Frost-Flowers and Spring

Posted on by

Monday Morning Musings:

Frost Reflections

Crystalline, they catch
and scatter light, frost-flowers
on reflected branches, the real
and perceived now conjoined
in stark evanescent beauty

as over-wintered sun
returns, we rejoice to walk
in not-yet-warm, but warmer
light. A tangerine sky,
fades, lemonade gleams from blue sky.

Tall Pines State Preserve

Tall Pines State Preserve

enough to banish
February gloom—too soon–
the white fox clouds and moonless sky,
and so, winter resumes
her sharp blanket laid on the ground—

Still February–Another snowfall

but still, the birdcalls
begin, no morning choir
summoning the sun, yet bits
of song, the wrens duet
amid jay squawks and crow chatter

high on budding trees,
green tendrils emerge to test
and taste the air, not yet, but
soon, I hear them whisper,
the doves not mourning, woo–love comes

through an unlocked gate.

Garden Gate, or Magic Portal?

We had some warm almost-spring days this past week. On Saturday, we took a walk in Tall Pines State Preserve without having to bundle up in winter coats. Then yesterday it snowed, and today it was only 18 F when I woke up. So much for spring. But the days are getting longer, and trees are starting to bud, and the spring bulbs are starting to shoot up their first leaves, at least in the parts of the ground that get a lot of light.

February is birthday month here, both my now grown children had birthdays last week; my mother-in-law and my husband’s birthday are this week. I may have and will do some baking. Today is also Valentine’s Day. When our kids were young, we used to have Valentine-Birthday parties, where they made Valentine cards and crafts.

Merril’s Movie Club: We watched Definition Please (Netflix), an enjoyable movie about a former spelling bee champion and her relationship with her brother and family. It deals with some mental health issues. Not a wow movie, but good, with a strong, touching performance by Sunjata Day, who also wrote, directed, and produced the movie. We also watched Flee (rental from Amazon Prime, also on Hulu, and in theaters). I’m not normally a fan of animated films, but this was excellent. It’s mostly animated, but with some film clips, too—it’s a documentary, a memoir of a man who fled Afghanistan as a young teen, and who is pursuing a career in Denmark. He gradually reveals some painful secrets about his life to the friend who his interviewing him. Highly recommend this one; I really would like to watch it again.

We also started watching Inventing Anna (Netflix), which I’m enjoying so far. I’ve liked Julia Garner in everything I’ve seen her in, though she looks and sounds different here. This Shonda Rhymes show is based on the true story of Anna Delvy, aka Anna Sorokin.

I just remembered this photo of Ricky as a Valentine Kitten.

42 thoughts on “Frost-Flowers and Spring”

  7. “but still, the birdcalls
    begin, no morning choir
    summoning the sun, yet bits
    of song, the wrens duet
    amid jay squawks and crow chatter” — this is the music I hear on my morning walks, but only at certain parts of our neighborhood. We used to have a large variety of birds coming to our yard, but not so much in the last several years. I’m thinking it’s because the trees on our tiny property have grown so tall and thick, and the birds seem to prefer a more open area; trees, yes, but not so many 😉 We’re going to have quite a few cut down next month. They are too tall and spindly and would likely break in a hurricane. One came down during Hurricane Hermine. We don’t want to go through that again 😉
    Such lovely photos and thoughts, Merril. And what fun to have so many celebrations close together and in February, the most dismal month of the year (in my humble opinion).

    • Thank you so much, Marie. We have lots of birds around, as you’ve seen, but the pre-dawn choir hasn’t started up yet. I don’t think it will till it’s really spring.
      It’s sad about the trees, but I understand. We had one that was dying, and we had to have it cut down. It was a very tall old red oak–but thankfully, the really big oak in the center of our yard seems OK.

      • We do feel weird about having the trees removed, but Greg reminds me that they were planted by the developers. The area we live in used to be a cow pasture. Greg tagged 15 trees in total. But they are all crowded on one side of our house. They weren’t that big when we moved here 30 years ago … lol. In hindsight, we should have been more proactive in keeping the trees thinned out. Oh, well. Greg wants to plant fruit trees in that area. That should be fun.

      • One of my yoga instructors manages a fruit tree nursery with her family. I asked her what fruit trees would grow fast and need little maintenance. She listed so many variety of citrus trees I wish I had taken notes 😆

  8. These are the lines that made me happy today, in particular “the real and perceived”:

    “Crystalline, they catch
    and scatter light, frost-flowers
    on reflected branches, the real
    and perceived now conjoined
    in stark evanescent beauty.”

  10. Lovely light, such crystalline colors, that is exactly the right word. The birds have woken up here too. We didn’t see it, but there was a very loud hermit thrush near where my daughters and I were sitting on Saturday. A search on Google identified it for us. And the robins are back. (K)

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.