Timelessness

There is something timeless about a stormy afternoon.

Even though the wind has everything in motion. Leaves let go and scuttle across pavement. Newly uncloaked locust branches, dipped in wet ink, sign repeating messages against the screen of gray sky. Chimes in the snowball bush outside your studio diminuendo then clang again on the same four notes.

Here, at the desk which was still in your father’s office three years ago, the light from the window doesn’t change.

There is something delicious about the timelessness of a stormy afternoon. You eat a bit too much of it and grow dreamy. The chords of ambition you had yesterday, when the peak was covered in snow, when the sun came and went and the air remained mild, when the washer filled and emptied onto the line, when the last of the black beans were harvested, when the garlic harvested in July was tucked in neat rows following the beans and covered with old pine needles, when the fresh sheets went back on the bed, when the onions simmered into the first robust soup, when the house was tidied, when candles were lit and the table set for company, those chords have become a hypnotic drone in which countless melodies reside.

Choose one of those melodies and let it lead you into remembering how much you love looking up words in a heavy, printed dictionary. Drop into the relaxed rhythm of your breathing, the sense that you are napping while fully awake, the sense of fullness in your belly where awareness dwells and phrases form and echo out like slow strikes on a steeple-full of well-cast bells.

You feel warm and steamy as if fresh from your bath and the Lawrence Welk show is floating bubbles up the screen. You feel dark and purposeful like the garlic.

On the aqua vinyl cushions on the furniture on the front porch, hundreds (oh, yes, hundreds) of spring bulbs are sorted according to type and destination. Harvested from the soil near where the bones of your great grandparents rest and destined to naturalize on the last rise of prairie below the Rockies, they are stalwart and ready. When the storm passes, work resumes.

For now, the industry of timelessness is warranted.

What a Ride

Tuesday’s stom was so fierce, even the dandelions, snug to the ground, were blackened.

Roaring winds. Single digit lows. A mere spattering of snow. Tulipa kaufmanniana ‘The First’, filled with bees on Monday, could not bow down far enough.

Tight-fisted buds on the Carol Mackie daphne, crisped. Hyacinths blasted.

The front door tulips? Not likely this year.

Then, yesterday, new signs. Rhubarb keeps on trying.

Narcissus ‘Itzim’ and chionodoxia bloom together.

And this morning, before sunrise, rain. Enough to leave puddles.

Enough to leave a sip in the birdbath.

I couldn’t wait to go out and smell the air. I threw on a hoodie over my pj’s and dug into the earth with bare fingers just to make sure it was real. Even in the driest part of the parking median, the earth was perfectly moist.

Birds are rioting.

The mourning doves have returned.

The front door tulips have been kissed. All is forgiven.

Recess in the Gardenhood

Wednesday evening this week, Rose and Diane, who work with me in Green Way’s gardens, agreed to let me cook for them.

We needed to talk about the coming season, how drought will effect our work load. Passionate gardeners often find ourselves with many other things in common. Our conversation ranged over several countrysides. And while we laughed, exclaimed, solved the world’s problems, and, yes, ate, it snowed.

It snowed a real snow. Moisture laden. Four inches in the three hours. They left in a quiet sifting of heavy flakes and a celebratory mood.

The official total out at the airport was 7.3 inches. The patio table on the flat corner lot captured five.

Makoto Moore, meteorologist with the national weather service in Pueblo, CO, says “We’re still knee deep in drought.” But snow on the ground lasting for several days and the clean fragrance of fallen clouds raises spirits and has everyone hoping for more.

Up in the mountains as much as 17.5 inches of powder accumulated. Good news for the river basins.

Did you know that no rivers flow into Colorado? Here, instead, are the headwaters of the Platte, the Arkansas, the Colorado, the Rio Grande, and more.

Snowpack remains at 75% of normal statewide, but with March and April typically the snowiest months, fingers are crossed that February’s treasure will kickstart a productive spring. You can almost hear as folks around the state take turns holding their breath.

Another big storm heads our way tonight. Cell phones have buzzed: blizzard warnings are posted.

Today, however, I declared a recess in the gardenhood. The sun polished the sky into a porcelain blue. Wednesday’s snow shrank and liquified, singing its way down gutters and storm grates. I strolled on down to Shooks Run just to hear the liquid music. Upstream, inside the fence of the municiple golf course, ancient western willow raised their broad and glorious heads, bright February gold twigs against high, icy bands of clouds.

Back in the office, a message from my cousin Ginny alerted me to the March issue of National Geographic. There is an article on fracking in North Dakota. It attempts to give a balanced socio-economic look at the changes fracking is making in the state. The photos by Eugene Richards convey the story beautifully. However, a quick reading yielded no information on troubles ranchers are having with their livestock. There is always more to the story.

Alright, back to recess!

Tracking the gardener.

Returning

From the center of a clutch of undead and pirates standing with open sacks on my front porch, she chimes, “I’m a princess.”

She takes two fun-sized sweets from the basket. “I see! What is the name of your country, Princess?”

She buckles her brow while the others dip into the stash. “I’m dressed UP as a princess,” she says, unbuckling.

“Oh, I understand. I’m dressed up as a grown-up.”

She buckles up again before turning with the others, chorusing thank you down the walk.

Thus begins the fourth year in the gardenhood.

I could have stayed longer in Switzerland. My welcome was robust, and I was so at home. And yet, when I made my travel plans last summer, I wanted to be back by Hallowe’en. I’m happy feeding the goblins.

Last year, the porch was dark. I took the bag of treats to my dad’s house. My brother answered the door. I’d spent half the day planting tulips, narcissi, crocus, and lilies in a new garden.

A crew of painters worked on the trim of the portales framing two sides of the garden. One of the young men listened to his i-phone, the 1930’s sound track to The Wizard of Oz. “If pretty little bluebirds fly…” Uncanny. I remembered Dad telling me what a crush he had on Judy Garland. Dad was big on beautiful girls.  A storm was blowing in.

The year before that, I had to put a gate across the studio door. Willie the terrorizer was definitely against the idea of ghouls and begging bunnies at the front door. This year, the flat corner lot is spooked by Edward the Handsome, a pure white cat, his sea-green eyes pale in twilight. I don’t remember if Ed hid from the begging mobs at Dad’s door last year. Last night, however, he curled and closed his eyes on the futon.

To say Ed is happy I’ve returned from Switzerland wouldn’t be a stretch. He’s spent the last two nights curled up against me in bed and breathes easy now in my lap, head bowed, ears still, answering my slight movements with tiny grasps of his huge, polydachtyl paws.

While I prepared to depart home for home, Sandy blew up the East coast. Friends on both sides of the pond worried about my flights. There was little room in me for angst as I filled my senses with final views of the Swiss village I love. Still, in thoughts that crackled like static, I wondered how new blogging friends, Kevin and Donna, were faring. Last I heard, long-ago sweetheart, Les, was living and golfing on Long Island. High school theatre comrades, Erik and Susie, pursued their dreams in NYC. Was everyone safe? How oddly grounding to have my thoughts returning to these people never-seen or last seen forty years ago as the hours droned by and the plane chased the sun to Chicago.

I’m just about 40 hours back in the gardenhood. Leaves cover lawn and beds, collect in small drifts by the chain-link fence, a perfect haunted look for celebrating the supernatural.

I’ve dragged the hose all around, run the duster over the creaking floor gathering up Ed’s generous offerings of kitty down, unpacked my suitcase, and sorted all the contents. I’ve answered all the emails, generated a few more, filled out my mail-in ballot, and paid my bills. With business taken care of and vampires plied with candy, some not-yet-returned part of my consciousness believed I would wake up this morning under Mucca and Maria’s roof. Like Griffin in Men in Black III, parallel universes converge and separate behind my eyes.

The not yet returned part of me expected to wake up here this morning.

The gardenhood waits for my integrated footsteps.

While part of me still walks here, behind Maria and little Anna-Lu, having just bought 6 loaves of fresh bread from a farm an hour’s walk through woods and pastures.

Admiring Mari-Ursla’s work.

Mumala and Anna-Lu under the fig tree in the last of summer’s sun.

Mo sccots to join them.

Stones garnered from wet places, the colors of fog and glaciers.

In the gardenhood, dry-place stones.

Nebbelmeer, a sea of fog, closed the sky over the valleys, but left the mountains in glory.

Rain.

…turned to snow.

The village disappeared from the rest of the world.

Barely visible beyond the gardenhood, the foothill neighborhood of last summer’s fire.

The newly homeless from Sandy’s wake, like those from the Waldo Canyon fire, sleep in so many hotels, spare bedrooms, and livingroom floors, certain cells of their being wondering where they will awaken. Where does a dream end and life begin?

By grace, no trauma has tossed me home from home. I’m returning by dreamy, gentle stages to the gardenhood. Yes, and though my costume is downy from a lap-full of cat, I’m still dressed up as a grown-up.