Blankets of straw

It is time to mulch the garlic with straw. I planted it late, mid-Novemebr almost, but I know it will be there come spring, and in July the scapes will rise from the ground again, first straining straight up, then relaxing a little into curls, coiling like garden hoses or snakes charmed out of their baskets by the sound of a flute.

The straw keeps the bulbs warm over the winter, as they lie seemingly dormant a few inches below the surface. In truth, they are very much alive, sleeping perhaps, but gathering strength for the work to be done in the new year.

In general, it seems a mistake to consider the winter months a time when nothing is happening in nature. Everything is happening. Spring leaves and flowers are only the final result of all the preparation that goes on under the snow. It feels appropriate that the Jewish New Year should begin in the fall, when the second cut hay is brought in, when the vegetables are ripe, and the maple trees stand like torches in the field, for it is not a time of endings, but a time of beginnings.

Beginnings need quiet, not too much commotion or business or colour. It takes concentration, a looking-inward, self-reflection, Growth is not easy. This is true for plants, and perhaps for humans too. What time of year are great thoughts or projects born? When do change the most, make new commitments, knit new dreams to bear fruit when the earth is warm again?

Comments

The Tree

Years since it bore an apricot. Many more since it bore many. Half the trunk rotted, fallen, gathered in the windrows by the field. On mossy branches raspberries grow, making rainbows. But every spring, around my mother's yahrzeit it remembers (as do I) and blossoms in the palest pinks fiercely, profusely, fragile. Nothing will come of it, as nothing comes of me, except forgetting, except small bits of me riding away on petals on the wind.

Something About Spring

There's something about spring.... Trees and shrubs madly competing to get all their leaves out first, big, fat, lush; grass turning too green, then being outdone by the too-yellow of a carpet of dandelion; tulips burning up the near-empty garden beds with hues of deep purple and barnfire reds. It's all somehow too much. And people, too, popping out of their sealed houses, shivering in thin shirts and sandals with grim determination, trying to ignore the hard spring breeze. In all that rushing towards new life, that frenzy seemingly shared by all living things, with the swallows repairing last year's nests, and the Canada Geese squatting in the middle of the hayfield, or even by the side of the road to get the new crop of children out ... in all that there is also denial, a forgetting of what fails to return, what has quietly ceased during autumn and winter: plants that went underground and have failed to rise again, animals whose last breath rode away on the stiff winds of

We're okay!!

We're okay, we say, we're well; zooming to see friends, it's great, we're smiling, waving, smiling. Smiling. And all around our elders trapped in airless rooms with only one way out: in body bags. Curbside the freezer trucks are waiting. Remember what it's like to hug, to kiss, to be so close we dreamt each other's dreams? Will we remember--if we live? And will the woods be green again this spring? Will God forgive us our sins?

E T T Y - Q U E T T E

Search This Blog