winter. I thought I heard honking geese one day last week and threw my door open to the blowing snow only to discover a neighbor’s truck horn was stuck.



5. Reports from foreign climes: Friends gleefully torment me with their pictures of snowdrops and crocus (last month), budding lilacs and daffodils in bloom (right now), rising temperatures, gentle rainfall and greening of the grass. Bah, humbug.



6. The Montana Seed Show: The Seed Show is one sure sign of approaching spring. We who have hunkered in our houses all winter will gather, shake hands, slap backs, exchange hugs, tell lies, and eat pie. We will scan the exhibits, ogle the quilts and paintings, and generally enjoy one another.



7. Floods, a sign of spring we’d rather not see: Already ice jams against bridge abutments and water trickles beneath the snow-covered frozen soil. The latest update promises floods on the Milk River . Since the valley is wide and perfectly flat, this is not an encouraging report. In addition to the river, Harlem is keeping a close watch on Thirty Mile Creek to the north of the railroad tracks. I’m in the market for hip waders and a row boat, cheap.



8. Taxes: Did I mention taxes?



It’s snowing. County trucks loaded with gravel, blades to the ground, just rumbled down my street. Frozen fog glitters. My cats stand at the door and look longingly. When I slide the door the cats, despite fur-lined skin, test the air with their noses, turn back, run and hide.



9. A walker: Jack, his parka zipped with hood up, just walked by. The street in front of my house is a regular route for walkers. Jack is the first walker I have seen since November. Spring will surely following his footsteps.



Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

March 10, 2011
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Spring Will Arrive

This one went to the paper today. I wrote it this morning. I am liking my new computer. I named her. But that is another story.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Spring Will Arrive

It was February second. With bated breath I awaited the annual appearance of the groundhog. Up here on the northern tier, winter has us locked in its unrelenting icy grip since Thanksgiving. The groundhog may say yes. The groundhog may say no. Spring arrives on its own schedule. Besides, how can a subterranean rodent affect the turning of the seasons? But I grew up on fairy tales. At first light, I chortled and said, no shadow. Spring is on the way. And sure enough, the calendar justified my exuberance with uppercase letters, SPRING BEGINS on March twentieth. I checked the information on two calendars just to make sure. Right.

Then Monday night my friend Kathy from British Columbia called to chat. “The daffodils are in bud,” she said.

“The snow banks are receding,” I responded.

“This morning Richard and I drank coffee sitting in the sun on the patio, breathing in the smells of new leaves and lilacs.”

“The ice in the river is beginning to break up.”

“Today I am planting primroses along the walkways.”

“What are primroses?” I counter. My forty-third garden catalog from the various nurseries back east just arrived with offerings of exotic plants guaranteed to die in this northern semi-desert zone. “I shall plant petunias and geraniums when the frost leaves the soil.”

“It is supposed to rain tomorrow. That will be good for my bulbs,” Kathy said.

“It is 20 degrees here with wind gusting to 30 miles per hour. Tomorrow will be sunny and temperatures in the 50’s. Snow is forecast for Wednesday. That doesn’t mean it will happen that way, but it might. Right now the county roads are slick with mud but usually they freeze up at night. A few more days of wind and the roads will look like tracks carved in baked clay.”

“Do you ever have spring?” Kathy asked.

“We often get a week in May,” I answered rather hesitantly. “Or June. Then summer arrives with temperatures in the 90’s and clouds of the famous Harlem mosquitoes.”

Yesterday a friend remarked that this is the most dreary time of the year. I refuted that. The fields are beautiful with sunshine illuminating the various shades of gold, browns, tans, heathery purples. If you squint your eyes just so, you can detect the green beneath the brown. The leaf buds hang on the ends of tree branches, just waiting for the right signal to shoot forth. And when I rake into the flower debris from last fall, I see new life burgeoning forth from the soil. There is hope. Little gophers line both sides of the highway. Huge flocks of geese heading north alight in the stubble fields for the night, as if the stubble is a special campground just for them. Oh, yes. Today is Wednesday. It is snowing.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________