Spring In The Air 11 comments

14 Feb 2004 @ 11:13, by Richard Carlson I have never waited for anything the way I've waited for today, when nothing will happen. ---Marguerite Duras And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. ---T.S. Eliot Approach it and there is no beginning; follow it and there is no end. You can't know it, but you can be it, at ease in your own life. ---Lao-Tzu In the Woods, c.1900-04 Watercolor over pencil on paper Paul Cezanne 1829 - 1906 A break in the weather and, while it's still cold outside (around 20 degrees Fahrenheit) here's a chance to restore and replenish. Southeast Ohio has been so wet this fall and winter, relieving a few years of drought conditions, that the ground is completely saturated. Any more rain or thaw after snowfall means flooding at once, so time at home has been used fortifying against the elements. Today is calm and rather bright so I was inspired, as the Valentine ladies laze about a bit this morning (plus Ilona's friend Tara who spent the night after the big Middle School dance) to get after a few chores. The larger woodpile is well away from the house under a primitive shed Jeroch built a few years ago. We saw up some of our fallen oaks, but increasingly I look to neighbors, who cut, season and sell wood, to bring me a truckload for our 2 woodburners in this large house. I see there's enough left to get us easily to first sprigs of spring, but I've got to carry a couple hoursworth over next to the house. Other guys tell me to get a little tractor with a wagon on it to do this---and maybe ultimately I'll have to---but right now I enjoy the walking meditation of back and forth with an armload and then emptiness. I get to think and look at the sky and talk to a few birds. I might even burn a few calories which everybody in the world tells me I need to do. I look at the logs singly and more carefully this winter as I pile them into my arms. Last year I might have carried an eggcase over to the house, because during the summer we suddenly found a couple dozen black widows around the exterior and, most alarmingly, in the attached garage. Black widows are extremely attractive spiders to me, despite the poison. They are astonishingly fast and can "disappear" in the blink of an eye, usually too fast to catch and squish. They're nocturnal so you really have to look for them in the dark, maybe with a flashlight. They build a tangled web about chesthigh to adults in which they catch a ton of insects. Black widows really don't bother people since they're not at all aggressive, but folks get bitten by accident and the injury is pretty terrible. When I found a couple inside the house, from the garage, I had to get busy---and so I stooped to spraying. They like to winter in woodpiles and many bites come while carrying logs after bugs are thawed out again. No signs of life today though. Oh but of course there are signs in the bushes and trees. Buds are ready to ease a leaf out into the sunshine and warm rain of next month. I trim back branches along the paths and driveway and bring them into the house to sprout in vases of water. February is a lot cheerier with some green and blooms around the house. Tufted titmouse nesting songs are starting up, since they sing them at a hint of warmth on the air. Woodpeckers are tapping aggressively this morning too, and often that means the males are staking out their territories. The red-bellieds are singing their strange gargling songs more loudly too as they visit the feeders. They take seeds with them into the surrounding oaks, where they seem to be drilling them into the branches. For years I thought they must be storing them instinctively against hard times, but now I wonder whether these insect-eaters might use them for bait. A seed sunk into a branch somewhat might draw an interested larva to it, but who knows if a woodpecker could figure out such a scheme? I find only one mousenest in the woodpile and fortunately it appears to be incomplete, so I don't disturb any timid, wintering ladies. But I'm not so lucky when I walk down to the meadow and check the birdhouses. Usually mice take them over for the winter, but I decide to look at this early time anyway. I guess I have to confess to wanting to find something alive and closeup inside---and sure enough, when I open the first one, there's a rustling and then a head pokes out...and gives me the look. The look a mouse can give you, when she's disturbed and frightened for her life and home, is only a little less shaming than one from your own mother! I close the birdhouse back up again and tiptoe away. The next little birdhouse is a casualty of time I'm afraid, for it is down next to the walnut in the meadow. Ilona made it during a summer activity maybe 5 years ago...and alas, the back has rotted away enough to fall under the weight of a couple winter mice. It's frozen and so I can't look inside, but I see through the hole all the soft signs of mouse occupation. What a wild ride they had when it fell! Can you imagine the bottom dropping out while you sit in your computer chair reading this? That's how Nature is though, isn't it. So I'm a little melancholy as I trudge up the driveway. I've put the fallen birdhouse in the sun to thaw out, and I'll have a look later to see if anybody got hurt. Nor have I broken the news to Ilona yet. One must be prepared when cleaning up around the delicate, tough tentativeness of life about to begin again.

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