The Late Winter Crawl

The baby has learnt to crawl. Suddenly I am aware again of every open doorway, our looming stairs, and the cords in every room that he so dearly loves to chew on. We are also in the midst of the human-carpet-sweeper stage, every little crumb and scrap of paper and stray bit of styrafoam is edible if it comes anywhere near his now-perfect pincer reach. Life is about to get really, really energetic. Its a season of movement and experimentation. Go!

I have my annual case of spring fever. I can feel it bubbling up inside of me and sometimes foaming out my ears without warning. I am positively magnetically drawn to the bundles of cut daffodils in the grocery store. I cannot escape the place without a cluster or two in my paw. I have started seeds for the veggie garden and have packets full of warmer weather seeds sitting by for wistful fondling. Time to grow some sprouts for sandwiches to fend off the blues.  Right?

The weather has been sunny and the morning sunrise occasionally breathtaking and I can palpably feel the days lengthening. I am praying morning prayer as a Lenten resolution using a Divine Office app on my phone in the middle of the morning which feels like the right thing to do after having seen a stunning sunrise. I have candles to light in my Mama Space in the sunroom and a little tabletop fountain to tinkle wetly in the background too, a beautiful prayer space. If I pray upstairs, where I write, outside my writing window I can see sapsicles hanging from the broken branches of the big sugar maple if the day is cold and chill sometimes a squirrel nibbling the sweet ice and bounding away to check out the tasty goodies on our compost pile.

This week A is taking a breather week before beginning his new job (that exciting, new life phase that will require thrift!) so we are doing lots of sitting around together and watching intriguing TED Talks at night and having slow mornings. There are just a few days left and then he will be off to train for two weeks in California leaving me and The Little Fellas for a fourteen day solo run. I am packing all of us in the car and taking off for Michigan to do some maple sugaring and maybe a little ice fishing with my parents in the north woods to keep us peppy and occupied. Good times ahead and lots of great blogging of the adventures along the way!

Hanging On To Plums

Image by pchgorman via Flickr

It is skunk cabbage season. And now that we don't live right next to a wetland I have to seek out my skunk cabbage experiences. It is the very first of the spring flowers...it beats out the crocus and the snowdrop and every daffodil in town, literally melting the snow and ice away with the sheer force of its will, making a hole in the chill and bringing blossoms to a snowbank. I will have to take a little expedition to find some soon.

I found some crocus the other day, without even trying! Look at that lawn! It is colder this spring than it was last year at this time (blogging helps you keep track of these things) so it hardly feels like time to look for blossoms. I am still immobilized half the morning by the chill and donning sweaters with impunity. But, there they were, a light frosting of lilac over the grass...all the same. Pardon the poor photograph, such faithful small friends were begging to have their photo included even if it wasn't as clear as one might have hoped.

I do hope that it warms up soon...I could go for a good 60 degree day with beams of sunshine. I am sort of sick of toasting my mitts on mugs of tea although it still seems like the way to survive. I hope we get some pools of sunshine on the sunroom floor sometime soon, the kind a sleek kitty would curl up in for the rest of the afternoon. You know....that is, if we had a sleep kitty.

And the sap is running! One virtue to the chill weather. I am sure the tree-tapping crowd is glad that it is staying cool enough to keep the run going. And I do like my supply of local syrup to be deep so I even benefit directly in a fringe sort of way. We saw sap buckets on the trees at the farms we visited yesterday  when we went on a milk/egg run on our naptime drive. Small signs of progress. Nice to see those.

And then there are the plums. This isn't terribly local but it makes me happy. Every year, these pointed tipped plums come tumbling in from Chile. They come in fire colors, predominately yellow but hints of gold and crimson and hot orange, especially emanating from the tip.  They ripen beautifully on the counter-top and unlike most any stone-fruit this time of year, they actually gush juice when bitten into. I discovered them a couple of years ago and look forward to late winter every year when I know they'll appear again in a small basket at my local Whole Foods. This year I found out that they are called lemon plums. So lovely to know the names of things you love. I'll take every little gift I can to tide me over. Drip on, sweet plums, drip on...you gotta get me through till April! (Note to self: Must go get some more this weekend...we're running low for some strange reason!)

Related articles

• A warm welcome in a cold climate (telegraph.co.uk)
• John Switzer commentary: Ecological center gets all sappy this time of year (dispatch.com)
• A plant dissolves ice!! (xeniagreekmuslimah.wordpress.com)
• Little Blooms of Hope (adnelg.wordpress.com)