When the mind is filled with a winter of worries, the only thing to do is don a fancy coat and hold your head up. As we careen toward the start of spring, I find that a certain winter weariness has set in – the opposite of the energy and excitement I typically feel at this time of the year. Maybe I’m just tired out, from everything. It isn’t that I’ve been going all that hard – I just haven’t given my head the break it needs, despite the day meditation.
The block of ice in the pool is still intact – one large, continuous piece that has only started to recede from the edges, still thick and impenetrable and foreboding. To look at it makes one feel that spring is far away. The snowbank by the driveway is also hanging on – a triangular patch like the tip of an iceberg. In the backyard, the earliest of our perennials, a stalwart Hellebore that has been with us since we moved into the house twenty years ago, is still matted down with a wet blanket of oak leaves. It went largely unprotected by any substantial snow cover for the bulk of the winter, and doesn’t look like it held onto many of its usually-otherwise-evergreen leaves. That’s not a bad thing – such cleansing is necessary for a bigger crop of fresh leaves and flowers come the warmer weather. It also makes my job a little easier – I find myself having a difficult time being so ruthless to anything green so early in the season even if removing the tattered live would do the plant a greater good.
So begins a Friday that’s predicted to be warm and sunny. This is the switch of the seasons. Ambivalence and hesitancy and a full moon.
