March is . . .

Daffodils -- or, botanically speaking, the entire genus of narcissus -- are one of the most delightful things about March in England.

All year long, they lurk under the ground . . .
and by mid-March there are clumps of yellow everywhere.

Very cheering, don't you think?

Just-spring

According to the BBC weather website,

we've had 30-40% less sunshine

than usual

in January and February.

I would say that it has felt 40% grayer;

yes, at least that.

Cheers for a day of "sunny intervals."

Cheers for snowdrops

and purple crocuses.

Is it purple prose to say

that English spring is paved with flowers?

Here comes the first wave.

At Welford Park,

the snowdrops are nearly as dense

as the drifts of snow

for which they are named.

I've been coming here every February

for years.  

And never, never has the sun shone.

It's usually quite a shivery experience,

cold hands and chapped cheeks,

but today we took tea outside.

The many visitors,

mostly old and young,

did mostly obey the dictates

to keep off the grass.

But there were a few rule-breakers.

Keen photographers will do anything

to capture their prey.

Wellies are an absolute must,

as the mud to grass ratio

(not to mention the temperature)

does not favor bare feet just yet.

I did hear this, though:

Mom, can I take off my coat?

It's still February, of course

and the sun is a big tease

because rain will be back tomorrow.

But just for today, it is Just-spring

and the world is not just muddy,

but mudluscious

For those who could not resist

fresh spring green

and the year's first warmth

there was one grassy verge.

I wonder which child

first had the notion

to roll down it?

I was almost tempted, too,

to try my forwards roll.

Long forgotten skills:

Let's dust them off

and bring them out

for spring.

In two more weeks

there will be an explosion of daffodils --

always a more reliable source of yellow

than the sun, in spring.



This is not a snow story

Definite signs of life in the February garden:

poppy leaves, dwarf iris, grape hyacinth

witchhazel, viburnum, primrose

azalea buds, tulip shoots, snowdrops
(click on them twice to enlarge)

It's one of those bleakish, windy days despised by people with fine (ie, "difficult") hair.

Wintry and dull, still, but there are definitely signs of burgeoning green life in the garden.  This is the compensation for English winter, with its long string of gray days.  The damp earth, hardly ever frozen, is so fertile -- even in February.

For the past couple of weeks, I feel like I have been making all sorts of preparations for what is to come:

New passports and endless forms have been filled out for my oldest daughter's trip to Africa.

The house is being touched up for its launch on the spring housing market.

My youngest daughter has been prepped, for countless hours, for her scholarship exams this month.

And every day, sending out feelers about new jobs and work studies and a new house.

We're laying the groundwork, but time still has that suspended "waiting" quality to it.

I've been asking advice (from all and sundry) about how to keep the muntjac deer away from my tulips.

Our gardener suggested putting a radio set on a low volume into the beds.

Apparently the deer have keen hearing and shy away from human noise.

Do you think this will work?

(Sigmund is highly doubtful,

but that is his reflexive position on many questions.)

May: hymn of light, colour and leaf

May, in England, is extravagantly beautiful.

The garden is at its most demanding, but also its most rewarding.  A lesson in this?
Weeding, watering, feeding, and tweaking could take up every hour of the day, but on a sunny day those jobs are a pleasure.

May makes a person want to wax lyrical. 
Adam Nicolson, the heir to Sissinghurst -- one of the most famous gardens in the world -- wrote this:

This is a damp, lush country.  The late winters are grey and depressing. The spring is often a disappointment. But then in May, the condition of our life in these islands becomes heavenly.  "When I die," Monty Don wrote in The Ivington Diaries, published last year, "I shall go to May.  It will be green, actually the colour green in all its thousand shining faces.  Every moment will be like the arc of a diver breaking the waters of a green lake, a shifting, growing hymn of light, colour and leaf."

And yes, the world is so green . . . but full of other colours, too.
Lilac, wisteria, peony, allium, bluebell:  these are the May palette.

And horses kiss in a green, green field full of buttercups and white-blossomed May trees.

Butterflies

August isn't the most colorful month in the gardening calendar.

Almost everything looks a bit frayed, overgrown, or yellowed at the edges. (You can just glimpse the dried brown heads of the once brilliantly purple allium. Their former glory exists only in my blog sidebar now.)

For some reason, though, there are great clouds of butterflies everywhere.

On Thursday, I had to take my youngest daughter to the Jane Austen House with me. For several patient hours, she sat on a wooden bench and knitted in the garden. There was one magical moment in which a swirl of white butterflies looked like a moveable crown upon her head. Sadly, it was captured only in my memory.

Why are butterflies such an irresistible subject for the photographer? Is it because they are the very essence of what is ephemeral?

My youngest daughter, still impervious to the charms of cell phones and the like, spent hours fashioning a sari from her big sister's old duvet cover. She still likes to play dress-up -- not for any alluring reasons, but just for fun. I wonder if this will be her last childish summer?

A few weeks ago, a dear blog-friend sent me a card with the following quotation from Edith Wharton: If only we could stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time.

Happiness is so hard to pin down, but I do try to recognize it when I see it.

Bees

Snowdrops mixed with autumn leaves

Purple crocuses

Daffodils lit up from the glow

of a temperamental sun

Lots of sad news this week, tempered by some blessings:

• The 50th birthday lunch of a good friend ("well, it is better than the alternative")
• Clean lymph nodes; is there anyone still innocent of the importance of that news?
• Spring flowers; even though they come around every year, doesn't it seem like we especially need them this year?

Every day, the good and bad and mundane all mixed together. This poem -- with its irresistible title -- spoke to me particularly loudly.

Bees

by Jane Hirshfield

In every instant, two gates.

One opens to fragrant paradise,

one to hell.

Mostly we go through neither.

Mostly we nod to our neighbor,

lean down to pick up the paper,

go back into the house.

But the faint cries—ecstasy? horror?

Or did you think it the sound of distant bees,

making only the thick honey of this good life?

Sorry, Canadians . . . but we've got green shoots here

They are green, and they are in my garden!

It has been a gloriously sunny day – “false” spring only, perhaps – but I will take it. I meant to take a short walk to the corner store, but I got waylaid by the beauty of the day and wandered into the forest to look for snowdrops. Everywhere I looked there were people doing the same . . . I even saw two men, shirtless, out jogging! (It wasn’t really that warm, but the urge to bare one’s skin to the sun can be strong.)

One of the things that I love about Texas winter is that you only have to endure cold weather for short periods of time. That is best, I think; otherwise, winter’s harsh and antisocial qualities start to grind a person down.

I would agree that every season has its beauties, but for me, spring is incomparable. One of the things that I like best about England is that the signs of spring appear so early. Snowdrops are first, but the daffodils and narcissus will appear soon after. Then, the other bulbs: tulips and iris and fritillary. We’ve planted hundreds of bulbs this year . . . and I can’t even remember what or where now that the garden is all bare branched and knobby.

When I look out my bathroom window, I can see these green shoots. I will be plotting their progress . . .

Does Flower Arranging Make Me a Dilettante?

Alternative titles for this topic included:

My Life as a Character in an Edith Wharton Novel
and
Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all you know on Earth, and all you need to know.

You will notice that I went for the most self-deprecating version; as is my wont.

Today I went to a class to learn how to arrange spring flowers. When I entered the sunlit room, I was overwhelmed by the profusion of flowers: lots of juicy orange and vivid purple colors; beautiful pale green and cream roses that looked as if they were blushing; acid yellow rananculus; pussy willow, with its fat, silky catkins; fragrant mimosa; flowering branches of blossoms, pink and white; and frilled "parrot" tulips straight out of Dutch still-life. It was glorious; breathtaking, really. It made me feel giddy and joyous. And a bit decadent, too, because what says privileged lady who lunches more than a day in a flower shop -- learning to make one's own hand-tied posy?

When a friend asked me what I was doing today, I admitted -- perhaps with a slight shamefacedness -- that I was going to take a flower arranging class. Well, this woman (fellow American; former New Yorker) looked at me, aghast, and replied: "I would never do something like that! It would just confirm my worst fear: that I'm nothing but a dilettante." Of course I just laughed. (Of course I also thought: Honey, give it up -- you are a dilettante.) But the remark did give me pause.

In the past week I've been working on applying for a teaching job, and I'm not entirely sure that I want to. Most people go out to work because they need to make some money. But if you take money out of the equation -- and with teaching, you might as well -- you have to question why you are doing such a thing. Do I really want to trade my delicious bits of leisure time -- time to read and write and gather my rosebuds -- in order to grade another batch of disappointing juvenile papers? What will I lose? What will I gain?

In the past week I have been given a compliment, been asked a question, and been pierced by a criticism.
The compliment: we were out with some friends, and the mother/wife/full-time employed person told me that her children had voted mine the "homiest" house that they knew. I think this had something to do with the fact that I make my own "biscuits;" apparently, this is somewhat unusual in the houses they frequent. At any rate, they like to come over and hang out here; and I must admit that the hostessy part of me was touched by this vote of confidence -- no matter how narrow the field of competition.
The question: a very dear friend, she who first dubbed me Bee Drunken, asked me if I liked being a stay-at-home Mom. At one time, this friend and I were students together at Queen Mary College -- part of the University of London. She went on to be a journalist in New York City, while I went on to be the youngest mom of my cohort, move 13 times, and work sporadically as a teacher.
The criticism: when asked if she had read my blog about reading, my mother confessed that she had never looked at my blog -- and furthermore, that she considered it a waste of time that could be better used on "proper" writing.

One more anecdote, and then I will try to get to a point:
Not so long ago, my children -- tired and washed out from a long weekend -- told me how lucky I was that I didn't have to "work" or actually do anything. When I sputtered indignantly about having to go home and clean our house (a "tip" as the English say, after a long weekend of houseguests and slobbery), and do laundry, and grocery shop, and cook, etcetera --
my daughter replied, somewhat disdainfully, that people who work full-time have to do all of those things anyway. It was a pretty debate-worthy retort, actually; and while I could have argued that full-time working mothers often hire people to do their domestic duties it would have been just an avoidance of a certain truth. Once your children are at school, is there really any justification to be a stay-at-home mom?

But who's going to let in the workmen when something goes wrong in the house? In a 200 yr old house this is not an idle question -- but rather a need that arises on a nearly weekly basis.
But who's going to take the children to the dentist? (My youngest daughter got kicked in the mouth by a horse recently and has a more or less standing appointment at the dentist. But that's another story.)
But who's going to be the one who brings beauty and calm into our house?

I have been a full-time working mom, and furthermore, nearly a single one as well -- when Sigmund recently spent 18 months working and living in Holland. It wasn't quite Edvard Munch's "The Scream," but then I do remember the constant background whine of our lives as being: "Mommy is Sooooo Tired." The truth is, when I am not working full-time outside of our home, I am much more likely to want to work inside of our home. I cook more; I don't mind if a child wants to stir the risotto; I make risotto, for that matter; I throw parties and invite people over for the weekend; I plant baskets of flowers and herbs; I recycle -- everything; I am more likely to send a birthday card or a funny just-because-I-am-thinking-of-you card; I don't complain (as much) about ferrying children around; I am more likely to read a bedtime story; I am more likely to be patient with children; I am more likely to be smiling.

Since I live with a person who works long hours, and is not genetically inclined to good cheer, and since I also live with a teenager, it is my job to be in a good mood. If I am in a good mood, there is a better chance that everyone will be a good mood. Is this an equation, or just a corollary?

On the other hand, there is the fact that I was voted "Most Likely to Succeed" (what a poisoned chalice) in high school -- and "Most Outstanding Student" in graduate school. What part talent, what part ambition, what part hard work? Any part fluke?

Is aiming for domestic beauty and happiness too trifling a goal?

Tonight there was a beautiful bouquet of tulips, and roses, and mimosa, and rananculus on the dinner table. There were homemade biscuits; there were homemade lemon cookies. Do these things really enrich my family's lives, or my own, or am I just -- in the final accounting -- a dabbler?

But if you don't have to go out and slave for a wage are you a fool to do so? Are we a generation too devoted to the idea of Work?

I am turning these questions over in my mind tonight. I am listening to The Story sing "The Angel in the House." I am asking for some input: