HERD ABOUT IT?

by Ana Grarian

The teases of spring have arrived right on schedule to CNY this year. With February comes a slightly different smell to the air that hints of mud rather than snow. The gray sky portends rain rather than snow, and days that ebb into balmy intersperse the bitter cold. The winds change and those warm days are often damp and unpleasant, but the melting snow lifts my spirits.There will be more winter weather to come. Often our largest snows come when the warm damp spring air meets a cold front blowing out of Canada.
The birds are feeling it too. Often I am first drawn to their early morning chatter, which then turns my attention to these other signs. A crow greets me in the tall trees outside the house with his raucous voice.
The days are significantly longer and we get up to a gray morning coming to light. Heading home from work it is still light out. There is a difference to the sunlight in mid-day. Stronger perhaps or maybe at a slightly different angle. I am drawn to certain windows to feel it on my face.
The seeds are calling to me. My mini greenhouses await their annointing of soil and seed. I am hopeful that my new room with large windows will bring a fruitful start to my project. Garden supply departments in local stores are luring me with brightly colored pots, garden gnomes and tools still shiny and new.

A spring wind blowing
the smell of the ground
through the intersections of traffic,
the mind turns, seeks a new
nativity—another place,
simpler, less weighted
by what has already been.

from: The Thought of Something Else, by Wendell Berry