The Little Things

I don't know what kind of flower this is, but now the entire dining room smells of it! My boyfriend, who will remain nameless, rescued this bloom from the sidewalk and wore it in his lapel on the bus ride home. He presented it to my roommate when we got home, who showed it to The Kiddo (her son, the most adorable and mercifully mild-mannered 6-month-old I have ever encountered). I think it's a more extreme smell than he's used to because his eyes got reeeeeeeally wiiiiiiiiide. Tiny kids are fun to watch when they first encounter things we take for granted. We had a pretty respectable thunder-storm this afternoon, and he stared out the window fascinated by the rain for as long as someone was willing to hold him near it. Kid's got good taste in nature.

My Favorite Springtime Color

My favorite springtime color is black. Just look at it!

It's been raining here for the past few days, punctuated by nice mild, sunny days. As a result, the trees and the grass are the kind of vibrant green that only fully develops in the rain, and flowers are popping out all over the place. Tulips and daffodils and these little purple things that I suspect are crocuses, but I'm not gonna lie, I actually don't know what a crocus is.

Amidst all of this glorious color, we have patches of rich black. The bark of a wet tree, the black soil out of which the new flowers have emerged. The night sky, deeper and darker than before after a few seconds of sudden, lightening-strike day.

The black is life-giving, and sets off the richness of the brighter springtime colors. But it's beautiful in its own right. It's rich, it's moist, it's velvety, and it has a life of its own. Within the black are sparkling droplets of water, storm clouds a slightly lighter black than the sky at night, texture and variation. It captures shades of brown and blue and even green and pulls them into the dark, fathomless realm of black.

Sunshine on a Cloudy Day

Very nearly every blog I read these days is posting pictures of tender, green buds and waxing all excited over the newly blooming spring flowers (seriously, even Neil Gaiman). T'ain't nunuh that here. Spring, for those of you just now joining us, is by far my favorite time of year, and I'm really excited to be living in a place with real seasons again for this very reason. The harder and nastier your winters, the harder the flowers bloom when it's over. We're just not quite there yet.

Don't get me wrong, we've had some lovely days this March. It's just too early for flowers, and this week has been pretty consistently cold and dreary. So the Van Gogh umbrella helps. I feel like I'm forcefully unfurling sun and summer onto the tale-end of winter. Chasing it out. Or blending winter with summer, hoping the shake-up will settle sooner, rather than later, into real-life spring.

IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO BE SPRING!!!

Did you hear that, nature??? I know you did because I got to wear short-sleeves today! w00t!!!

Today and yesterday have been in the 50s, and I've been wearing a skirt! I have never been so excited about skirts as I am now, on the tail-end of my first Wisconsin winter. It's been sunny in the afternoons with hints of rain to come. The piles of snow in everyone's yards are slowly decomposing and disappearing, leaving moist, black mud behind. There are no flowers yet by a long shot, but I can hear birds now, and I know that rich, thick mud has life starting to stir buried deep down beneath what I can see.

This morning was grey and mild and moist - the wind at the busstop was like silk on my cheek, not claws of ice. It made me feel Springy and happy, so I put on a skirt with boots and my polka-dotted tights! I traipsed into lecture feeling girly and bright, only to have a friend point out to me that I was clad entirely in shades of black and grey. Which was true. AND I DIDN'T CARE BECAUSE I HAD POLKA DOTS!!!

This is how Spring begins. The white fades to grey, leaving black on the ground before any color can emerge. But it's warm, and there's life and you're happy that it's finally starting to thaw. And this afternoon, my arms got to feel the wind for the first time in MONTHS!!!