Summer has arrived at The Gables! I love the in between months, spring and fall. Their titles are apt and in those seasons when the world is rolling into the living and the dead I feel so energized by the changing everything. This said, one of the loveliest things about spring is the way it feels like we’re all waiting for summer. Gauging the advance of hot weather by the height of the tulips and the greenness of the growth that surrounds us. There is the slow watch of unfolding spring bulbs into tulip, crocus, hyacinth, amaryllis and then eventually poppy, iris and allium.
The slow pace of spring is gradually and fiercely gorgeous .
Then one morning we wake up and those spring beauties have faded away like macarons in a French patisserie window and the curtains of our worlds pull back to reveal summer standing in full glory with hair to her waist and sandals on her feet. She is hot, bare armed and about to toss lightning bolts and singing rains from her fingertips.
How sudden.
How sharp.
How simple.
She hit the switch and the world is made of
the fragrance of clematis, the taste of popsicles and the swing of croquet mallets.
God bless that summertime.
She always arrives just in the nick of time.
This afternoon I have spread a blanket out on the lawn, beneath the plum trees, in the cool of dappled shade. It’s windy. I’m listening to the voice of air as it speaks through the trees. Air is nothing without a vessel with which to make itself known. I know it is because I hear it combing through the stature of the blue spruce, elm, catalpa and plum trees. I know it is because I hear it moving bird song with it’s muscle. I know it is because I can watch it push at the world around me, symphonic, as though it has the hands of a conductor and the music is for the making. I know it is because I feel it passing over my skin and smoothing running fingers through my hair.
I cannot taste it unless it carries dust into my open mouth
nor can I smell it until pushes the scent of lilacs up against my ol factory senses.
I cannot see it unless it’s controlling the world
around me (for all things must bend to the wishes of the wind).
I cannot understand it unless I watch it manipulate my environment.
This is what I’m busy with today.
I’m understanding the wind.
A beautiful Sabbath to you all.
I hope you found rest for your souls.
xx
The Plume
PS I know there have been plenty of creature photos lately so if you loathe creatures, my apologies, certainly! I’ve been photographing the beasts a plenty for RW namely. He reads this blog by phone in his smokejumper bunk house. I know he misses our beasties and am trying to help take the edge off with the odd handful of images of our fur and feather babies as often as possible. If you’re fit to be tied by all the fur and feathers just do slow blinks while you’re scrolling through my blog and I promise you’ll nearly miss it all!
PSS
The new neighbor is moving in. I was taking out the compost while he was unloading his truck. I’d have stopped to say hello but he had a phone growing out of his head. On the seat of his truck was a taxidermied duck in a glass box. Now read my tea leaves please — what on earth could it mean?!!
