Every day walkers march past our house. They pass every ten minutes or so in the early morning, then dwindle. When summer brings 80+ degrees by mid-morning, accompanied with 80% relative humidity, “only mad dogs and Englishmen” will attempt a walk. Some walk to exercise dogs which have seemingly conducted a PR campaign to make sure every house has at least one. Some walk because they like it. (You can tell: they appear to be in good physical shape, they walk on a regular schedule, they seem to enjoy it.) Others walk because someone told them to–perhaps a doctor, a spouse, their conscience, a good friend, or one of the ubiquitous self-help gurus on the internet. We suspect one elderly gentleman walks three times each day to regulate his blood sugar. My father-in-law did that for many years, and managed in that endeavor to postpone insulin shots for more than a decade.
For several weeks I’ve joined them on this circuit, up and down this short stretch of street, oddly reminiscent of a treadmill laid out in a short course of concrete. I’ve learned by leaning into this as a practice (as opposed to “an exercise program”). Sometimes, I walk more slowly, listening to my muscles, my fortitude, walking within the boundaries of what is possible. Sometimes I push my pace exuberantly, reveling in my ability at 70 to suck oxygen into my lungs quickly enough to maintain this rapid pace, thrilled that EXERCISE can still be a part of one’s life.
Today I melded the two, yielding to an inner desire to go slower, not for physical reasons but to focus on the incremental occurrences which blow by me normally. Today….
I noticed how rapidly tulip poplars have dropped their blossoms. Apparently a quick flowering gets consummated as rapidly. Their flowers no longer being necessary….
Tulip Poplar flowers. Raleigh, NC. April 2025.
It’s trash day and with it, yard waste pickup day. Reflecting the beginning of the spring/summer interface, we see sights such as these…
Overfull yard waste containers. Raleigh, NC. April 2025.
Circling at the block’s end, I encounter my across-the-street neighbor’s sidewalk. Older than me, quite likely in his 80’s, he maintains his large corner lot minimally. Those of us who pass make our own paths through the accumulation of leaves he does not clear:
Spring in Raleigh, NC. April 2025.
Many sights beckon, but one cannot stop every few feet to snap photos. (Not if one desires to arrive home and brew tea before one’s spouse arrives at the kitchen.) At the “modern” end of the three-block length of our street, where a developer with more cachet than aesthetics decided “hey, a boulevard would be nice,” said boulevard is filled with ornamental trees which have no right to be here. This is a Chinese snowball tree, on the backside of its blooming peak:
Chinese snowball tree. Raleigh, NC. April 2025.
One of the delights of continuously walking a circuit lies in encountering familiar sights suddenly made new. How does one walk past a plant daily without focusing on what it is? Suddenly it blooms, saying, “Take notice! Look at me!” I did not use my plant identification software on this, and I don’t know what it is. It looks rose-like, but obviously it isn’t. A mystery to be solved for another day:
A plant. A beautiful plant. Another day. Raleigh, NC. April 2025.
And one notices the fire ants have established many beachheads in the sidewalk crevices.
Fire ant colony. Raleigh, NC. April 2025.
Finally, arriving at the start point, one marvels at the stark contrast of a natural environment composed of native plants that have flowered vociferously in the past weeks.
Our front yard, six months after its installation. Raleigh, NC. April 2025.Mock vervain (I think) on the left, Robin’s plantain on the right (a cultivar of fleabane). Raleigh, NC. April 2025.
Watching a specific environment over time delivers meaning which a one-time walk through a park does not. The tide and ebb of the seasons, the minor changes in foliage, the calls of the birds as they cycle through a mating season, the feel of the air as less humid air gives way to summer–all of this imprints the incremental passage of time on one’s psyche.
Typically, or typical for the previous few years, our star magnolia blossoms sometime between the first week of February and around Valentine’s Day. Yesterday (February 27th), I looked out as I opened the blinds and saw many swollen, fuzzy buds, but no blossoms. Just after 10:30 I looked again and saw several had said, “Sun! Hooray!” and opened up to greet it. Spring, as defined by me, starts when some of the days peak at 60-70 degrees (or higher here in North Carolina) with the additional stipulation of the early bloomers: daffodils, magnolias, the camellia, and a few others. This occurs in the first half of February usually, although cold and sometimes snow have occurred too in those weeks. Put a gun to my head and I would admit we can’t count on these blossoms until about the end of February. Our winters have been warm for a handful of years. A return to a more normal range of temperatures in February (complete with a windy, cold snow-and-ice storm on the 19th) perhaps signals a return to normalcy.
Among my pantheon of pet peeves I count the astronomical definition of the seasons. People look around on March 21st–or 22nd, because They Say So–expecting some radical change. You can almost hear the globe laughing. Let’s leave astronomy to matters of astrophysics: rotations, revolutions, light years, and such. Let’s leave Spring to what our eyes see, our noses smell, our ears hear, and what our skin feels as it collides with our sun’s radiant energy and the increased load of humidity it can carry. Here in central North Carolina, it’s definitely the beginning of Spring. For over two weeks I’ve posted photos of such, and this past week left no room for doubters:
The star magnolia has hit full bloom…
Star magnolia. February 29, 2024.
The camellia has busted out its peppermint blossoms, and in its exuberance, an aberrant deep pink one:
Normal camellia blossom. February 2024.Abnormal camellia blossom. February 2024.
…and daffodils (or relatives thereof) are blooming everywhere:
Ready for their close-up: daffodils. Leap Day 2024.
A screeching blush of robins stopped by a week ago, but I had no time to properly photograph them. Just arrived from further south to torment those who stuck it out? Or just a gathering to kick off the aggressive mating season? One of them has been attacking his own reflection on my side storm door for ten days now. The bird feeder needs filling about five times more than usual. Yes, it’s good. Soon I’ll note that first sheen of green as I look through the tops of the until-now bare trees, a sheen foreshadowing the imminent burst of leaves as we launch into the heightened glory of full Spring.
Imagine I’m drinking this–because I am. February 2024.
American football has ended its seeming stranglehold on the domestic sports scene. A surprisingly close game last night between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs kept me up to the end. That’s pretty unusual. I quit watching football decades ago. My interest diminished with the demise of an old version of the Seattle Seahawks, the one with Jim Zorn and Steve Largent. Or perhaps it diminished with my renewed interest in baseball. Whatever.
For a baseball fan, football feels about as welcome as your ex showing up at your next wedding. Baseball has just introduced itself at the beginning of April when the National Football League holds it’s draft. When the season gets going and the annual draft of new baseball talent occurs in early June, the NFL starts rattling its sabers about pre-camp workouts. Baseball gets some clarity as good teams rise to the top, bad teams falter, and the 2024 trade deadline approaches–and the NFL opens its training camps! All of these boorish events pale to this: baseball heads into its final month to determine the postseason, a five-week celebration of near-daily baseball games ending in the World Championship, and the NFL opens its season. In a pragmatic but depressing capitulation to reality, MLB mostly avoids holding postseason games on Sundays when most NFL games occur.
(And why do we call it football? Players’ feet only intentionally touch the ball to punt the ball away or kick the ball through the goalposts. This likely reflects my ignorance, but go with me here: players hand off, run, pass, and catch the ball. Now that European née global sport has appropriately called itself football!)
Ah, but for a few glorious weeks baseball reigns supreme. Football retires from the stage and lets the sport-formerly-known-as-America’s-sport, baseball, back into into the leading role it once occupied. Collegiate basketball intrudes, true, during March Madness, but it displays the genteel manners one would expect from amateur athletics. Baseball spring training games occur in the afternoon; NCAA games occur primarily in the evening. It crowns a champion during the first week of the baseball season, turning in that assignment a week late just as college students will, and bows itself from the stage. And the professionals in the NBA? Who cares? Their interminable playoff schedule will just be starting in mid-April, a two-month slog that ends in the middle of June.
Baseball and football play nice once each year. Football crowns a champ just prior to the start of baseball’s spring training. For six weeks all baseball fans think one of two things:
My team could win the World Series this year!
My team might not be as bad as it looks!
Hope springs, regardless. Thank you, Super Bowl; thank you, Spring.
First of the year: 11FEB2024
I know more cold weather remains a very real possibility. By the weekend we will see temperatures at or below freezing. Yet the ephemeral forecasts from various sources promise me I’ll see more early spring temps than I will not, and that’s something. Very soon the star magnolia will bloom, daring the other trees to follow suit. Judging by last year, we’re running a bit late. Here’s a photo from February 10th last year:
Star magnolia blossom. February 2023.
Perhaps you can tell from the photo that the star magnolia (all magnolias?) blossoms prior to putting out leaves. Our purple magnolia does this too. Those little buds appear in the fall, winter like a butterfly’s chrysalis, and then get a bit fuzzier and bigger as their imminent bursting approaches. Most pop out together, but some appear late. March sees only a few:
Hence…Star Magnolia. March 2018.
Like the Star of Bethlehem in Christian scripture, the star magnolia signals the rebirth of our plant world around the small plot of land we manage.
Tomorrow goes by Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday and some German name which I can’t pronounce or spell and which means Doughnut Day. All of them imply, “hey, we need to party and indulge, because tomorrow begins Lent.” Unfortunately (kind of) Ash Wednesday coincides with Valentine’s Day. We’ve decided our party tomorrow will stand in for Valentine’s Day. While we nibble on a few berries, nuts, maybe a piece or two of cheese, I will prepare calas or rice beignets using this recipe. I’m looking forward to it. I love involved, authentic-in-spirit recipes, and this Anson Mills recipe promises all of that. I’ve not purchased their rice or pastry flour; we’ll hope the expensive Carolina rice I did purchase will suffice. Dinner, which we’ll start working on after our late morning calas in at least a desultory way, will be Anson Mills’ Roasted Stuffed Quail for Two with Madeira Sauce. We did not spring for the mail-order quail when we first planned this as a New Year’s Eve meal. Our local grocer carried them. Nor do we have madeira, let alone a 5-year one, and I’m not buying one for 3 tablespoons of recipe use! Some marsala and sherry will suffice. We’ll set some simply prepared asparagus next to the quail and toast our near-30-year relationship.
As lovely as that may (or may not) sound, it’s Lent which occupies my mind today and for the past few. One needs to prepare for Lent. Arriving to Ash Wednesday, opening one’s bleary, I-partied-too-much eyes, and arbitrarily picking something to give up for Lent represents a knee-jerk response to the liturgical meaning of Lent which undercuts it. Sure, you can give up caffeine or alcohol or that favorite candy or whatever because, “that’s what I always do”–and Lent will mean about as much as the thought you put into it. One’s spiritual life basically runs on cruise control (at whatever speed you’ve set) if this represents your approach.
Alternatively, a person in touch with one’s relationship to the Presence which animated this Universe–which created life (a scientifically provable proposition which I will address in a future post), which appears to have imbued all of us with a portion of Its spirit, and which in a way not describable to me, appears to care about us–seeks with initiative and purpose to pledge oneself to one or more practices during Lent, then that person approaches the mystery of Easter with (hopefully) a clearer insight to understanding that mystery. If nothing else, they approach in a better ‘spiritual plane’ which even the non-religious believe to be a good thing.
I have for more than a decade attempted to set one practice each for the physical, the mental, and the spiritual/emotional. (I know, I know. Let’s debate the conflation of “spiritual/emotional” some other time.) This year my practices do not need to be hidden, as they sometimes do to be authentic. I plan to…
Go to the gym thrice weekly as we originally intentioned a year ago. We’ve attempted to restart the gym practice since a falling off in the holidays to limited success. I also have a more private concern here which isn’t so much a practice as a focus on what I’m already doing.
I’m going to begin reading the Bible with an emphasis on two things: the Pentateuch (the first five books) and the four gospels. I’m not sure of the juxtaposition. About seven to ten years ago I used a guide to a first-time reading of the Bible in which one read Genesis, Mark, a few other books–it gave a representation of the Bible overall, including a book from the prophets, a couple apostolic books, etc. I liked it, but I’m ready for a bit more.
Emotionally/spiritually? I’m still not sure on this one. I think my fledging effort to be more social will come into play. Of the varieties of introversion, I’m the one who avoids social gatherings among other things. This will be ….interesting.
Lent means more than Advent to me. Perhaps the focus on penance/introspection? I can definitively say there are days which anchor me to my spiritual pursuits. Ash Wednesday and its implication of Lent is one.
Our spiritual life, and therefore our inspirations, remains in this world. A focus on Jesus, Buddha, or whomever, to the exclusion of the physical world insulates us from our reality. The light poles and cell towers of our world inhabit the day-to-day milieu where we must perfect ourselves as humans. Like this photo, we must see the beauty in the context of the mundane. Ash Wednesday 2023.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park, western slope. May 2004.
At the beginning of May 2004, we headed to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, primarily to visit the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I’ve searched in vain for a photo taken around that time near our home in Grafton, New York, where Spring still fought Winter’s grip on our weather. Two days later we entered Spring’s glory, Smoky Mountains-style. I’ve posted other photos (here and here) which display the explosion of green we encountered. I said to my wife as we drove through undergrowth with leaves as large as my hand–some kind of berry, I suspect–and kept an eye out for black bears newly emerged for the Spring, “You know, I think I could live here.” Two winters later, as I cursed the snows again, an opportunity beckoned to test that conjecture, and I took it. North Carolina pleased us even more than Tennessee. Recently, I’ve posted several photos from that time because late January reminds me of the move, and the approach of Spring always makes me thankful I get to experience a long, lingering one here below the Mason-Dixon Line. I’m thinkin’ I need to put on my travelin’ shoes again…
all the voices in my head 