MARCH CLEAN-UP

 

Spring arrives with tentative steps, promising flowers, but (bar the occasional crocus, scarce, and soon gone) not delivering yet.  The died-back, low-grown lawn is now revealed to be a dozen species, all of them, even the weed ones, disdaining to thrive in certain mangy patches of bare dirt.  The leafless trees branch shamelessly into wicked fingernails. The leaves pressed into mud, banning the grass, are as attractive as smashed cigarette packs.

Walking it, boots sinking in muck, scooping up severed tree-parts as from a body-strewn battlefield.  Sweeping scraping raking   twig-lengths, clammy grass-thatch, and stubborn sweetgum seeds. Some spring.

It is, in this, like a very baby: newborn, red and runted, face screwed up in rage, but nurtured, soon smiling, blooming, fattening, filling out.

So I diaper the flowers, and change the lawn, with patience.  Nature will do the rest.

Resurgence (pre-Spring)

drooping  branchlets     dotted

with  unbroken buds,

having survived the blight

to greet

another year . . .

[ -- John Updike, Couples (1968)]

Feasts of Spring

We had breakfast guests this morning on the deck;

some with feathers, some with fur.

Sunflower seeds bright black  atop the snow.

[For a similar vision  from around this time two years ago, try this.]

Rites of Spring (iterum -- vel ter resartus)

Today  I hauled the old lawnmower out of the shed, where it had long lain hibernating.   (I say “the” shed  since the reference is in fact unambiguous:   unlike Arthur ‘Two Sheds’ Jackson, I personally possess only one shed.) 

Nota bene:  Dr Justice is *not* like that man !!

I gassed ‘er up, and, in lieu of actually oiling anything or “replacing the plugs and points” (what is a point, exactly?), since I don’t understand anything about lawnmowers, I contented myself with prodding it here and there with my toe, and eyeing it with a masculine, propriety air -- with just a hint of asperity to it, along the lines of, “Let’s not have any of that won’t-start-up nonsense this time, shall we?”

For we have here that annually recurring agony of vernal uncertainty.   You set your stance, seize the ripcord, let loose your mightiest tug, and… it either leaps to life with a throaty roar, or… splutters impotently, mocking you, and then you’re hosed.

(I must here explain for the ladies, who would otherwise scarcely understand, that failure of one’s lawnmower to start, is humiliating for a man.)

Yet lo!   With a deafening neigh  worthy of Bucephalus,

Dr Justice, taming his lawnmower

and a forward leap recalling Pegasus,

My trusty mower, defeating the weeds

the noble mower sprang into action -- the very first on our cul-de-sac, this season, to do so!

Thanking the gods, I strode forward, laying low the uppity tussocks  and insolent weeds,  like Hector mowing down Myrmidons, relishing in Man’s estate.

In ancient Rome, it was considered a most auspicious omen, when one’s lawnmover started right up  in the spring.

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For an exhilarating parable

in which Spring becomes general,

and dry twigs  send forth  green leaves,   see

Murphy and the Magic Pawnshop

[Kindle] [Nook]

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March in Maryland

In like a lion,
out like a lamb ...

Back in like a lion,
Back out like a lamb ...

[And as to this new April -- It seems to be suffering from some kind of Gender Identity Disorder, imagining itself to be January.]

Primavera

Grim winter chilled the spirit, fog has bound the mind,

till Spring with his swift fingers  loose the bonds that bind,

and Cupid, shooting love-shafts,  couples  kind to kind,

--thén will I mend, thén will I wend, thén will I

  wóo

      you.

Springtime creams to summer,  the sap is in the trees,
so golden as the honey  of the dreaming bees,
all lost within the buzzing  of the brimming breeze,

--when summer's sped, then would I wed, be wedded

  tó

    you.

Fifty shades of tan

   [early March, mid-Atlantic]

Nothing yet budding;

a few dry leaves  from autumn last 

(papyrus-yellow  and paper-thin)

still clinging to their beech trees.

Leaf-litter, windthrow,

straw-stalks,  hay-mow:

all -- tan ochre beige wheat hazel 
fulvous fawn or tawny -- 

-- all as yet  the color of canvas,

for Spring  to paint upon.

Vernal Equinox

As the nights recede, and the chill days lengthen,

finally something clicks within;

then Mister Bear   rumbles awake,

and lumbers forth  from his sleepycave,

blinking at all that light.

There is sunshine, sunshine  everywhere,

great golden buckets of it.

The bunnies splash about in it,

like otters in a pond.

“What a wonderful world,”

thinks Mister Bear.