Sunday, March 25

Spring Comes


I can't resist posting a nosegay of signs of spring. It's a lovely and innocent season, with only, maybe, the wild bloodroot showing in its new-born freshness the blood in the root, or maybe the message comes from the two sets of twin newborn goats out at Holcombe Branch, four, but minus one, the infant who was "lost." Birth and death, they're all there in the seed, in the bulb. The new shoots bear in their newness the promise of eventual death -- and regeneration. No wonder the old farmers and citizens were more aware of death, of the inexorable sadness and innate beauty of things. Maybe now in our clean and technological, managed world, Charlotte's Web would have a harder time gaining acceptance. In the new versions of an old tale, the wolf doesn't eat grandma but stows her in the closet. Is it any wonder than horror films have full page ads in the Times? Maybe our subconscious craves recognition of blood, or sorrow, of death in the midst of life. To parents I would say, Would you rather your child be exposed to Chucky and Saw or read that in "once upon a time" wolves may have et grandma but the wise hunter would come to release her intact, that goblins could take away babies but mother love wins out always and the baby returns, that Charlotte dies but her three babies live? I know where I come down on this one. So, in the spirit of Wiliam Blake, who knew that Innocence and Experience were the two eternally fused aspects of life on earth, here are a few images of the innocence and beauty of spring.





Blubells (Mertensia)

Trillium budding

March brings breezes loud and shrill,

Stirs the dancing daffodil.

Christina Rossetti, The Garden Year

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