Long-Awaited Photographs

I've been out of town a lot lately, so I haven't had the chance to watch my yard gradually transition into its current state. Not that springtime generally suggests "gradual transition" anyway; each hour, something new and different has popped up in my yard or changed color or unfurled into a huge leafy fern. Still, leaving for a few days and returning has reminded me anew that the yard of sticks and starkness of wintertime becomes a Pennsylvanian jungle come spring.

Last week, one of my friends and readers mentioned to me that to those of you who haven't been to my backyard might like to see more pictures of the setting. I must say, I would have hoped to describe it well enough to not require pictures (nudge nudge, wink wink). However, being perfectly honest, now that I have a new--that is, functional--camera, I can get over my actual hangup and capture some of images of my very photogenic backyard.

To begin, a view of the vegetable garden, shaded by the ash tree. Behind is the housing development that used to be a small woods.

The strawberries refuse to grow within the garden fence, but here they are, preparing to switch from white blossoms to sweet red berries.

Next, what we call the Fairy Garden, perfect for relaxing with a glass of wine on a summer evening.

Then, of course, the famous view from the garden swing.

In my opinion, the existence of phlox is proof that God loves Pennsylvania. Whether in cascading millions along the driveway border...

...or as a single blossom, this native wildflower is one of Pennsylvania's greatest treasures.

The forget-me-nots, too, are as spectacular en masse as they are alone.

Our shade garden, however, is one of the most Pennsylvanian squares in the yard. After we moved in twenty years ago, my mom spent hours and years transforming it from a solid mass of packed clay to a display area for wildflowers lovingly transplanted from her uncle's woods.

Buttercups...

Mayapples ... and a bleeding heart peeking through the leaves...

...all make for a lovely bouquet.

Lovely enough even for the wookiee to enjoy.

Something Tells Me It's All Happening At the Zoo

I do believe it's true. A friend of mine sent me this article from MSN all about zoos and their current movement to be more natural and environmentally friendly.

The only zoos I've ever been to and enjoyed were the National Zoo in DC and Busch Gardens in Florida. They had natural habitats for the animals, not concrete slabs, and they had huge ditches to separate humans from dangerous beasts, not bars and cages.

I'm glad to see that more zoos are taking that initiative, and that there are programs that encourage this sort of zoo setup over the other, less humane versions. It's also exciting to see that the Philadelphia Zoo is offsetting its carbon use. As much as it helps for individuals and families to think ecologically, it's the huge institutions that will really make a difference just by setting an example.

Encourage the good zoos around you. Appreciate their conservation intentions, and consider how they can improve still more.

Dirty Feet

My feet are dirty and I couldn't be happier.

Yesterday, I returned home from a weekend in Philadelphia, staying with a couple of dear friends in their 7th-floor apartment across from the Art Museum. My feet kept going numb all weekend. Something about walking on pavement, I think.

Today I wore sandals and rolled up my jeans before taking a walk around my remarkably green backyard. The thicket of bushes that Mom and I once christened The Fairy Garden looked hopelessly dead all winter -- so dead that you may have noticed I never mentioned it -- and the mockingbird that camped there all winter had poor camo for hiding in a transparent cluster of empty sticks. Between Friday morning, when I left for Philadelphia, and yesterday, when I got home, the Artist spilled his green paint on the Fairy Garden and even added some blossoming crabapples for good measure.

When I came in, I had to wash my feet.

This afternoon, I wore sandals again to aerate my compost bin and add some grass clippings from last week's first mowing. I encountered the wookiee birdwatching behind the garden shed, but for all his wookiee-like aggression, he's more of a gentle giant. He chases squirrels from bird feeders and leaves the birds alone.

When I came in, I had to wash my feet again.

And then this evening, I went completely shoeless while scrubbing up and hosing down the window screens. Hose water + the backyard = muddy feet. It also = clean screens, which is glorious for the sudden spring weather. I washed my bedroom windows and put in all the screens. I was 1/3 through washing the living room windows when it began to rain.

I should probably have stuck my feet out the window for a natural wash, but I didn't. They're still dirty.

One Sunday morning when I was living in Baltimore, my friends and I were walking from the car in the parking lot to the front door of the church. Between the parking lot and the foyer, however, was an open yard of grass. I kicked off my dress shoes and walked barefoot across the grass. It was maybe ten steps all together, but those ten steps held me through another week of pavement and downtown.

I got claustrophobic in my friends' apartment this past weekend, and it's not a small apartment by any means. But for all its square footage and windows, I felt like I was in a shoebox in the middle of a crate stacked in a storeroom in the bowels of a strip mall.

This past Sunday, while they were driving along a woodsy country road, my grandma looked out the window at the trees and said to my mom, "You know, sometimes I think we get too far away from nature."

And you know? My dirty feet and I think my grandma was absolutely right.

Dog-Sitting

My neighbors went on vacation this week and asked whether I'd like to watch their dog.

The answer, initially, was no way, but I didn't tell them that. I'm not much of a dog person, and this particular dog has a bad reputation. But I did agree to at least meet the canine and let his owner walk me through the basics of vacation care.

The dog loves me.

I don't know why, but he has taken to me like a mockingbird takes to a new birdcall. And their yard, just three doors up the hill from mine, is like a different environment altogether. As the dog sniffs around his yard and does his thing, I get to watch a different set of birdfeeders, observe a different view of the horizon, and listen, listen, listen.

Yesterday, there was a rufus-sided towhee whistling in the trees. Today, I could see elk on the next hill over. Even the wind sounds a little different from that part of the hill.

Tomorrow is my last day of watching the dog, mainly because I myself am going out of town for a few days (if you're lucky, you might get an update about it on my travel blog). But I think that I might still venture up to my neighbor's yard occasionally this summer when I am in town. It's funny how a slight change of angle can give you a whole new perspective on a familiar place.

You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello

To my classmates,

It's been a pleasure. I hope you keep up your blogs long after today so I can continue to learn about your regions and read your perspectives. I can hardly wait to transfer our digital discussions to classrooms and coffee shops in August!

Continue to find nature in your own backyards, and contemplate the errant dandelion.

Becca

A Final Reflection

For those of you without a syllabus to refer to, next Saturday I will email my final assignments to my course instructors and pray for good grades to complete my first semester of grad school. Our final blog prompt for the semester asks us to reflect on our experiences and what we’ve learned, but it’s such a fitting close that I imagine I might have taken a stab at it without the assignment. (That is, if I would have let myself take the time away from other assignments to do so.)

My three courses have intertwined themselves like the English ivy on the walnut trees, so that I’m not sure what one class has taught me outside of the others. I do know that, of all times in my life to be forced by school to go outside and simply be, this season in my life was the when I needed it the most.

Nature is cruel. Nature keeps winter from disappearing from my region when I just want sunlight. Nature left a pile of feathers behind the garden shed after a hawk caught her dinner. Nature tears shingles from rooftops, floods creekbeds, and brings on cancer and heart attacks and grief.

But nature is kind, too. It’s connected; we’re all in this boat together. I’m not the only person to lose her father suddenly and unexpectedly and on the eve of the most family-oriented holiday of the year, and that knowledge, while not making the loss any less sad, still helps me keep some perspective. Nature is cyclical. Seasons change. Transitions happen. Sometimes, like a democracy, the change in season happens peacefully, without you even noticing. Other times, the passing season refuses to let go its hold. But it still can’t stop the change. Even when there are remnants of cold, the warmth shows itself in little ways.

My life is a series of settings. I track myself based on where I am, not necessarily on who I am or who I’m with or what I’m doing there. What I’ve read this semester and observed in my backyard has reminded me that setting, so strong a character in my life, should be as strong in my writing. As the seasons change, I’ll learn the trick of establishing place.

This backyard won’t be in my family forever, but my family will be in it. It has my dad and my mom and my brother and me stamped in every inch of its soil. Our pets have been buried here, fresh veggies have been harvested, firewood has been stacked and wine has been sipped in the flickering light of mosquito candles and the shining summer moon.

I’ve always loved my yard. I took photos of the yard with me to Germany, and I bragged about my yard when I missed having space to breathe in Baltimore. But after a semester of simultaneous stress and grief and healing, I love this yard like I would love a doctor who cured me of a disease. Still, a big part of healing is getting past the healing and back to a normal life.

This morning, I watched a pair of hawks soaring on the wind.

Dancing With the Daffodils

Outside my window, it's snowing again, but the flakes are swirling around electric yellow daffodils. A few weeks ago, two kids, passing my house on their way home from the bus stop, delivered the daffodils I ordered last month for Daffodil Days. Shortly after those hothouse blossoms drooped in their vase on my desk, the bulbs scattered all over my yard took it upon themselves to shine like droplets of summer. I confess I'm surprised that they're still open; it's been snowing for the past 15 hours or so, and if I were a daffodil, I think I would have closed up by now and retreated to the warmer earth.

But I guess daffodils aren't like that. They seem determined to hearten us this first week of April, every year, no matter where we are. My mom reread her gardening journal last week and laughed to realize that the daffodils have sprouted in our yard the same week every year for the past decade.

And my classmate Johnny sees daffodils in his garden, too, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. These intrepid little flowers know no boundaries. Even across an ocean, they're rising at the same time. And in England, they may even bloom again in June.

One of my favorite memories from my travels four years ago occurred in Poland during the first week of April. I was in a bus headed for Krakow somewhere between winter and springtime when I learned of the Pope's passing. By the time I arrived in his home city, it was already clothed in mourning. My last day there, his funeral aired on giant screens in and around the city, and thousands watched in respect.

The event cast a pall on the vacation my friends and I had expected to have that week. None of us was Catholic, but all of us respected the devotion the entire city was showing to a man we all thought well of. We wanted to have fun, but we also wanted to respect this moment in history and the memory of a great man.

It was the daffodils that reminded us to hope. With the sound of the funeral mass still ringing in our ears, we came upon a field of daffodils.


There will be grief. There will be sorrow. There will be winter. But all over the world, there will also be transition into summer, and the daffodils won't let go, even in a shower of snow.