The Lenten Rose

 

 

Here is the great pile of snow that the Bobcat rolled out of our driveway, and along

the fence line to create a little parking spot.

 

 

In some spots along the street the road is practically a one lane road, although the last few days of warmer  weather have taken all the ruts away and we are now driving on pavement – mostly.

 

Not that there has been any sunshine!!!  It is possible to follow the sun as it traverses the top of K Mountain, but only as a faint glow behind the lowering clouds.

 

I looked at all this snow stacked like large dirty white haystacks at each intersection in town, and thought glumly about when we would ever see a bulb or blossom with two feet of the blessed stuff covering all the garden.

 

Then I thought about the Hellebores, – those lovely Lenten roses that only have a few days to make it to Lent, which is early this year, according to the moon.

 

It was a warm afternoon.  I will go out!!!!

 

I walked to the mailbox in my boots, slushing through the snow at the sides of the road. 

 

When I came back I found a small shovel, and after I had put feed out for the birds I started to remove the snow carefully where I knew the Hellebores were tucked in under their white coverlet.

 

Here is what I found!!!

 

 

How brave and beautiful as they did what they had to do in the season they were called upon to do it

 

I cannot begin to tell you what a wonderful feeling of hope and well-being they gave me.  I have been waiting with such longing for spring and the garden to distract me from my other yearnings

 

Inside, some of the bathtub forsythia has made it to the centre of the table – a lovely cheering accompaniment to dinner-for-one

 

 

along with three delicious books of poetry that arrived in the mail.

 

Mary Oliver’s ‘What do we Know’ and ‘Owls and other Fantasies’ as well as the selected poems of Wendell Berry.

 

From Mary Oliver….bless her for the beauty and the wisdom and the joy and comfort she imparts…..

 

Here are her thoughts on springtime and the woodpeckers

 

All day the flicker

has anticipated

the lust of the season, by

shouting.  He scouts up

tree after tree and at

a certain place begins

to cry out.  My, in his

black-freckled vest, bay body with

red trim and sudden chrome

underwings, he is

dapper.  Of course somebody

listening nearby

hears him; she answers

with a sound like hysterical

laughter and rushes out into

the field where he is poised

on an old phone pole, his head

swinging, his wings

opening and shutting in a kind of

butterfly stroke.  She can't

resist; they touch; they flutter.

How lightly, altogether, they accept

the great task, of carrying life

forward! ............