Easing Into Spring
With Nature as my guide
I’m feeling a bit like the stubborn pile of snow hanging on to winter in front of my little house. It is officially spring, but I’m taking the transition extra slowly this year. It’s unseasonably warm today and tomorrow - near 80 degrees - and that probably has a lot of people jumping with joy.
I’ll admit, the warm sun does feel delicious. And the two days of chemtrail-laden skies have cleared to a gentle blue.
This winter into spring transition has always been hard for me. I was a mid-December baby and perhaps learned to love hibernation at an early age.
That doesn’t mean that I didn’t relish taking those February or March vacations to warmer climates and turquoise blue-green water. I needed that desperately when I was married and with young children.
But, with each passing year, I seem to want that interruption in my cold weather winter less and less. My body doesn’t like to wildly go from cold to hot and then back to cold again.
Well, there’s no denying now that spring is here. I am really happy for those of you who long for this season while you suffer through the colder months. I know that’s hard, and you deserve this season and all that it brings—especially my Kapha friends.
I am looking forward to that spring green that is so beautiful. Of course, it is - it’s the color of the heart chakra. 💚
During my first two springs and summers here in this little spot of four seasons of paradise in New Hampshire, I felt so much pressure (all self-induced, of course) to find all the plants growing around me. Make them into medicine—tinctures, oils, healing herbal infusions.
And also to make a garden. Grow vegetables.
There was/is so much work to be done. And not to whine about it because I know how darn fortunate I am to be here, but I am alone and not so experienced in vegetable gardening.
I wrote about this last year, so I won’t repeat myself. I just re-read it for my own benefit.
This year, I’m taking my time.
Easing into spring.
I’m slowing myself way down and am in observation mode.
Listening to the birds. Watching their habits.
Walking the land and seeing what’s showing up.
Well, look who I found!
It’s the Queen herself! Just a few days ago, I could barely see her feathery leaves ready to poke through the earth. And now, look at her!
This morning I meandered down the road and ended up at the Audubon Wildlife Sanctuary, which is just a ten-minute walk. I’ll keep visiting there until Bug Season arrives, and then I might have to take a break.
I took a little video for you. But for the life of me, I can’t figure out how to embed it here. If anyone on Substack knows how, please let me know! I didn’t want it at the top but rather in the body of the post.
So, I guess a photo will have to do.
That’s my little house on the hill.
I’m writing in The Little Barn today. This morning, it looked like the Light of Inspiration itself was being beamed right in here! Waiting for me to create. I’ve been feeling the nudge back to painting. But, all I seem to want to do is write, and it feels so deliciously effortless, not like painting does for me right now.
This year, I’m leaving behind the spring/summer to-do list. Spring cleaning? I need to do things when the mood strikes me. Morning time is best.
But morning is also my creative time. And when I like to go for walks. There are not enough hours in the morning, so I’m happy to wake up earlier and earlier.
Nature isn’t rushing, and neither will I this year.
I wonder when the paper wasps will return. I don’t know enough about them to explain where they went when they abandoned the nest that they’d meticulously crafted above my kitchen door. It is exquisite.
Did they die? I guess I should research that because they seem to like it here, and they were actually really nice neighbors. They never once were aggressive towards me, and in turn, I always let them know when I was coming out of the door.
Sometimes I would sing to them.
A leaf just blew into the barn, and I jumped, thinking it was a mouse! Yes, I have a mouse phobia, thanks to my dear dad, who used to dangle the poor mouse-trapped mice in my face. Well, maybe he only did that once.
I think I need a nap. This heat is getting to me. Maybe I’ll hang the hammock between two trees and have a rest.
Who here is jumping up and down with spring fever, and who is not? I’d love to know! I have an inkling about a few of you…
Much Love,
Barbara
Good Day to you, Barbara, it has been awhile since I wrote. Long story made short, I fell and was flat on my back for two weeks; painful? Oh yes, indeed and I haven't even started with the med. follow-ups yet, well just barely .
Sigh, it's a trap getting old so my advice to you is Do what you just wrote--take it slow and savor aging unlike me who, a vata-pitta and overburdened with guilt at not getting enough done each and everyday, tried to do too much.
Just like my Dad, who when he went in for heart surgery, the docs found out he had had a 'heart attack' previously, but he does not recall. Yeah, Dad, it more than likely happened when you had come home from the farm fields having put in 10 hours of tilling/sowing/cultivating or whatever the season and you had said, "I don't feel too well" and you laid down on the floor (cause god forbid you take a nap on the sofa dressed in your soiled farmers clothes) and took a well-deserved siesta...for about an hour, then off to the fields, you were back on the tractor finishing up. Up at the crack of dawn and during harvest, after midnight.
And this was not intended to be a paeon to my dearly loved but now departed father, but I am feeling a bit blue these days. We were alike in so many ways and I feel like i should have learned more by watching him. Persistence? Patience?
And It is still 47 degrees in the early morning here in the NW with sheets of nonstop rain and although I once loved the winter ( being born in the middle of Dec, as well and raised on a North Dakota farm), I am so cold, always freezing that if this 'climate warming' doesn't happen soon, I might just shrivel up into a husk and disappear like that paper wasp nest photo of yours.
So for the first time ever, I am anxiously awaiting the summer with it's burning fires in the mountains, heatwaves and dry gardens and a water shortage. Am I nuts or what?
It's been a hard winter--so go slow, savor the wildness, forgeddabout the garden (there is always the farmers markets) or grow only what you like or can't find (I have a huge garden in the front yard, but haven't done a thing for three lousy years due to cancer). I mostly miss those killer tiny tomatoes and my lettuce and Kale were tremendous until the bunnies discovered them.
I now am apparently raising birds/butterflies/ rabbits with some fawns that get left inside the fence line while Mom deer goes cavorting for greens elsewhere. It works for now. So I say to you enjoy your wilding (my word once more as it was the year before is REWILDING cause I didn't feel I fully got to rewild) and watch the birds more. I am 3 years older than you, feel like you might be a sister of the soul if not the blood; so lil sis, big sis says.........take your time and write or paint or plant some toms or nothing at all. You do you! Looking forward to your next post---I may not be able to respond but I do read every thing.
So the sun feels amazing on my bones and I certainly needed the sun in my eyes but I am not looking forward to what I notice comes with spring. Living in a city provides ALL kinds of loud obnoxious people, sounds and behaviors..... I definitely like my windows closed and not having to hear everyone's music blaring at every red light. Bahhhh humbug🤣🤭 .... addendum... I too am taking everything slow from now on. Otherwise I just might not make it 🤣😉😁