Pacific chorus frogs are singing — a sure sign we’ve made it through another winter. Meteorologists may say it’s not official until March 20, but frogs’ joyous, noisy courting ritual announces that spring has arrived. Their joy is contagious.
And the first sunny day turns a switch: Suddenly we find more reasons to be thrilled by the great awakening of spring. Every day the sun shifts higher in the sky, making each day longer than the last. Buds are swelling and showing green. Peonies and anemones are coming up. The earliest bloomers — hellebores, crocus and snowdrops, for instance — are showing up and showing off.
A neighbor once lamented that the world looked its worst at the beginning of March: He was tired of looking at piles of rotting leaves, skeletal trees, and brown grass. He even complained that the rampant blackberry vines looked close to death. But what you look at is what you see. Today, in addition to all those buds and early bloomers, I saw the first ladybug of spring.
In the hearts of gardeners, the urge to dig and plant is waking up. We are rummaging around in the seed packets we never got around to planting last year, and thinking about what we will do differently this time around sun. Might this be the year we get cantaloupe to ripen? What varieties of tomatoes shall we grow? All this is joy in a different key. It’s the joy of anticipation of the growing season to come. We look forward to kneeling at the edge of the garden, getting our hands dirty, and preparing to plant spinach and peas.
This is a time of reconnection after a cold dark season of absence. We’re back where we belong. And that’s another profound joy: the feeling of belonging to our gardens, and to the greening world. This is a sense of belonging every bit as basic as our need to belong to each other.
The difference between working in the garden and going for a hike is this: on a hike, we admire the natural world; in the garden, we are partners with it.
As each spring passes, we have more springs behind us and fewer ahead of us. We never know how many. So at any age, it’s foolish to tune out singing frogs and ignore early flowers and swelling buds. And there’s a bonus for paying attention: the more we engage our eyes, ears and hands with this year’s reawakening, the more we will know to look for next spring. Every year, we can see more, learn more, and feel the joy of spring more deeply.
We have never needed this joy and sense of belonging more. Right now, we face the turmoil of a looming constitutional crisis, the federal abandonment of efforts to avert climate catastrophe, promote racial and gender equity, and reduce economic inequality.
We need an antidote to the vibrating anxiety about the state of our country. Spending more time outdoors — in our gardens, in the woods, on the water and in the mountains — we may find the peace we need to persevere in our search for a way forward.
Jill Severn writes from her home in Olympia, where she grows vegetables, flowers, and a small flock of chickens. She loves conversation among gardeners. Start one by emailing her at jill@theJOLTnews.com
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marygentry
Yes to the frogs and the buds. Fir several weeks now I have also thrilled to the birds in the morning. I have miniature daffodils in open bloom right now and an abundance if buds not quite ready to surprise me. Thanks for the rrminder.
Friday, February 28 Report this
Chappellg
Lovely comments. So true that the garden gives us respite from politics. And I love the metaphor of being in partnership with nature. Your column helped me recognize the stirring of nature’s blood as well as my own. Soon I’ll be planting seeds & putting out mason bees!
Thank you.
Friday, February 28 Report this
SecondOtter
Not only are the frogs already laying egg masses in our ornamental pond, but the Tree Swallows showed up three days ago!
Sunday, March 2 Report this
TheGreatAnon
I appreciate what Jill is trying to do here. Rejoice! Spring has sprung, all things begin anew. Cool
But here's the ugly truth. The cycles of Nature I grew up with are badly broken.
In far NE Olympia the frog chorus lasted a single night with less volume and not in the accustom places. Lake Litchfield was silent. 40 years ago the frog chorus was deafening and lasted for weeks as a couple different species made their amorous intentions known. Barn & Cliff swallows have become transients, no longer spending the summer here. The fall invasion of flying male ants, and the orb weaver spiders that used to be fat and prolific feeding off them, haven't been seen for a decade. I remember when local creeks reeked from the heaps of decaying chum salmon. We had to lock our dogs up to keep them from getting salmon poisoning. I haven't heard the hoot of a Barred Owls roosting in the trees of Mission Creek nature park for a year. When was the last time you saw a bat?
Yeah, gardening is fun and valuable but I fear pollyannish stuff like Jill has served up is doing us more harm than good.
Monday, March 3 Report this
OldKid
To the GreatAnon,
Whether we glory over our precious signs of spring, prepare our gardens, and share our joy as winter ends, or not, is up to us. Your choice to lament what we've lost is also something we go through, if we're old enough to have known past decades of flourishing nature.
Where you go off-track is when you criticize Ms. Severn. Sharing one's joy is never the wrong thing to do.
Friday, March 7 Report this
burkemeister
OldKid. Except in what she calls the "joy" of escaping politics. She laments, "We have never needed this joy and sense of belonging more. Right now, we face the turmoil of a looming constitutional crisis, the federal abandonment of efforts to avert climate catastrophe, promote racial and gender equity, and reduce economic inequality." Instead of simply celebrating the beauty of spring, she couldn't resist making it political. She had me—until that. Perhaps she forgets that this country holds a diversity of political views. Rather than uniting people through the shared wonder of the changing season, she chose to inject her own politics into the moment.
Friday, March 7 Report this