This piece of music by the Danish String Quartet is titled ‘The Peat Dance’ and it recalls a windy day in Ireland when I was in some tour group marching across the peat bogs, pausing in a peat-thatched cottage for some Irish coffee to take the sting out of the cold. Humans are funny in the ways we walk through winter together, and apart.
Suzie enjoys the Danish String Quartet, and we are currently in the midst of planning for a dinner loosely called ‘Suzette’s Feast’ in an homage to ‘Babette’s Feast’. Ours will likely be a sad and silly approximation of the wonder that was Babette’s glorious meal (Suzie has already nixed the turtle soup, and I haven’t been able to locate any quails to stuff – we are having Mom do up some Cornish game hens for the latter) but this is how we traverse the final weeks of winter. Together.
Hope is on the swiftly-moving air currents (a clumsily-disguised description of wind because I’m tired of saying that word). It’s in the shift of the sun, and the disappearing hour this weekend. It’s also in the burst of new growth on our indoor plants – a sign that comes before the snow has melted, before the first cranky and crinkled unfolding of the Lenten rose.
This is a fern that we’ve had since I first met Andy – a descendant of one of his Mom’s original plants – and somehow we’ve managed to keep it alive for twenty-five years. It’s in our sunniest window (and if you’re having trouble with ferns, I advise trying them in a bit more light – when the literature says they can survive in deep shade, that usually means the deep shade of the outdoors – indoors is by its very nature already shaded). This fern, like most of us, has had good years and bad years, and right now it’s looking very lush and happy, thanks to a prime spot right beside the humidifier. Ferns always like high humidity, especially in bright light.
I sense spring in its verdant new growth. Promise, too.
