Stop and Smell

The Lilacs! Oh, the lilacs! The blossoming bushes' perfume is filling the air these days. Hints of the sweet smell waft and trail on the wind. It is a beckoning scent, teasing and suggesting that I stop what I am doing and run outside to find the lovely flowers. And why not? I love this blossoming time of year (which is quickly fading into real summer) that showers petals and flowers along my way. I often stop to smell them: lilacs, apple blossoms, other flowers that have no scent, but I give them a sniff to make sure. It seems like such a sweet surprise that these beautiful, fleeting flowers also smell so delightful.

Last year at this time, Ray and I started our cross-country bike trip. When we left the lilacs were blooming and we followed them from Washington state well into Montana, where they were flowering weeks later. If there are places where lilacs don't grow as a herald of summer, I'm sure they have something just as beautiful, but if I lived there I would miss them terribly.

Lately I have been rushing around, trying to cram as much into each day as possible, planning each hour long before it has begun. So I appreciate the opportunity to pause and the reminder to do this by the pervasive aroma of lilacs which are in bloom everywhere around here. Not only to pause, but to notice something that marks such a fleeting moment in time (from budding, to blossoms to brown and past), to be in the moment, a place that I find myself much too rarely. As I pause to absorb the color and the scent, I am reminded of all the beauty and wonder that is around me.

I am taking a permaculture class this month and we have been looking at patterns in nature. Regular, irregular, spiraling, repeating and scattered, once I start looking I see them everywhere.

Signs of Life

A few weeks ago I planted the first seeds of the year. The miracle of something so small, hard and shriveled awakening from the dark, cool soil has begun. For now the little sprouts are so precious, worth a picture, even. They will grow and flower to produce sweet tender pea pods and succulent peas for eating out of the shell. Eventually they will be overgrown and unruly and stop producing and it will be equally satisfying to pull out the stalks and clear away the debris. I love that, even though spring comes every year and sprouts and shoots always grow, it always seems new and somewhat unbelievable to be surrounded by so much green when things have been frozen for so long.



It seems like everyone at the community garden has been as eager as a seedling to be in the sun and soil. We had a work day which exemplified the power of teamwork. With everyone putting in an hour or two we accomplished far more than I had hoped and I could not thank everyone enough for the part that they did to help get the garden ready. There is lots more of this to come.



Not only is everything blossoming, leafing, singing, and growing voraciously, but I am feeling the busy-ness of spring quite fully. Everything in nature is going full force, the days are rapidly getting longer and I am juggling a few jobs, a class and still trying to find time to take in the season. There's really nothing I can do but rush in fully and try to catch the energy of spring.