Spring Sunrise 2019

Waiting, waiting. . . purple clouds in the east, the great Source color-mixing on its palette in real time, then adding some light, knowing we are watching. Light is a specialty. The work must be totally unprecedented. There can be no error, cannot leave a blank space or discard and start over, must differ from all before it, because this day is a gift specifically for the majestic Earth, and the sunrise its wrapping! And it has to be unsigned so everybody and everything has to guess who gave it. Everyone's answer is different. Everyone is at a different place to receive it. Perfect! I'm smiling. The artist hopes only that the gift will make us smile.

I have enjoyed the long, elaborate, poetic springtimes typical of mid-Missouri, with upsetting lilacs and startling bunnies and winds that invent their own kites, and hope this spring is another. Not only that, I love sharing the greenery and music of the birds and frogs with visitors from the north who travel in a day from their winter to our spring, and marvel.

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.

The Cat Sitter

No pets are allowed on the Divine property, the better to preserve our wildlife, but sometimes I like up close and personal, especially with exceptionally fine cats such as those I cat sat for this past weekend: Hermann, Rufus, and Mimi (pictured).

They filled life with surprises. I opened the bedroom door after waking, and ginger cat Rufus was there waiting for me--and raced me downstairs to the kitchen where each morning we caught the suburban sunrise from the exceptionally fine eastern-facing window.

suburban sunrise

The house is on a hilltop and it is very different for me to see houses below, to sit in an armchair (which I don't have) beneath a good lamp (which I don't have), with a cat perched on the armrest or in my lap, making a continuous bubbling sound, to enjoy life and simple reading and writing as if on a vacation--because I wasn't driven to do 200 things at once, as I am at home--and some inter-species communication, mutual curiosity, and unconditional love.

Domestic animals rule, too!

Druid in a Bathrobe

East to west through 3 rooms

Whoever built the Divine Cabin in 1935 did it right, because March 20, equinox, at sunrise I was waiting like a druid in my bathrobe for the early sunbeams to knife straight through three rooms to the back wall. The builder cared enough to point the kitchen door precisely due east--so that the west-facing window hosted the exact same phenomenon, a sunbeam piercing the house clear through, in reverse in late afternoon. Does it in autumn, too. But spring is the most heartening time of year and its first day its most heartening day. I toasted it with coffee, ate cornmeal mush with maple syrup, and bacon--it doesn't get any better than that. . .smiled all day.

March 2017 has been 81 degrees and then 24 at night, and then it snowed, but every time this happens I frame it as spring starting all over again. Spring is a limited-time-only thing and I set the alarm now to get up before dawn so I experience as much of spring as possible. I think somehow it appreciates me back, turning all soft and green and baby blue.

Moving Into His New House

When a tall person visited on March 9, I got his help taking down the old bluebird house, all weatherbeaten and cracked top to bottom, and mounting a brand-new one. Then, with an eye out for those house wrens who load up bluebird houses with sticks and thorns just to be ornery, I watched for a week, then two weeks, and was finally rewarded this morning as I sat in the spring sun drinking tea. Male bluebirds sit atop a bluebird house and flap their wings to attract their mates' attention. If she approves of the dwelling, she creates the nest and they go for it. Bluebirds are shy, so when this one saw me he fled the bluebird house and perched in a tree. I dream all year of this moment when the first bluebirds first nest in the bluebird house and I am the host and witness. This new bluebird box has a hinged side secured with a hook and eye--good design for box cleaning or nest viewing. It's raw pine. You can see it on the right, on the  old wooden post, which is 7 feet high. The downward-curved thing on the post is chicken wire to keep critters from crawling up the post to feast on bluebirds or their eggs. During previous birdhouse cleanings I've found lifeless blacksnakes and live bees in the box. I don't visit or handle the box very often, because that leaves a scent trail that might attract predators.

A Sunrise Like a Moonrise

Last night had a nightmare, very rare for me. This morning woke up in light of a glassy moonstone grey as I hadn't seen in a while, and suddenly my chemistry changed. From the kitchen, which faces east, I saw the sun struggling upward though shrouds of purple and gunmetal gray, looking more like a moonrise, and for a moment I was disoriented: day or night? No; it's summer becoming fall, heading toward the one equinox I could do without. No one hangs onto the final days of summer as I do, begging them, please do not take my basil and hummingbirds and "honor" vegetable stands. But the morning didn't listen and whisked me along as the earth shifts on its axis, tilts away from the sun, giving me no choice except acceptance. It does, however, provide coffee to lift one's spirits.

Everywhere, Endless, and Changing

I want so much to share the beauty I see, living out here--daily, my cup overflows. In the city, I got beauty at the museum or in individual plants or trees, and only in glimpses, so I moved and I stay so I can feast on the beauty that is everywhere and endless and changing. On my gravestone please write, "She loved beauty."  Or maybe this, from a North Country British gravestone:

The wonder of the world,
The beauty and the power,
The shapes of things,
Their colours, lights and shades,
These I saw.
Look ye also while life lasts.

(That wasn't written by a Londoner.)

Woke early this late August morning with a head cold returned in full force (darn, but that's life; I'll take it) and peeked outside and the sun was just rising, but I saw turkeys at the meadow's edge, and although it's not a bird-book picture of a turkey, the above photo is what I actually saw. And loved it.