Spring Will Come

It is the first snow since we moved here nearly two years ago, and I am enjoying the crackle of the hardened crust beneath the boots I bought last year in hopes that snow would come. It is a damper, stickier, and more fragile variety than the snow I grew accustomed to in my years in Minnesota, but all the more precious for its fragility and short life. It may well be gone tomorrow.

I follow across our yard the deer, fox and rabbit tracks - signs that my closest neighbors explore the winter landscape, too, albeit in the hours before I have left my bed. I wonder if, from the underbrush, they now watch me cross the lane to check the rhododendrons whose optimistic buds have grown ever larger since the fall. The wet ice weighs the bushes down and coats the leaves. But the buds still stand impervious, strong and green, and ready to outlast the snow and lead us into spring.

Forever Beautiful

The last time my mother came to this church alive she was well into dementia and unsure of her surroundings. “Something bad has happened,” she repeated again and again as we laid her brother to rest. “Something terrible.” She looked worried and scared until the tree that sheltered the graves of her father, mother, and grandmother - and now her brother - caught her eye. She opened her arms wide and grinned. “Oh, look at this!” she said as her hands outlined both the tree and the sky beyond. “How beautiful! I could just stay here forever!” We laughed, how could we not? “That’s good Mom,” we assured her, knowing that someday soon enough she would do just that.

I visited, this week, the tranquil graveyard where my mother and then my father are buried. I thanked them again for all they have given me in their lives and, still, beyond to now. And then I turned and thanked the tree whose roots have surely wound around and now hold tight my parents resting still below the surface. Forever. Beautiful.

Turning Point

Finally, the butterflies have come! I’ve been waiting all summer, worrying that something has kept them from my garden. But here they are, the yellow and black swallowtails, at least (not so many monarchs), here just in time to fatten themselves up on the coneflowers, giant hyssops, black-eyed susans, and Joe Pye Weed before they head to winter nesting grounds - I’m not sure where, but certainly not here. I sit on the porch and enjoy their quiet feasting motions, and those of a sudden influx of goldfinches, too, in what feels to be softer sunlight than just a week ago.

We’re at a turning point - the birds, the butterflies, the garden itself, and me. Though the cicadas have been warning us that summer has nearly passed us by, this is the first time I have felt autumn’s presence in the garden. Soon, there will be more seeds and berries for the birds that stay than nectar for the butterflies that now are moving through. But here I am today, sitting with hummingbirds that duel and fuss above my head and gentle rain that falls beyond the eaves. And through the patter I faintly hear the high school’s marching band out in the football field just down the road: “Oh, say can you see?” It’s not time for school just yet, but it’s an iconic harbinger of fall to hear them practice in the rain.

I will not be sorry to see autumn come. I have some garden tasks to do, of course, as the air cools down and the days get shorter. But I am more than satisfied with the progress and the abundance of my garden in the past few months. The light, the color, the birds. And now the butterflies. I will watch them feed and then be ready to say goodbye and settle in to winter and to look beyond, toward spring.