The blend is uneven, barely mixed
as winter cedes to spring in
fits and starts:
trumpeting geese over barren
fields
dangling buds
of red-flowered currant,
willow’s thin yellow curtains, last year’s
dry curls of dead grass among
discarded leaves.
Fits and starts of lime-green
moss inviting
touch
on a fresh morning, chill rain
slicking the boardwalk,
fallen
camellias and collapsed cattails,
their tough green shoots stabbing
at the sodden air. It is an uneven blend
of dark
mixing with light moving
slowly, the
doe settling into wood’s edge for its
evening chew.
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Spring is moving slowly here, with colder and wetter weather than normal. I dart out between rainfalls – it’s often just hours before the drizzle begins again. I took these photos on forays to a local botanical garden, a park, and at the side of the road. They are a mix of wild and cultivated – the camellia tree was planted, the red-flowered currant, and many of the grasses and trees were not. Wild Cackling geese (relatives of Canada geese) fly high above power lines and the doe forages at the botanical garden. It all draws my eye, whether wild or not.
It’s between seasons and I’m feeling in-between myself, unsure where to go next, literally and figuratively. Patience.
Patience too, during this just-before-Spring time. Gardens and fields are still mostly under last year’s detritus but cherry blossoms are about to pop, narcissus and forsythia are out, birds are singing and the grass is greening up. My favorite season is a breath away…
bluebrightly 
Reblogged this on JAMIE ROCHE.
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Thank you!
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My favorites are the trees and grasses just beneath the birds, and the boardwalk. They’re so deeply appealing, I wonder if perhaps I’m not entirely ready for spring. We didn’t have a significantly colder and wetter fallow period this year, and I feel as though spring is here too soon. It’s not that it’s early by the calendar, only that the variation in season wasn’t there.
Forsythia and pussy willows were my childhood’s first spring signs. It’s delightful to see the catkins here, although I think they’re different from ours. Lovely, in any case. I smiled at the dried leaves surrounded by dry grasses. They look like some delicate object, packed for shipping. Put a fragile label on them, and send them back to autumn!
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Winter has lingered long enough. That breath away is taking it’s bloody time already! I’m so anxious to get on with sprucing things up for listing the house and yet the rains never seem to quit. Those short, small windows of sunshine just aren’t enough to get serious about cleaning up winter’s leftovers. sigh… And every single breath of sunshine turns out to be teasing me every single time. I have never been this anxious for winter to pack up and go away.
One of my favorite signs of spring hasn’t arrived yet… that precious tender shade of spring green on the neighbor’s weeping willow tree. It’s still looking pretty dreary even with the daffies and the azaleas blooming. Sorry, I’m just feeling a bit curmudgeonly. Perhaps I should just be hibernating until springtime actually decides to show up for real.
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Beautiful words and pictures, my friend. I can well understand the feelings of uncertainty as to where to go next. I think of you often, and I do hope that your new life is coming together as it should. As to these pictures, I like them and I love the colours. Those particularly getting to me are the 2nd one down, the dead leaves criss-crossed by the dead grass stems – wow! what impact, and I am deeply, deeply in love with the limited colour palette! And also the striking, thorny picture below that. And lastly the fallen tree, the shot above that of the boardwalk – I love its reclining shape, and the bright green covering of mosses and ferns, and the great numbers of thin branches hanging down over it all – what a photo! A
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I love your poem and your photos, showing the in-between of the seasons. I especially love the first photo and the moss-covered tree in the forest. 🙂
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So lovely to see spring emerging from the winter – lovely images!
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Such a lovely post. I grew up in Michigan but now spend winter in Florida. Here in the lower tip of Florida we are subtropical so I don’t see or notice the change of seasons. Your post has started me looking forward to our return north to experience the things you captured so beautifully with your words and camera. Thanks.
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Excellent shots, blue. I’m looking forward to spring, but with 18 inches of snow on the ground, it could be a while.
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my favorite is that footbridge and the tree limb hanging down… in my mind i’m ducking down while looking at everything…
with the days getting longer, i predict you will be getting more and more clarity…
may your day of the equinox smile on you!
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A beautiful post about the changing of the seasons. And such gorgeous photos.
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Beautiful words and beautiful photographs Lynn! Your posts are always such a treat!
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Beautiful. What a wonderful tribute to the First Day of Spring 🙂 🙂
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Lovely post Lynn. I especially liked the gentle humor and vividness of this particular stanza:
“Fits and starts of lime-green/moss inviting/touch”
Your wetlands boardwalk is a dynamic image (with a great zigzagging branch). Looks wonderful in color (and probably would look just as good in b.w.)
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Love the third one down for its colors, shapes, and short DOF. The mossy tree is awfully appealing the way you’ve framed it—so lush! I agree with the comment that shoreacres made about your second photo: “[The leaves] look like some delicate object, packed for shipping.” . . . It’s perfectly understandable that you feel in between. Patience is hard, but—with the help of photography—I’d be willing to bet you’ll make it, even if with fits and starts.
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Lovely selection. I particularly like 2 and 7
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Just exquisite, words and images!
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Wonderful words and pictures Lyn, I feel the heavy tension of change in the air!
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