I was designed for green grass
Toes sunken deep into unseens and sunshine.
Under a blue celestial sphere
tan shoulders - brown as my coffee,
turn a richer shade of brown.
I am freckled
Head to toe
connect the dots - game of hide and seek.
This is the season,
my season...
the season of unfurling
and coming into my own.
I sit here typing to you, eating edemame thinking about spring. How can I not with the newly exposed leaves and spring green that emanates from every inch of outside!? Spring to me is about firsts. There are so many firsts... spring is the beginning of it all and that's exactly why I love and revel in spring so deeply. I used to think summer was my favorite, and when the snow falls I say "this is my favorite!", but no it's spring. You wait so long for it... and anything you pine and wait for is worth it. It's the something that makes your heart pitter patter, thud thud, and boom boom until you can barely contain the sound bouncing around your ear drums. Spring is beginnings.
Spring is the beginning of warmth... bright light through the trees!
It's the beginning of color... after a season of blue, grey, and white... it's a feast for the eyes...
Spring is when children grow just a little more and try out challenges they have never attempted before...
Spring is birth...
And spring is the opportunity to be born again... into something better than before.
One can not explain the connection to a place they may have. Perhaps it's just a love for what's there or the feeling you get when visiting... but I feel in my heart a place you feel connected to means that somehow over time and space... perhaps a past life, you had a reason to love this spot and once again love the same place but without knowing exactly why or how.
For me... this is and has been the Liberty Loop. It's a 2.5 mile walk around a large marsh area (Audubon Reserve), where a plethora of different bird-life resides and flourishes. Egrets, herons, swans, geese, mallards, bald eagles, hawks... and well my list could go on and on of the feathereds to be seen. Turtles... my favorite small aquatic creature perch on mounds of grasses, logs, and rocks. They mull around in depths of water that are just low enough for them to feed and wander... like a toddler in the shallow end of the pool, perfectly delighted to be doing their turtle thing.
I walk this place regularly and feel at peace. My feet take the pace of the beats thumping throughout my ears from my ipod that plays emits bands such as The Paperkites, Xx, and The Staves. This place isn't meant for anything too loud or demanding... it deserves a background set for heartbeats... not drumbeats.
The Liberty Loop changes by the day and season. Not only by scenery but by wildlife. My place is a place for holding hands, walking silently, and smiling at the giggling children running up on geese.
I can think clearly at the Liberty Loop, feel deeply there, and find a rhythm and space that I need to feel what I need to feel. It's a place I try and not answer texts, return emails, or even touch my phone at all unless it's related to changing a song.
Everyone needs a place to go, to feel in, to breathe in... everyone needs that serene banquet of earth and sky and feathers.
There's is mental relief to be had in the dirt. The release of bottled up emotions just seem to sink out through your feet and back into the earth. The ground is so receiving, malleable, and reliable. I don't pretend to be a master gardener, know every single plant by name (although I do know a ton), or think I can grow every little seed in the Burpee catalouge. What I do know is I need my garden as much as it needs me. That this winter was so long and so cold that it seemed like forever until I could get dirt under my nails and into each crease of each of my palms.
My garden never stays the same from year to year. I'm never patient to just let things grow and tend to themselves. My ADD tendencies need to move, relocate, and dig up what grew in one spot last year but seems oh so much better over here this year. I split the day lillies into smaller mounds and sink them into places that my eye has decided is just right. As I decorate my patches of dirt like I would a piece of bristol board, smoothing the surface and making things to my liking... I envision the growth to come. In my mind I can already smell the peonies and hear the buzzing of bees.
This year another piece of lawn is gone... less to mow right!? HA! Every pleasant and warm day has been spent building blisters on my hands and collecting mosquito bites like girl scout badges. It's a game of connect the dots from my ankles to my neck.
Tis the life of a gardener!
This year I will be taking a more serious approach to vegetable gardening. My husband is making a beautiful raised bed for me and I have already put up chicken wire fencing complete with burgundy green beans that turn green when cooked planted below. I want to have enough vegetables to not only provide for my own family but to give to neighbors and friends. I know that sounds a bit ambitious, but I'm an ambitious kind of girl!
What about you!? Garden plans?
It's spring, and spring means turtling season! If your a regular reader you know I have a soft heart for any creature, but especially for turtles making their way across, or idly sitting in the middle of the road. Let no turtle go un-saved when it presents itself in my path.
In the past week I have saved four turtles, just a wee fraction of the tally to come... last years total exceeding twenty I name and number each of my shelled friends.
Please don't hit or run over a turtle, love the earth and all it's creatures. After all, it's a true pleasure to help a traveler on their journey to greener waters.
I may be home now and acclimating myself back into routine, but that doesn't mean I still don't have a bunch to share with you from my adventures in Texas. My last full day in Texas found us traveling a few hours out into the flat country farm land of that grand ol' state. It's blue bonnet season in Texas and it's just starting to really demand attention.
Blue bonnets are the texan state flower and when you see them you know exactly why.
We stopped for just about every patch we saw, sitting amongst the petals and catching each other in awkward poses trying to capture just the perfect shot. It was refreshing to be with someone else who also gets right down on their bellies for a photo. Someone who knows it's not just about pointing and shooting, but about a careful eye and seeing what others don't.
The blue bonnets are mingled with the bright orange and coral blooms of Indian Paintbrush, the subtle pinks show off as wild poppies and wild phlox. It seems flowers never come in combinations that aren't flattering. It's as if they know and prepare for the show that is spring.
Being amongst this jaw dropping display only makes me more eager for New York's own spring exposition. It was hard coming home from warm climates to cold. My first day back found me layering up and not wanting to exit my warm blankets in the morning. I brought home a tan, a renewed heart, and a missing of a friend I wish I could see on a regular basis. Till next blue bonnet season Jax! I'll be waiting for your visit here when the apples turn red.
Our day started in our own separate fluffy hotel beds, stretching out and saying to each other "what do we wanna do!?".
I have been driving in Texas!! HA! I'm a bad passenger and often find myself nauseated and feeling close to death. Okay maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it feels like that when I am in the throws of a stomach turning bout of UGH! So yup, I've been driving! It's fun and Jax makes an awesome travel guide. It's so refreshing to not be on any type of schedule.
We go, do, and drink coffee whenever and wherever we want.
Breakfast at Starbucks and a drive onto the Galveston Ferry. I have never been on a ferry let alone drove a car up onto one! It was such an experience! Once securely on board and moving, we got out of the vehicle and perched over the edge of the boat. The laughing gulls chased us as the pelicans which I have aptly named aviators for their precise flying skill graced the sky off shore. Back in the car, driving off the ferry, we drove twenty or so miles on High Island where we checked out the local graveyard and after made our way to the beach and stayed for hours just combing through piles of shells looking for sea glass until we decided we were hungry and had to pee.
Turkey wraps, a soda I couldn't open, and a bag of chips and we were setting up camp back on the beach!
There are only so many chips you can eat in one sitting and we found the perfect way to use the rest... by sharing!
These feathered friends had extreme precision! After throwing chips to them we began to throw them straight into the air over our heads! These laughing gulls knew where it was at for sure!
We said goodbye to the beach, rode the ferry again, and drove back to Galveston and walked the strand. There I bought my first cowboy hat (straw one) and some souvenirs to bring back home. I have fallen in love with italian sodas which are flavor mixed with I think sparkling water. My first one was a lemon drop, yesterday I decided a perfectly pink strawberries and cream was in order. After a long day of adventure we two girls were worn the #$%# out. Crashing early back at Jacquie's humble abode was a immediate necessity.
Did I mention I saw dolphins!?
Graffiti art IS art. It's an amazingly colorful and inspiring medium I have completely no understanding of. The idea of using different tips on the end of spray cans to complete a larger than life perfectly blended piece of art just blows my mind. Who knows, maybe someday I will have the opportunity of trying out some can art!
After poppin' tags at the nearest thrift outlet we took a hop, skip, and not even a jump to a series of buildings amazingly decorated with works of evolving and ever changing art. This project is called the Houston Art Project, supported by the Bread of Life and funded by the Rice University.
Jax and I wandered down paint laden corridors as we talked in our best white girl street slang. Cameras snapping and lines like "I'll pop a cap in yo ass" echoed off the walls.
Here are images I took at the Houston Art Project. I was blown away at every turn, by every new amazing piece of WOW!
I told Jax I would pay her a whole dollar to lay on one of those couches, but she declined (come on! lol).
In my opinion every town, city, and place should donate an abandoned building to this sort for cause. Not only is the cause great, but the public gets to experience graffiti art in a positive light.
Five thirty in the morning is a strange time of day if you ask me. It's still dark, the body fights against you if you have a reason to wake. I make my psychiatrist appointments for 6:15, and I make them for a very real reason. Of course I need my prescriptions, but another reason is something all together more pure.
It's still so cold in the morning, 20 degrees if your lucky and as I get in the car shivering gently I wait for the heat to come to a comfortable enough warmth to blast it full strength. At this hour, there are no children in my car so I can put on my music, and I can put it up loud. I sing along pretending I am just as good as the artist singing it... and just take this time to be alone with my thoughts. I used to enjoy this sort of time when I once had a regular 9-5 o' clock job. I watch cars file out of their driveways, lights on, like ants climbing out from an ant hill. The only souls awake at this hour are those going to work, farmers tending to their cows, and me. Or atleast it feels that way, it could just be me and my good imagination. At times on this drive I can convince myself I am the only one awake at all.
I arrive with a few minutes to spare, step out with a shiver and skip quickly inside. A jolt of un-needed anxiety leaps up my throat so I disguise it by looking at the poorly un-focused/over sized photography on the wall. He calls me in and I follow him down the hall that is never clean. My appointment is quick and could probably be quicker if it wasn't for the doctors bad jokes about the pope and comments on how he can better decorate his office, but how he has to do it so there is nothing a patient can throw at him. He's very forgetful. I could tell him the same thing each time I see him, and the next time, and he wouldn't remember I mentioned it the time before. I observe people like a scientist observes a molecule through a lens. I always have, I love doing it. The doctor continues to tell me how one patient once tried to kill him, yet when I paid my copay and made my next appt. that he has scissors and a stapler at less than arms reach from me... I point this out to him and he chuckles and makes another poorly planned joke... it really cracks him up! I laugh because of how hard he laughs at himself. It's good to make yourself laugh I think. Nah, I know it is! Before I leave he asks me what time I want my appointment and I say "same time"... "your a real trooper" he replies. I shake my head no and say, "I do it for the sunrise".
I do it for this...
and I definitly do it for this...
I do it for the sky that starts off lavender then moves forward to so many other beautiful hues. I feel exceptionally blessed to see the sun rise. It's special... and the real finale is when the actual sphere of light peeks over the mountains. It's amazing I don't run off the road how often I look behind me and into the rear view mirror. I wonder if everyone is just as excited to see the day begin a new. To hear the chatter of red wings and see the flutter of newly welcomed robins as they wake from their hiding places. The sides of every house is a fire, without smoke or destruction. They are bathed in an amber ale color, they glow and it looks so warm. I arrive home just in time to smell coffee, kiss my family, and anticipate the next time I get to see the sky burst into flame. I don't take such amazing feats of nature lightly. When is the last time you watched the sun rise?
