A Rough Draft of Spring

March has been very gray, unusually gray, or was that my imagination? No, my neighbor Terri noticed it too, and we pined for spring sunshine, but day after day it's as dark at 9 in the morning as if it's 9 at night, and most of the time, raining. It's rained eight days out of the last ten. Even my dream last night included rain. I was out in the rain and found the dead body of a pileated woodpecker and began crying. Nice dream, huh? Thanks, March. It's raining now.

Yes, how many gray days occupied the month of March 2018? How many cloudy days have besieged us until we are all slightly crazy with traffic accidents all along I-44 every freaking day? Or let's put it another way; how many sunny ("clear") days have we had in March? I searched for the answer and found it here. Exactly ONE sunny day all month so far: Saturday, March 3. There's a sunny day predicted for Friday, March 30; that's the only other, if it happens. TWENTY-NINE days out of THIRTY-ONE this month were cloudy, mostly cloudy, partly cloudy, snowy, "T-storms," or scattered clouds.

But before I learned this awful truth I woke the morning of the equinox, March 20, before sunrise, saw a blush of color in the east and excitedly thought, "I will take a picture of the sunrise and call it 'Spring Sunrise'!" and prepared my camera. Sunrises develop their color -- it's like stirring Crystal Light into a glass of water -- so I waited and snapped, anticipating more color, and what you see here, that little pinkish blush, faded and vanished beneath more gray, and since that day it's rained like all get-out. Yes, this is your "nature photo" for the month. I can't even remember what I did all this March except trying to see Black Panther on a Tuesday only to be told at the box office that the afternoon showing was all sold out.

Free Chives

Last night the Arctic winds howled as I have never heard them. They tore some of the plastic off the windows and shredded it. They kept me awake. They forced the temperature way down. A human being can do nothing except think about hot soup, a favorite soup. With a sandwich if possible.

I chose the simple recipe "Shrimp Soup DeLuxe" from Twelve

Months of Monastery Soups. Fresh chopped onion, olive oil, shrimp, some dry white wine, white pepper, a bit of milk. . . and a half cup of mixed fresh herbs as the final touch. Fresh herbs in January? Yes! On a slope near the lane, hidden just inside the woods, clumps of chives grow every winter. I don't know where they came from, or why, because they grow nowhere else on the property, but they come in very handy. I cheated and went out and bought parsley for the soup, too. But the chives were free.

January Hike - 1852 Graveyard

Twelve days previously this scene was buried in a foot of new snow and well below zero at night. In fact winter is can be great for hiking: no heatstroke or chiggers and an antidote to cabin fever. Yesterday, with a  high around 40 degrees, the hiking group walked the 12-mile circuit of Little Indian Creek Conservation Area outside of St. Clair, MO; its 4,000 acres straddle Franklin and Washington Counties. Among the few highlights of this mostly forested multipurpose (horse-appled) trail is a little cemetery with weathered stones, most unreadable, yet with a few graves decked with fresh artificial flowers. At the cemetery, about 5.5 miles along, we met sudden high winds and light wintry mix, perhaps because we were uninvited and disturbing the peace. Quickly we departed without finishing our lunches and soon the winds calmed and the sun broke out. Near the 7-mile/3-hour point I'd had my hike and bailed, taking the connecting path back to the parking lot for a total of 7.9 miles, which is plenty.

Every Feather Tells a Story

On the gray-brown carpet of fallen oak and hickory leaves, flashes of blue caught my eye. Treasures! Feathers! Iridescently blue; how lovely and refreshing on these cast-iron January days!

I picked one up and admired it, then saw more of them and couldn't help but collect them, and then grew uneasy. One feather on the ground, all is well, but this many feathers in one place always signifies a fight to the death. I hoped otherwise, but sure enough there was one bloodied feather as evidence. Nature has taught me not to feel sorrow over dead anything, but I became solemn realizing I was at the spot where a beautiful creature parted from the earth, to serve some greater purpose, I hope, or at least I want to believe.

Soaks Up 47 Times Its Weight in Excess Reality

When God closes one door, He closes another, too, just to show us who is boss. Life events were such that I took a day off from work and hung out with Hawkeye, also recently and repeatedly traumatized. We had lunch at Captain D's and I was able to eat a meal for the first time in days. Too nippy to hike so we did the Dollar Store. Bought myself a Dodge Ram cap plus a bag of marshmallows.

At my place Hawkeye, using my tools, all by herself restrung her daughter's favorite bracelet, sadly broken more than a year ago -- and now daughter'll get cheered up when she receives it in the mail. We talked about what the Universe wants, and how it ain't what we want, and how, in this vale of tears, we got to have faith. Then we had soup and bagels and chocolate-covered almonds and blew up some fireworks. We succeeded in cheering up to a good extent. I recommend this Rx to anyone suffering from too much winter.