Exploded!

The last three days here have been unseasonably warm in a lovely way. Something I've noticed since working at Kline Creek and the Farms and living here in New York is that spring is completely amazing.

Last year was the most obvious for me. All through the winter the farms staff ran programs that involved being outside long enough for the weather to really register. When all you need to do is run from the office to the car, cold, snow, wind and rain are bothersome, but they don't seep into you the way they do when you're standing outside with a group of 2nd graders for 45 minutes. Teachers, I'm sure you know what I mean. For me, the hardest part of our school programs in the winter was always the outside chores, where we took the kids into the barn to meet the horses and pitch hay, shelled corn, fed the pigs or the cows or the sheep and checked the chicken coop for eggs. With no wrist watch or clock, it was hard to time the chores so that you could get all the education in, but not have a ton of extra time at the end. But I found that I could tell about how long we'd been out by 1) how many toes I could feel 2) how runny my nose got 3) how many fingers I could feel. If my toes went numb before we were out of the barn, I was running slow. If I could still feel my fingers when we went to shell corn, I was running fast. It worked for me.

But when spring came, I can't even tell you how grateful I was for the warm air. I can remember one day specifically as I looked around the farm yard I noticed that the oak trees in the wooded area behind the barn had a faint light green hue, as if they were covered in moss. The baby leaves lightened the color of the branches, but they also feathered the outlines, softening everything in view. I could have sworn that the day before there was nothing, so the color was especially surprising after seeing the trees harsh and dramatic all winter.

The same thing happened here yesterday. There were no leaves. And then the trees just exploded! Now when we drive around, there are trees covered in heavy white blossoms and bright spots of neon green out on the hillsides where a tree or two have woken up. The daffodils have been up for a while, but now they are everywhere. People have planted them in lush beds in their yards, ranks of them have popped up all along the roads, and here and there a single flower nods where a squirrel must have horded the bulb last fall.

Things are really growing now, but mentally it feels as though spring has been here for quite a while. I was ready for spring in February when the snow started to melt. Ever since then it's been a battle of inches, trying to outlast the cold. Each and every day it was a few degrees warmer, and if it was sunny, I was outside digging in the garden trying to get the beds ready for planting. If I had a hotbed set up I could already be eating lettuce. I can see now why spring is so charming to so many people.

Before I started to get closer to the dirt, spring was those two weeks in May when everything bloomed and the air was warm. Now, I can see that it's not the cloying twitterpated season ala Bambi that I thought. Spring takes it own time and comes slowly, enjoying a long and gradual awakening. I can relate to this. Far from the saccharine beauty I usually think of, spring is often awkward, even ugly, full of mud and old dead plant material. But here and there a bunch of wildflowers pokes through the generations of their dead ancestors (as Garrison Keillor observed) and is all the more welcome and beautiful for its rarety.

I like the honesty of this wild spring better than the manicured spring I've been used to.

Also, the yarn dyeing turned out...well interesting. My kettle dyed green was exactly the effect I wanted, but not quite the right color. Too neon for my taste. I also tried a painted skein with blue and green and brown that I like a lot, but also isn't quite what I was shooting for. Pictures when I get to the library.