The weather in Shipka has been quite warm and wet lately – the perfect mix for waking up the garden. With temperatures becoming more stable, it’s finally time to get started.
Everywhere you look, things are turning green. Actually, a lot of it is already fully green. It feels like everything suddenly came back to life. When you look up at the mountains, they seem to change every day – greener, fuller, more alive. A great time for long walks in nature!
This also means it’s time to get our hands in the soil and start planting and sowing seeds. You look at the forecast, check/prepare the ground and decide what can go in. Some of the things we’ve planted over the past few weeks are: Potatoes, beans, corn, beetroot, salads, rocket, kohlrabi, carrots, onions, garlic, parsnip, … The list keeps growing, just like the garden itself.
Whatever it is that you plant, the act of planting always comes with a bit of excitement. You don’t know exactly how things will turn out, but if feels good to start. To begin the growing season. There’s something hopeful about planting this time of year. You don’t know what the weather will do next, or if the slugs will beat you to the lettuce – but still you plant. Because you trust that things will grow.
And that’s maybe the heart of spring. Not just the sunshine or the flowers (though those help), but the return of hope. Quiet, steady, muddy-booted hope. After the stillness and reflection of the winter, life is moving – and so are we.
Everything seems to speed up now – plants, birds, bugs and the to-do list. There’s always something to be done, but it’s a good kind of busy. It’s energizing. The kind of work that leaves you tired in the best way.
Mary Oliver once wrote:
“You listen and you know, You could live a better life than you do, be softer, kinder. And maybe this year you will be able to do it.”
Spring brings more than growth. It brings a kind of invitation or reminder – to notice, to care, to begin again. And maybe even to be a little softer.
Here is the full poem of Mary Oliver, “North Country”:
In the north country now it is spring and there is a certain celebration. The trush has come home. He is shy and likes the evening best, also the hours just before morning; in that blue and gritty light he climbs to his branch, or smoothly sails there. It is okay to know only one song if it is this one. Hear it rise and fall; the very elements of you should shiver nicely. What would spring be without it? Mostly frogs. But don’t worry, he arrives year after year, humble and obedient and gorgeous. You listen and you know you could live a better live than you do, be softer, kinder. And mabye this year you will be able to do it. Hear how his voice rises and falls, there is no way to be sufficiently grateful for the gifts we are given, no way to speak the Lord’s name often enough, though we do try. And especially now, as that dappled breast breathes in the pines and heaven’s windows in the north country, now spring has come, are opened wide
Wow Tirsa wel done and enjoyed reading it