Hawk watch

Posted on by
Reply

Thursday was the day I started looking up at the treetops while walking, hoping to spot nesting Cooper’s Hawks.

We have them in the neighborhood, and we’ve had nests within a couple blocks of our house for the last two years. The right time to spot the nests is when they’re first being built, before the leaves grow in and obscure the view. By late spring, when the babes are born and starting to grow, it’s hard to see those nests through the foliage if you don’t already know where they are.

Thursday was warm and sunny, and I realized while out walking that this should be close to the time of the year when the nest-building begins. Perhaps a bit early, but better to start looking early than late. So upward went my eyes.

I haven’t yet spotted nesting hawks. But on Friday my search was rewarded with the discovery of a pair of nesting crows. I don’t think I’ve ever seen crows build a nest before, but there they were, two black tails wiggling together in a tree joint way up high, then one flying off southward and the other lifting off 10 seconds later headed east, both to return later to wiggle again side by side. Now that I know where to look, they’re easy to see.

As the March wind blows

I’m sitting on my front porch as I type, enjoying spring’s warmth and the bright, filtered sunlight of a partly cloudy day. The neighbor children are out, tossing baseballs and riding scooters, and winter seems truly banished even while the weather forecast threatens snow for tomorrow. The lilac has sprouted just the tiniest green buds, the forsythia seems from a distance to have done the same, and the tulips have shoved through the ground to soak up the light. Today is the day I’ll start seed pots indoors, filled with anticipation for the delicate seedlings to appear. Outdoors, I’ll leave the mulch of fall leaves untouched to protect everything that might be growing and sheltering beneath it.

I start my day grateful, for nature in all its glory and fury:

  • Sunlight
  • Warmth
  • Newly sprouted buds
  • Songbirds all around

The world around me is in chaos, and I’m worried about the state of my country and the future of our most vulnerable neighbors, our children and their children, not to even mention myself. That worry is ever-present these days, and I struggle to find a balance that lets me get through each day without ignoring what’s happening in the society around me. Looking to nature helps, but doesn’t make the worry go away. Nature and our actions are intertwined, and even as I carefully tend my own small place in the world I see the warning signs that show the damage we are doing on a much larger scale.

Frida, Frida, Frida!

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve finished reading Frida Kahlo’s diary, along with a marvelous book about her work, Frida Kahlo: Face to Face, by Judy Chicago with Frances Borzello. I might not yet be done sharing found poems from the diary with my neighbors, though. Here are the most recent two from the front porch. Maybe more to come.

The geese are calling

Posted on by
Reply

The cardinal is singing madly from on high, and the trees—at least some of them—are suddenly covered in tiny sprouting buds. The magnolia tree down the block has put forth blooms not yet (thank goodness) open, and the beautiful corner garden a block away has a full stand of blooming crocuses, the palest of lavenders striped with white.

In my garden, it’s the tiger lilies that have won the race to emerge first from their winter shelter, poking just enough green up from the soil to claim the sunlight for their breakfast. The robins have grown quite loud, nearly drowning out the cardinal by proximity.

And, oh, the geese.

When I sat down to my desk this morning, coffee in hand and the windows still closed against 40-degree temperatures, I heard them—a cacophony of honks and hollers that raised my eyes skyward. I couldn’t see them from my desk chair, my field of vision narrowed to the width and height of side-by-side window panes (and those occluded by dog slobber). But visual creature though I am, I didn’t need to see the geese. They were unmistakable, flying high above my house, calling of spring.

And so I found myself after work sitting on my porch with book in hand for the first time this season, waving to the dog walkers and watching last season’s spent hydrangeas quiver in the breeze. My seed packets arrived by mail two weeks ago and will go into peat pots indoors as soon as I buy bleach to clean the starter trays. Then I’ll put them in a sunny window, keep them moist, and check them daily, eagerly, awaiting their precious sprouts.

It might be winter again tomorrow, or next weekend. Almost certainly it will snow again before summer arrives. But today it’s spring. And that is enough.

Gratitude is easier some days than others

Today is one of the easy days, when I’m grateful for many things. Including these:

  • Sunshine
  • Spring warmth
  • Geese high overhead, chattering

More Frida

Posted on by
Reply

I’m still reading Frida’s diary and still finding in it gems and inspiration. The result: There’s a found poem series progressing on the front porch now, word images from the diary replacing one another, walking a tentative path forward toward whatever comes next. Here are the latest two. More are likely to come as I continue to savor this beautiful book.

I write this while waiting for my morning coffee to brew before heading to my desk for a day of work. Today I’m grateful for:

  • Coffee
  • The quiet of morning
  • Warmer weather, even though it means muddy paws
  • Frida’s diary
  • Sunshine!

Creative catch-up Saturday

Posted on by
Reply

My work week was a busy one, and I got behind in some places, including here. But I did manage to post a little bit of poetry to the front stoop. As a result, today we have a double edition of #frontstooppoetry.

Perhaps because the week was so busy, and perhaps because this country feels so fully dystopian, this rather free-form question spilled out of me on Wednesday. (It got dated Wednesday-Thursday on the chalkboard because it was late at night and I (rightly, as it happens) anticipated I wouldn’t get a chance to replace it the following day.)

Time seems these days to have folded itself; somehow the world seems to be moving simultaneously at hyperspeed and in slow motion. A single day seems to speed by in an unending barrage of extremist news from Washington, yet the long-term passage of time seems excruciatingly slow. How long will it take the coming years to go by?

Add in the fact that the Trump administration is trying to return us to the 1950s or earlier, and my sense of time has turned inside out.

Today, though, I found inspiration in the book I’m currently reading, The Diary of Frida Kahlo.

Frida started keeping a journal sometime in her 40s, sadly near the end of her life, and it’s both written and visual. Filled with casual drawings—almost doodles, really—it’s gorgeous to look at. And the writing is beautiful as well, quite free-form, almost stream of consciousness. It’s more a journal of her thoughts than a chronicle of what was happening in her life. Written in Spanish, the book includes an English translation with notes, so I go back and forth between the full-page color originals and the translation/notes.

This book is beautiful in every way, and I’ve ordered my own copy so I can have it nearby after returning this copy to my library. Meanwhile, I’ve written out several passages as found poems, and that’s what made it to the chalkboard today.

Postcarding

One of the friends I correspond with regularly via postcard wrote to me recently that she’s finding it hard to create art during the Trump Administration. Me, too, my friend—I hear you. Today, though, I found myself able to make postcards for the first time in weeks (possibly thanks to Frida’s diary?). For whatever reason, it was a much-needed catharsis. And I’m ready to share the love. I’m hoping to use these to prompt myself to write to more than the couple of friends I regularly trade cards with. Those friends will get the first, of course, but there are plenty to go to others as well. Here’s a sampling.

What I’m grateful for today

  • Frida Kahlo
  • A burst of creativity
  • Libraries and bookstores

Coping with the cold

Posted on by
Reply

It might be in the single-digits outside, but I know Spring is coming. I know this because I have my seed catalogues. I’m putting the finishing touches on this year’s order; the seeds are chosen, but I have to determine what other seed-starting supplies I need. Within the month, I should be waiting for seeds to sprout.

Short of flying to a desert spa, it’s the surest way to get through February.

This year’s order will be mostly vegetables, with just enough flowers to fill the planters on my deck and patio. Even those planters will hold a lot of veggies this year; I’m thinking of some beautiful mixtures of chard and kale and other edible greens, possibly with (edible) nasturtiums.