Piedmont Spring

Spring has come, with life emerging from the soil beneath dead leaves and branches bare just days ago. Each day brings subtle changes in the swelling buds of trees, coloring the hillsides in red and beige and palest green. One day the understory in the woods is bare. A day later viburnums and buckeyes display the delicate green of tiny new leaves.

Magenta buds cluster along the crooked branches of redbuds. Trout lilies swim in thousands down the slopes near the creeks, showing speckled blue-green leaves and tiny pale yellow flowers facing down. Daffodils shout spring in the suburbs; trout lilies whisper the resurrection of life in the Piedmont woods.

Windflowers sway in the breeze sweeping along the creek, tiny and white, sized for fairies. Spring - fleeting, faithful, miraculous.

Bluebirds and Winter's End

One of the pleasures of winter in the South is the grace of spring days that appear ahead of season. Sunday was one of those days of blue sky, soft air and warm sun, the more exquisite for its rarity in an unusually cold February. The natural world here registers the call of the warming sun before the calendar does. The early daffodils, crocuses and hyacinths began pushing through the soil and broke ground a couple of weeks ago. Birds are singing again, announcing their presence as nesting season approaches.

A pair of bluebirds diligently shops for homes. They perch on the roof, peering at the former hole in the gutter (patched) where they nested two seasons ago. They go in and out of the hole high up in the house’s cedar siding where they raised babies last year. I buy them a bluebird box and mount it 6 feet high on a pine tree outside the dining room window. Within four hours, the bluebirds discover it. The male goes in first, while the female perches on the rim of the hole.

The bluebirds are careful house shoppers. They return again and again for inspections. They perch on nearby branches, assessing the neighborhood. They check out the birdbath and land on the feeder, flying away after discovering nothing but sunflower seeds.

Yesterday the bluebirds began defending the box. The male drove away a white-breasted nuthatch pecking on the tree outside the box. The female darted out of the  box to chase another female bluebird that had landed on the outside of the hole.

I haven’t yet seen the birds gathering materials for a nest. It’s the end of February and the cold has not yet receded. But nature is quietly preparing for the burst of life in spring.

A Little Flower

One plant has bloomed quietly for weeks at the darkest time of the year. Its first pure white flower, shyly turned away from the sun and angling downward, appeared just before Christmas. It bloomed patiently through the frigid cold of early January. Even now, it has one bud waiting to open.

This little plant is Helleborus niger, or Christmas rose, a relative of the more common Lenten rose. If it bloomed amid the profusion of spring or early summer, I probably would not much notice the little flower. But in January it is a reminder that the garden is still alive and a testament to the variety of life.

Winter Walks

Winter walks bring subtle joys. Today, my first ever sighting of a pileated woodpecker, crested head bobbing rhythmically as it knocked at a beech tree in the woods near Bolin Creek.

Tree trunks dominate the January woods, with nothing green except for scattered patches of Christmas ferns. I couldn’t resist embracing a giant beech next to the creek. My arms reached just halfway around it.

I am grateful for the patches of woods that remain in the Chapel Hill area for woodpeckers and people to enjoy.

Mistletoe Joy

Sometimes you really do find what you’re looking for when you least expect it. I had been disappointed so far this Christmas season in the search for mistletoe. The Hogans didn’t have it this year at their holiday decoration party. On walks I’d seen it high in old oaks in the woods, tantalizing but 70 feet out of reach.

So yesterday I was surprised and delighted when I parked my car outside the post office in Chapel Hill and saw mistletoe growing just above eye level on an old fruit tree. I couldn’t believe my luck.

I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed. Should I break off a sprig immediately, or could I wait until after mailing the package? I didn’t want to seem greedy. A middle-aged woman sat in the passenger seat of the car next to mine staring ahead, oblivious to the mistletoe glistening in the sun.

Mistletoe, Phoradendron leucarpum, is a parasite that grows on old trees, mainly oaks. Birds spread mistletoe when they pick up the sticky white berries and inadvertently attach them to tree limbs.

How could mistletoe dotted with white berries remain within easy reach during Christmas season outside of the post office, all places? Some women have an eye for jewelry, some men for cars. I look at plants and the natural setting – and now nature was giving me a gift.

Indeed, the ancients believed that encountering mistletoe was reason for celebration. We know mistletoe best for the tradition, dating back to at least sixteenth century England, of hanging a sprig in a doorway underneath which a man and woman greet with a kiss. Mistletoe was revered in ancient times, when the appearance of living green on barren tree branches in the dark days near the winter solstice seemed miraculous.

The Greek Pliny the Elder, writing in the decades before Christ, documented the belief that mistletoe contained the living spirit of the sacred oak tree. And the Druids worshiped mistletoe, believing it to have mystical properties.

Finding the mistletoe made me feel like a small child on Christmas morning. I couldn’t wait to get home and string it up in the kitchen, a lovely reminder to kiss my husband.

Pumpkin Magic

This fall I decided to deploy an extra weapon in my fight against the seasonal blues: witchcraft. One carved pumpkin to represent the state of mind I am trying to banish and a second pumpkin to represent the feeling I am seeking to achieve. One angry pumpkin, one happy pumpkin.

I sketched the faces, and my husband and I spent a couple of enjoyable hours on a Saturday afternoon carving them. I felt particularly pleased with these pumpkins – not only was the exercise therapeutic, but we avoided the waste typically associated with pumpkin carving. We toasted the pumpkin seeds and made a delicious sweet-and-sour pumpkin concoction with the cutout flesh.

But nature always has the last laugh with the gardener. The happy pumpkin contracted a case of mold that blackened its eye, though it’s still smiling bravely through a collapsing smile. Meanwhile, the angry pumpkin remains in perfect health. So, as an American citizen, I am exercising my right to be inconsistent in my religious faith. I have withdrawn my belief in black magic.

Gardening in November

Dead leaves and pine needles coat the ground, but the hickories glow golden and I’m glad to see the sun after a few days of gloom. November is my least favorite month.

I’m usually tired of the garden by now, and there’s not much to look at anyway, aside from a pale purple carpet of eastern aromatic asters near a giant boulder. October’s slanting light is beautiful, but by November the days are short and thick clouds often block the sun. I have the gift – or curse – of sensitivity to light, and I feel the change of seasons as my outlook darkens and all I want to do is sleep. It’s a season of death and dormancy, and it seems ridiculous to hope, or even think of spring, before the leaves have finished falling from the trees.

Yet I count on gardening for a sense of renewal, so I was glad it was my day to volunteer at the North Carolina Botanical Garden. We raked paths, pulled bittersweet and honeysuckle, picked up sticks. Inexplicable that these tasks could be so satisfying. But the sun was warm and I find it impossible to brood when gardening.

Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh advises seekers of mindfulness to devote full attention to what you’re doing, no matter how mundane. When you wash the dishes, wash the dishes, he says. Easy to say and almost impossible to do, but I come closer in the garden than elsewhere. When you weed, weed. When you rake, rake.