Something in the air . . .

First daffodil

Look who's back in town!

There's something in the air. Probably euphoria. Maybe bliss. It's hard to find the right word.

           

We've been visiting plant nurseries, potting flowers, marveling at the lilies popping up in the flowerbed.  We ate our lunch on the deck yesterday and the birds—robins, house sparrows, grackles, red-winged blackbirds—are squabbling over nesting sites in the back yard. The mourning doves intone their haunting calls in the morning and evening and every once in a while, a flock of sandhill cranes flies by high overhead, their crrrrrrr call to the tiny people far below a greeting as they pass on their long journey from wintering grounds in Texas and Mexico to the Canadian Arctic. This flock is late; must have stopped over in North Dakota.

           

The world has spring fever and doesn't know which delight to pursue first . . . everything seems possible.

           

Life is not only everything; it's the only thing.

           

It astounds me that so much of the world is toying with the abysmal when the sublime is so near, so inviting, so enticing. But I'm determined not to go there this morning when the leaves and blossoms are bursting out all over and the sky is such a deep azure that every man-made blue looks like grey.

           

If I were the devil out to do mischief, I'd blind people to the glory of spring and watch them sink into the doldrums of longing and discontent.       

We started our “garden” today. Sheltered by an enormous spruce tree and facing the southern sun, we placed six large pots on tiles; here we'll put out the seedling tomatoes next week. We hung a huge begonia basket up near the front door and the succulents are potted and hardening-off outside after a winter on the kitchen window sill. Our herb children have graduated from their basement grow-light to the deck; the big, bad wolf from which they’ll need protection is late frost, of course. They still lack the sense to come in for night, even when called.

           

Our house is full this weekend. People from Edmonton, Saskatoon, Winnipeg passing through for weddings, mostly, or to visit Grandpa and Grandma. There's something rewarding in living in an inn; people are inordinately grateful to have a “home” and a clean, comfortable bed after a day of travel or celebrating; they chat with other guests as if they were old friends. How remarkable. We give them a key, tell them to make themselves at home . . . and they do. A young couple in Rosthern for a wedding intimated solemnly that they'd never been to a bed and breakfast before. B&B virgins. I'm betting they'll never look for a motel again.

There's definitely something new in the air.

            It could be elation.

            Or something else. Hmmm.

The Birds are back in Town

In grade school, our teacher would challenge us to be the first to bring in the news of what she called, “A Sign of Spring,” each new sighting dutifully added to a growing list on the side blackboard each April morning under a few florid, semi-birdlike drawings she had created there in coloured chalk. Although it’s getting late to start such a list here at Shekinah, Sunday’s sightings would have included the ice on the North Saskatchewan having been broken up overnight and now floating away, and the pileated woodpecker being back in town.

He’s really a magnificent bird, is the pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus). The pileated part of his name comes from the Latin pileatus meaning “capped.” He can measure half a metre in length, is known for pecking rectangular holes in old trees and for his raucous laugh.

His favourite food is the carpenter ant, and in the few days he’s been here, he’s hacked away half the frame around one of the large windows in the Timberlodge where he’s not likely to find many ants of any kind. Our pileated woodpecker is not very bright, you see; a few ants short of a lunch, you might say. He perches on the windowsill of the nature room and squawks at his reflection repeatedly. Either he thinks he’s being challenged for territory by another male woodpecker, or he’s fallen in love with himself—like Narcissus—and can’t understand why the beautiful bird in the window won’t come out to play. In any case, he takes out his frustration on the window frames.

The robins are back too, of course, and the ducks. It was a noisy walk home from the chalet yesterday; a highly agitated drake was complaining loudly (like the pileated woodpecker, mallards have not been granted a singing voice by the creator) as two other ducks chased him back and forth above the Deer Meadow. I assume it was a fight over a hen—it almost always is, whether with drakes or young men.

I pondered again the wonders of the natural world yesterday as I re-collected wet garbage scattered over half an acre by some marauding bear, coyote or sasquatch. I don’t think our woodpecker was responsible for upsetting the can, ripping off the lid and feeding on leftover margarine oozing from a tub discarded by winter picnickers. The interface area between us and the “natural world” isn’t always that pretty.

Have a happy spring.