Spring Lessons – May 2024
Nicky and I enjoyed a lovely three-night weekend escape trip to the farm, Friday to Monday (5/17-20). This was our second trip with the annual “Go Wild” passes we have with Frontier Airlines. The airfare is only $15 for each leg, per person. The catch is that you can only buy a ticket within 48 hours of departure, and there is no guaranteed availability, as it is essentially a space-available program. If you have flexibility and a willingness to adapt to the the rules AND you're based at a Frontier hub like Denver, it can be a lot of fun. We’ve used it twice now, and we’re really enjoying it.
On the farm I heard a Chuck-will-widow (a bird; a close relative of the whippoorwill) in the early morning hours on Sunday, its distinctive namesake call identified by the Merlin app on my phone. We’ve also heard red-bellied woodpeckers, and the usual array of tufted titmice (titmouses?), Carolina wrens, house finches, cardinals, and blue jays. The ospreys in the area have been very active this month, and I saw bald eagles on two of the three days. Still, I think the number of species present has declined dramatically over the last 50 years.
I found an old iron door hinge in the woods to the east of the orchard; at least 100 years old and quite possibly more, looking very similar to some of the original 220-year old ironwork. It was in a very rarely traveled, inaccessible part of the farm, near some ground that clearly had been disturbed by a groundhog (so perhaps it assisted in the unearthing). The farm continues to reveal its treasures.
In the mornings almost every day for the past 2 years, I have gone outdoors to stretch, in all weather, usually in just a pair of shorts, to get early morning sun on my skin and to keep up my flexibility and balance. It certainly helps. I usually ask Siri to set a timer for 12 or 13 minutes, but if the temperature is less than 20 degrees, I might halve that. I even went out at -10 degrees last winter. This weekend at the farm, the low was about 58, with at least 60% humidity. Easy. I increased the difficulty by doing a couple of sessions on the floating dock, its motion making balancing more challenging. A pair of swallows are nesting underneath it but they didn’t seem to mind my movements (though they DID comment on them…judgmental little bastards!). I was grateful for how they took the energy of my exhaled breath and made it dart out into the world and swirl in acrobatic dances above the water.
Lawn update. After being torn up by heavy machinery last August and September, it’s been a long project getting the lawn restored. Last fall saw a lot of raking and smoothing ruts. Then the weather got very dry and the bare ground got very hard. In February Nicky and I amended the soil (remember our “dirty movie”?), aerated and prepped. In March I added starter fertilizer and planted seed, covering it with straw that I brought down in 15 wheelbarrow loads from the hayloft in the barn. (That wouldn’t have been quite so effortful if I’d had the tractor, but it’s been in the shop since late September getting its engine rebuilt. Slowly, but surely.) I had set up some sprinklers and my sister Carol and her husband Kerry have kept it watered. It’s filled in pretty nicely, but the weeds have enjoyed the conditions, too. This trip I dug and pulled out the worst of the weeds, and added some gentle fertilizer to keep it going. I’m glad our summer visitors will be able to enjoy it.
Frustration. I was thinking about it while working to clear the tallest weeds and briars on the steep bank below the house. Frustration is, in essence, non-acceptance. The world somehow SHOULD be some other way (that I have determined or intended), and it’s just not. The world is the way it IS. It took 13.7 billion years for these conditions to come together just as they are. To defeat frustration, look more clearly, more deeply at what IS, ideally with an open attitude of intentional acceptance. A sense of humor helps. Laugh at the sawbriar latching onto your jeans, from ankle to waist. And listen: the kingfisher rattles his encouragement.
The gentlest lesson. I found an adult brown thrasher, dead just in the last day, underneath the fig trees to the east of the old front steps. It’s a peaceful spot, in the shade of the unfolding trefoil leaves, this morning with only the gentle lapping sounds of the lake’s edge just below. I sit on the ground nearby, removing some of last year’s woody growth from the figs and pulling up the grass, stick weeds, and wild strawberries. You might have been after the small, deep-red berries, not yet sweet, when your time came. A dart of shadows moves across the lawn, and I look up to see a flock of a dozen cormorants making their way up the lake. The bare soil feels alive, even through my thin gloves. Be not afraid. In a few moments, we will go our separate ways, your body gently to the wilderness below the old road, me on to the next fig tree. In a couple of months, more leaves will unfurl, the shadows will deepen. The figs will ripen, their rich sweetness both remembered and anticipated. Then this year’s green stems will become hard and woody. We’ll sit, or lie down, in this shade again.
– in flight, TYS-DEN, 5/20/24
