They follow right on the heels of the snowdrops: those cheery little faces, spreading through flowerbeds in bright stripes of purple and gold and white, lifting their faces to the morning sun.
Like the snowdrops, I read about them in The Secret Garden; learned to look for them in Oxford; and truly fell in love with them during my years at Harvard. There was (is) a house with a purple door right across the street from my beloved Darwin’s, and the first crocuses always bloom there, in a triangular bed at the end of the driveway. They bloom all over that part of Cambridge, of course, but that yard is where I go every spring, checking to see if the green sprouts are poking up yet, through the grit and mulch and winter leaf litter.
Sometimes they bud when it’s still snowing out; some years they wait a little longer to emerge. But always, always, they arrive eventually, heralding the end of winter’s gray cold and biting winds. They are the first shot of true color to emerge after the snow, and that jolt of purple and gold goes straight to my heart, every year.
Hello, friends. It’s (suddenly) May, and the world is in bloom – the apple blossoms, lilacs and my beloved tulips are splashing out with color these days. I’m feeling the need for a new writing series, so this month I’ll be sharing with you reflections on – what else? – the flowers I love.
I’ve always been a flower fiend, though as a little girl, I didn’t see a lot of the flowers I regularly see here in New England. We had a daylily bed out back (until our rabbit, Barney, ate them all), and I regularly saw dandelions and other wildflowers, but the vegetation in West Texas is wildly (ha) different from where I live now.
My mother has red yucca and oleander in her yard, these days, and I remember puffball begonia plants and potted geraniums in front of our house in Dallas. But the flowers I read about in storybooks mostly remained just that. West Texas is too dry for lilacs and hydrangeas, crocuses and magnolias, and the only zinnias and gladioli I knew were the ones in my Neno’s garden in Ohio.
One of the beautiful, consistent gifts of living in Boston is watching the cycle of flowers as the seasons change. Again: we have seasons in West Texas, but they’re drastically different (and much dustier, mostly) than the ones here in New England. The earliest spring flowers, especially, are dear to me not only for themselves, but as signals that the winter is finally over. The green shoots signal warmer air, longer days, the emergence of people and activities from winter hibernation. And the first ones out – sometimes poking up through literal snow – are, fittingly, the snowdrops.
I first read about snowdrops in The Secret Garden, when Ben Weatherstaff teaches Mary about the plants she’ll see emerging in the Yorkshire spring. I didn’t know what they looked like, though I assumed they’d be white. I didn’t quite understand that some flowers could sprout, even bloom, when it was still cold out. (In my hometown, where the temperature swings can be wild, and spring arrives in mid-March, it doesn’t quite work like that.)
I don’t think I saw snowdrops with my own eyes until my first spring in Oxford, as a college student. There, as here, you can find them in flowerbeds and gardens, often the first reliable sign of green after the winter rains. I was amazed to see them blooming before spring had truly started, in University Parks and in front gardens behind low stone walls. They were a delightful surprise that first year, and every year I have lived in Boston, they have proved a reliable harbinger.
When I worked in Cambridge, I learned to watch for signs of spring: the crocuses in the yard of the house across the street from Darwin’s; the bulbs in front of the yellow house on Hilliard Street; the daffodils along the Charles River, and later the lilacs in front of Longfellow House. I learned, too, to watch for snowdrops there: even in the bitterest winters, they start popping up all over Cambridge in February and early March. They’re often struggling up through mulch and snow and leaf litter, but they are determined. Touched by weak early-spring sunshine, they break through and ring their tiny bells to herald winter’s end.
Only now, in spring, can the place be named: tulip poplar, daffodil, crab apple, dogwood, budding pink-green, white-green, yellow on my knowing. All winter I was lost. Fall, I found myself here, with no texture my fingers know. Then, worse, the white longing that downed us deep three months. No flower heat. That was winter. But now, in spring, the buds flock our trees. Ten million exquisite buds, tiny and loud, flaring their petalled wings, bellowing from ashen branches vibrant keys, the chords of spring’s triumph: fisted heart, dogwood; grail, poplar; wine spray, crab apple. The song is drink, is color. Come. Now. Taste.
I recently read Dungy’s wonderful memoir, Soil (coming in May), which explores her experience of tending and diversifying her Colorado garden. I’m less familiar with her poetry, but loved this one – you can read the full poem at the Poetry Foundation website.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am sharing poetry – with an emphasis on women – on Fridays this month, as I do every year.
Harshness vanished. A sudden softness has replaced the meadows’ wintry grey. Little rivulets of water changed their singing accents. Tendernesses,
hesitantly, reach toward the earth from space, and country lanes are showing these unexpected subtle risings that find expression in the empty trees.
I saw this poem on Nicole’s Instagram back in March, and it seemed absolutely perfect for the “beautiful, capricious, reluctant” springs we often get here in New England.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am sharing poetry on Fridays this month, as I do every year.
We sleep in the desert on a land full of stories, and all night the wind reads the news. We’ve left our attachments – expectations and a newspaper – on the picnic table for the night, surrendering our documented selves and reported names to sleep.
All night the wind sifts our dreams, reading the truth. We sleep deeply but aware, like stones skipping water, and hear the news doing somersaults over the land. Finally, it blows into a cactus, sacrificed on a crown of thorns.
The moon encrypts new names into our dreams, and near dawn, coyotes sing the real headlines in yips of happiness.
We wake to a world without word, only scent and beauty. The Word is written everywhere on the land.
I discovered this poem last fall in the wonderful anthology What Wildness Is This. As we approach both spring and Easter weekend, I thought it seemed fitting to share here.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am sharing poetry – with an emphasis on women – here on Fridays this month, as I do every year.
We are having (I keep saying) a grey winter around here. A friend exclaimed last week, “Oh, you’re having such nice weather in Boston!” and I laughed out loud – clearly I’ve only been posting on Instagram on the (rare) days the skies are blue.
In the wake of last week’s snow/sleet/rainstorm, I’m looking for scraps of color – which, at the moment, looks like cheery hits of pink, wherever I can find them.
Whether it’s flipping through old flower photos (above), the pink parrot tulips I bought from my beloved florist recently, or my cozy new sweatshirt, pink is making me happy these days.
I’m waiting for the cherry blossoms and redbuds to spring forth (and loving the photos my friends send me in the meantime); dotting my journal entries with bright, spring-hued stickers; and generally searching for pops of pink (and other colors) to counteract the grey. I’m even sporting pink eyeshadow once in a while – anything to brighten my inner (and outer) landscape.
As previously stated, it feels like this winter’s been a long one. And despite my glorious getaway to San Diego in February, I have been hankering for some additional travel. I’ve got one trip on the calendar and am dreaming of a couple of others, but mostly, this March, I am staying local. So I’m trying to make the best of it – despite grey skies and rain – with local adventures.
My guy and I went to the Gardner for their Free First Thursday evening, which involved gorgeous live music by Fabiola Mendez, and the chance to wander the exhibits. I always love seeing the crowds who show up on First Thursday – usually a younger, hipper, more diverse group than you typically see at the museum.
We perused Isabella’s travel scrapbooks, and I revisited some familiar pieces. It was especially fun because I’d just read a novel about her (The Lioness of Boston, which was excellent). We always talk, too, about colonialism and privilege and wealth when we visit the Gardner – because someone had to labor for all this beauty, and it’s important to acknowledge the stories that don’t always get told.
The next week, I headed over to Albertine Press for a calligraphy workshop – which ended up being a one-on-one session with Jen, an accomplished calligrapher. It was both fun and soothing to trace letter forms with beautiful brush pens, and watch Jen demonstrate the strokes and shapes. I did a bit of shopping afterward, and came home with the beginnings of a fun new skill to practice.
On a Sunday afternoon, my guy and I headed to the Map Room Tea Lounge at the Boston Public Library, to toast some exciting developments for him, and brighter days ahead. We sipped delicious cocktails and enjoyed yummy savory bites – and got to sample a few treats from the adjacent tea room. It was just the sparkle our weekend needed, and a semi-hidden gem tucked into one of our favorite places.
I’ve got some live theatre on the list, too – an ushering stint at my beloved Lyric Stage and a trip to Into the Woods with a girlfriend, soon. And my guy and I have a concert date on the books. So, though I’m hankering to hop on a plane, I’m doing my best to enjoy what’s right in front of me – while I wait eagerly for the spring sunshine.
This morning, on the way to work, I walked down clear sidewalks: some recent rain and mild temperatures had washed them nearly clean of last week’s snow and sleet. I’ve been snapping photos of crocuses and snowdrops, stepping around the occasional clump of hardened snow. There’s rain and wintry mix in the forecast for next week: although we’re technically in meteorological spring, March is still winter in Boston. And this winter has been a strange one.
During the decade I’ve lived in New England, we’ve set records for snow totals in both directions: the notorious winter of 2014-15, when it would not stop snowing, remains the high mark for snow in Boston at around 110 inches. Until recently, this winter (which also boasted the cloudiest January on record) was the least snowy winter in Boston’s history. We’ve had at least one record-breaking cold snap, but many more oddly mild(ish), dry days.
Of course, it’s not over yet, and as we all know, “averages” are made up of both dramatic extremes and quieter middles. But it’s been a season of fits and starts: temps in the 60s over Presidents’ Day weekend, after lows that dipped below zero earlier in the month. A few storms that have dumped several inches of snow and sent everyone scrambling to dig out their shovels and ice scrapers, interspersed with days of cold rain or lowering skies. We’ve had very few of the bright blue days I love, where I inhale the cold, crisp air as I run along the harbor under the morning sun. It hasn’t felt quite normal–though “normal,” as we all know, is highly variable.
Despite the fitful weather and the lack of snow, some signs of the season are showing up right on time. Those snowdrops have been popping up for weeks now, recently joined by crocuses and early daffodils. The maple buds are turning red; the magnolia branches look fuzzier, or maybe that’s just me anticipating the time when they’ll burst open into pink and white. And the light–this I know for sure–is lingering just a bit longer every day.
It’s been a strange, fitful life season, too: a reentry from a pandemic that isn’t quite over, no matter how weary we are of anything COVID-related. Some of us are still relearning how to be in society, after nearly two years spent isolating whenever possible. I’ve written before about needing more time to recover after trips and activities, no matter how much I enjoy them. And of course there are the usual existential questions about life and career and relationships, magnified by the last three profoundly strange years: Am I where I’m supposed to be? Am I doing the work that’s meant for me, and am I loving my people well? How do I know?
How do I know, indeed?
We’re so addicted to forward motion, as a culture: linear progress, productivity, the checking off of tasks on the to-do list. I count up the number of pages I write, tally the runs and yoga classes I get to in a week, make and remake lists in my planner. I long to find some momentum on a longer writing project: a book of essays, maybe, or a memoir in vignettes. I want to accomplish, to check off, to have the sense that all this effort, all these quietly lived days, are counting for something.
As we approach the third anniversary of the pandemic, that strange, disorienting Friday when the world shut down, I’m wondering: what if linear isn’t the thing at all? What if progress is just a name we slap onto weeks of fits and starts, the shiny veneer we paste over a winding path, the story we tell ourselves because we’ve come to believe that cyclical or slower growth doesn’t matter?
I think about those crocuses: quietly gathering their strength underground for months before peeking their heads above the ground, seeking the light. I think about the seasons, how the angle of the sun shifts gradually each day, despite our labels of equinox and solstice. I think about my own growth, how I can attempt a yoga pose or wrestle a knotty emotional problem for days or weeks –and then suddenly, in a split-second epiphany or a quieter moment, understanding can dawn, seemingly out of nowhere.
Along with the crocuses, I am trying (always trying) to open myself up to the beauty that is right here, rather than forcing my own expectations onto reality. It’s hard sometimes: I’d rather have a plan and a list and a road map for how to get there. But it’s worthwhile and life-giving work: to slow down a bit, to notice what’s really here, and to delight in it – even if it’s not what I expected.
It has been a strange winter: we’ve had (knock on wood) hardly any snow, at least by normal Boston standards. We had the cloudiest January on record and a bitter cold snap in early February (which, thankfully, I missed because I was in California).
It’s felt a bit odd not to step around piles of slush, and I’m getting a little worried about what this unusual winter might mean for the rest of this year. I struggle with snow and cold and ice, but I know the plants and the ground need it to give us the other beautiful New England seasons I love.
But. I spotted the first purple crocus in our community garden the other day, pushing up through mulch and sticks and a few bits of discarded litter. And it gave me the same heart-leap of joy and hope as every year: no matter what, no matter the grey skies and existential crises and chilly nights with or without snow, spring will still come. It’s a relief and a blessing to know that the promise is kept: that underground, where we can’t yet see it, growth is happening. Color and joy, and new life, are on their way.
here we are running with the weeds colors exaggerated pistils wild embarrassing the calm family flowers oh here we are flourishing for the field and the name of the place is Love
I found this poem in How to Carry Water, a robust collection of Clifton’s poems. I love its riotous exuberance, its verbs, its unapologetic flourishing. And that last line! As a flower geek and a perennial optimist, I love it all.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am sharing poetry – with an emphasis on women of color – here on Fridays this month, as I do every year.
cakes, tea and dreams 