Lenten Sunshine

 Spending so many days indoors lately. Between windchill, cold temps, deep snow and mama laziness about dressing four kids up and down in all the required layers...we've just done a lot of holing up. The boys are starting to go a little crazy. Now that we are officially 29 days from Spring, I have managed to finally get each boy a set of real winter boots and an actual winter coat that actually zips. (How did my parents do it?!?!?! They had six!!!) We are finally equipped and the weather is starting to lift a little.

 The icicles are melting in the peak of the afternoon, the sky is aching blue and the sun is beaming down a lot lately. We have been braving cold and just going out and playing in the sun and snow until our hands ache. Its such a tonic just to be in the sunshine. Light matters.

 I was so excited last year when I bought a Seasonal Affective Disorder light to use on darker days. Hah. The boys stepped on it this year, round about November. I haven't been able to justify getting another so I've just been making it through relying on other boosters (liver, magnesium, coffee, hydration, visiting with friends, extra hugs...) to carry me through.

Today is Ash Wednesday and didn't make it out to get blessed or ashed which is a tiny bit sad. I also didn't run in a mad panic around freaking out about making it to church on time. There is enough space for everything in my life. I can do church and blessing and even ashing (heresy!!!) in the privacy and quiet of my own home sometimes and have a more holy interlude for the day I'm living today. I keep reminding myself that Lent is a season for letting go. I have a lot of that to do. Burying and symbolically burning and mourning the things that need to stop. This year I am fasting from close parking spaces, and leaving my dirty dishes heaped in the sink. I am going to try to write a few extra letters to those I love and drink more water and take time every day to do a little sacred devotional meditation from this cool website I just found called 3 Minute Retreat. Such a manageable, approachable, bite sized amount of devotion. I can do that.

Soak up all the sunshine where you are and think of us here, sending us the extra rays for our dark days yet ahead. Spring is still coming....

The Grey Part of Spring

Our speckled orchid, blooming in the sunroom window.

I was talking on the phone the other day to Mama (Big Grandma in the sidebar to your right) and she mentioned hoping that their recent trip to South Carolina to visit my sister, Lockbox (see the sidebar again for her) wouldn't sour them on the dregs of winter that they had to go back home to in Northern Michigan. Now that I am so newly returned from parts further south myself I have to admit to being pretty hungry for the vibrant colors of warmer weather too. I understand, Mama, even if I didn't head home to two feet of snow and maple syrup season.

Our fig tree, making a baby fig.

There isn't a flake of snow anywhere on our third of an acre but spring is still dragging out very slowly. We're living in those long cold days that hang heavily and greyly over everything...a dim, dirty light is all we seem to get for days on end and my photographer's eye is just hungry for some clean bright light, some warmth, some vibrant living thing.

My birthday plant, a little Meyer lemon, blooming (smells amazing!)

Yesterday I went out in the yard to check on the hyacinths (leftovers from the kind previous owner) and we found them up but producing only straggling buds mostly in white and pale pink. Monday is never a good day, I am prone to rash and irrational thought patterns. I gave up on the garden, and spring, and all plant life. And then A and I promptly had an argument. Overtired much?

Darned if the coffee plant isn't looking like its making flower buds again. See em?

Today, a night of sleep under my belt, marriage re-assembled and a little bit of light slurping through the morning blanket of grey I decided to take stock of the garden again and get re-inspired. One does not give up on the garden in the spring. It is just not done.

A single, tiny blue squill blooming in our backyard...one of my favorite spring flowers.

I was surprised what I found in the yard after a little investigation. There's a surprising amount of life and color starting to show. And folks, I have to tell you that it really looks like we're going to get great blooms on our inherited lilac! I am super excited.

Big fat, lilac buds.

All enthused, I decided to play hooky from my painting group and headed out to scope some local garden centers instead.

Lenten rose, blooming at the nursery.

Endless flats of pansies.

I can never resist the purpley pinky ones. They're my favorites.

There is something so boosting about garden centers, greenhouses, public horticultural centers and those tall, spinning racks of seeds in the hardware store....even if all of them tend to make me spend more money than I like to admit. Spending money on living things somehow seems less evil than many of the spendthrift possibilities.

My new watering can.

I found the perfect watering can (which I've been looking for for a good while), bought some pansies, and loaded up on crabgrass pre-emergent for our lawn. And bought, um....only a few dozen packets of seeds.

A straggling, but alive lemon yellow primrose.

Tiny purple veined violets which are blooming in our lawn!

I think I'm gonna make it. And until the real sunshine shows up, I'm drawing forsythia...sunshine on paper for foreshadowing.

Related articles

• A morning communion (mentalflowers.wordpress.com)
• Spring Rites (bethtrissel.wordpress.com)
• Hope (kristinvonkreisler.wordpress.com)
• can a Johnny's seed catalog cure depression? (1veggieatatime.wordpress.com)

Winter Light Show

Overlooked winter fact: Cold weather sunsets are stunning! (especially from the inside of a toasty car)

One of the items on my long To Do Before Dying list is "watch the sunset every single night for a whole year." I still haven't done it although sometime here it's going to show up on my resolution list. That said, lately, I'm running a little accidental warm-up routine thanks to one-car-family-life.

I think of sunsets as being summer happenings. That's kind of silly in some ways, we do have a sun even when there is snow on the ground after all! On the other hand, I think I've never really consciously watched for the sunset in winter. Here's why:  since  the old adage "red sky at night, sailor's delight" means that a vivid crimson streaked sunset means a hot, sunny day to follow I assumed conversely, in winter (since we don't get hot, sunny weather) every evening would be met with a tepid, pale end as the sun sank lustrously below the horizon. This, my dear readers, is how old wives tales are formed. Heh.

I couldn't have been more off. Because I'm at least twice a week (three times this week!) driving A to and from work, at this particular time of year we are rolling our way down the highway to fetch him at exactly the same time the sun is setting up for a glorious show. I was right on one small detail, there's little to no red in the evening sky at the moment...that said, who needs the red when you have January's luminous gold with blue and purple puffs of cloud as garnish! I am truly struck and have taken to bringing the camera with me to capture the glow. I can see a sunset painting in my future. I keep taking these photos...more and more views of this glowing winter sky that I would have missed altogether if we were living luxuriously with two cars. Small gifts, people, small gifts.

If you find yourself outdoors lately, around sunset...don't assume it's bland just because the weather is chill...go take a gander at the winter gold and think of me out there, snapping away happily on my way down 95.

Meltdown Music

Yeah, *cough* so, it was just yesterday that I was beaming generously out to the world my recipe for chocolate cake and telling everyone that I was whizzing along so well....heh.

But isn't that the way it works? Cloudbursts yesterday, meltdown today despite the golden morning sunshine. Well, now I've had the meltdown out of the way so lets hope I'm just on my way to normal again and have the bumps out of my system...I know its just part of rolling with the punches and really, really getting the engine humming.

Today, a video link of a new group I've discovered recently thanks to the wonderful magpie skills of my friend Alison. Please enjoy this extremely fabulous German band who do a wonderful collective peppy Elvis impression. I can't stop toe tapping when I play this song. I'm dedicating this to my patient husband who listened to me rave and cry all the way to his work this morning and then hugged and kissed me extra as he got out instead of cold shouldering me for even a minute. You're a gem dear, and you can stand under my umbrella anytime.




XOXOXOXO