Hammer and A Nail

The indigo girls told me to get a hammer and a nail. So i did just that. With both hammer and nail in my hand i stared at my text books and list of assignments and nothing happened. I tried beating the books with the hammer but that just dented the cover. I tried scratching the nail in my list but that just tore the paper into little pieces. I then tried nailing the paper to the table but now i need to get a new notebook and table. So i put the hammer down and grabbed a new piece of paper and a pencil and started studding. This was much more effecitve at getting stuff done. Good try girls. I'll attempt your method again when i need to build a house or something. I think that will be a better use of both tools.

Anticipation

March is a bastard. He will trick you with sunshine and breezes that sing of summer sunshine. When in reality the night brings in frosts and a reminder that you still live in a Midwestern state. The brown-gray grass, that smells of mud and moving water, changes at a snails pace to gray green to small patches of brilliant emerald. But trees and shrubs still hold on to their winter apparel. I can’t help but feel the heavy anticipation for the appearance of buds on the maple trees or the maroon beginnings of lilac blossoms. Last years perennials lay in winter-worn dried out clumps. The salvia whose rich green and purple flowers are now a mass of gray twigs and dusty leaves. If I was to be having a garden this year there would be plenty of broccoli, tomato, pepper and egg plant seedlings under the light table now. But my parents passion for vegetable gardening is much less than mine, as is many peoples; so the full spectrum lights will not make there debut to my room this year. In stead of the pallets of dirt and seed, all I will have this March is a small container with aconite, just taken out of the simulated winter within the refrigerator. Hope fully by May or June a seedling or two will sprout.

Signs of hope are everywhere. Even though the skies may be clouded over in a steely gray sheet, the powerful sun breaks through in the late afternoons and in the evenings casting a violent band of hot pinks, vibrant yellows, and intense reds across the western horizons. This light brings the end of snow banks and stimulates the growth of the new year to begin. Strawberries poke their three lobbed leaves though the hay layer of last fall. The yarrow and yucca are already bright green. The gray stems of last years flowers towering over head the new growth call me to grab the garden clippers and start the annual perennial trimming. Covering the kitchen scraps in this years’ compost pile goes old growth and a few handfuls of water logged leaves from the ground. The apples that weren’t collected and left to rot on the floor over winter now have rings of mold holding them to the ground. These get chucked down the hill where all undesirable compost goes to decay.

Irises all ready have six inches of green blade like leaves above the ground. Not sure the delphinium and columbine made it though the winter. It’ll be a couple weeks before I will know for sure. I planted both last year. One was bough off a discount table in the back corner of a Home Depot Garden Center. It was 5 dollars and only had a few leaves, reminiscent of grape vine foliage. Of course my ‘Charlie Brown’ complex wouldn’t let me leave the store without some overwhelming sense of guilt, if not passive murder, if I did not give this plant a fighting chance. But now with the return of spring, Jack Frost might have done the job that my neglect could have done 6 months earlier. The words of Barbara Kingslover come to mind with “Hope is a renewable resource”. Of course the frosted mornings and wind swept nights diminish the hope I have for warmer weather. But the days getting brighter and greener everyday, it is a constant refilling of hope for morning glory blooms, sweet corn, savory tomatoes, and drinks around a bon fire with friends and family.

February

*Work in progress*

It’s mid February here and though the days are bright and the sun melts the edges of snow banks 8 feet tall, the wind is bitter cold as ever. The Full Snow Moon lights my way as I walk back to my on campus apartment. I know that here in Duluth it is suppose to be cold now, but as a botanist and a one who doesn’t care for foot wear, I’m getting a bit sick of the cold and wish for more photosynthesis in my place of dwelling

I long for the late days of April when the trees are budding and the grass give off the cold musty smell right after a few days of clouds and rain. The bold colors of tulips, daffodils and crocus play on a backdrop of sage green prairie grass in my reoccurring dreams. The first tender leaves of salad and fresh mozzarella, home made of course, with sprigs of borage with its cucumber like taste makes a light, fresh, and sweetly orgasmic meal. The creeks run full and fast with the melting snow and I sit besides them as tiny insects dance in the waters. The spiral grass homes the wasps whom will soon take to the skies and make their papery nests among the trees. Birds sing love songs with the returning sun and by Beltane will have made nests with their companions. I sit among my brothers and sisters and revel in the turning of the earth. Crow sits among the high branches and draws my attention to the world above. The great blue sky, so open, so vast, sprawls from horizon to horizon; encompassing all half of the cosmosphere. Feathery clouds dissipate into the azure.