I Found Some Spring

April 27, 2024 ShirleyjdietzLeave a comment

Ever since about age eight or nine, I have been outside in April looking for spring to start in the northwoods. What I look for is a flower so small it is easily missed, but it is usually the first one to appear here. It has a special place in my heart. It’s called hepatica, mainly because of the leaf that has lobes like a liver (the prefix hepa refers to the liver). The leaf often turns dark under fallen leaves and snow but doesn’t completely deteriorate, which is probably why its flowers appear so early.

Mostly brown with a few pine greenery thrown in

I walked this week in the woods, hoping to get some inspiration from my friends, the trees. The woods are still pretty barren. The buds on the trees aren’t prominent and the landscape is pretty brown and grey. But I am delighted to have seen some spring – the flowers are here.

We always called them mayflowers, but I think that was descriptive of when they bloomed, not their actual name. White, pink, purple, blue are their usual colors and their stems have a delicate fuzziness to them. Sometimes a plant will have multiple blooms, sometimes just one. But they are life in the forest and I get a little thrill when I start finding them. It’s still April, so they are a bit early.

The leaves are from another plant, not hepatica

Maybe it’s because I am getting older that I notice aging in the forest more than I used to. I notice the older pines that are losing their lower branches, the ground around them littered with boughs that wind and snow brought down. I notice the dead trees, with bark peeling off and holes where birds have been hunting insects. Sometimes it’s a large tree that lost its hold and crashed down to the forest floor, its root bed sticking up in the air. There is a lot of destruction and death evident as a natural feature of the ecosystem. The woods looks quite messy at this time of year.

Sometimes it looks like there are more dead trees than living ones. Sad.

The woods can be a violent place of damage, destruction

Soon though, the ferns will be up, hiding much of the mess on the ground. Green leaves will cover up the mess above. Everything that died will continue to make its way back to the soil and nourish other life. It’s a beautiful pattern and has many lessons embedded in it. The patient, ever changing forest…

Maybe I was inspired out there, to record what I saw. It is a comforting thing, that spring has come at its appointed time once again. And I imagine that summer will come soon after. Seasons can be counted on, at least for now. This season, spring, is all about new things coming to life. Look for them. Just sayin’…

The early beginnings don’t shout to be seen, but they are there for those who will look.

Winter Talks Back

April 1, 2023April 1, 2023 ShirleyjdietzLeave a comment

Rage, winter, all you want. The sun is on its way out.

You don’t have to be a person to have a personality. No, you don’t.

Winter saw me buying seeds at Walmart this week and decided to throw a fit. I was awake numerous times last night, listening to the wind howling outside, coming down the fireplace chimney. Sure enough, this morning there was new snow, and drifts everywhere. Window screens were flocked with wind driven whiteness. Hungry birds and squirrels were trying to find the sunflower seeds they knew were there yesterday. It would be another day of shoveling and plowing in our community.

I got this far before the handle on the shovel broke.

I feel sorry for the geese I’ve seen flying around, looking for nesting places in the marsh. I’m a little sorry I had the car washed this week. I’d like to see green out the windows instead of white. But I am not at all dismayed by this fury. I know that the fight often intensifies because someone or something knows it’s going to lose.

Apparently winter also knows its days are numbered and wants to get in as many punches as possible before wandering off to a different hemisphere. I’m hopeful that nature is giving us a metaphor for the craziness in our world – it could be. The natural world is God’s spokesman and his creation. He came up with the plan for seasons and they’ve been happening ever since, in nature and in the history of man.

“Blessed be the name of God, forever and ever.
He knows all, does all:
He changes the seasons and guides history,
He raises up kings and also brings them down, he provides both intelligence and discernment,
He opens up the depths, tells secrets, sees in the dark – light spills out of him.”
Daniel chapter 2, The Holy Bible

So today, I am walking in snow, but also planting some seeds and putting the pots in a south facing window. I intend to wait winter out, and I think I’ll win.

November Moods

November 20, 2019November 20, 2019 ShirleyjdietzLeave a comment

One of the few colors to penetrate November’s grey cast – the greenery I gathered today.

November Moods

November is colored a hundred shades of grey

As if summer had used up all the colors in the world

Grey is an easy, undemanding color, more like a feeling

November tells me I have reasons to be thankful

Now there is time – I don’t mind looking for thankful thoughts

With every leaf I pick up, and every walk I take.

Thankful that I made it through the summer challenges

The unfamiliar roles I had to play, the confusion, helplessness

Thankful for wise ones who shared the load, who came alongside

I can hear the travelers in the sky, honking

I can see their dark V against the grey background of clouds

The comfort of knowing that nature knows it’s November

Geese take turns leading, how wise of them.

A Season of Crying

January 9, 2016January 9, 2016 ShirleyjdietzLeave a comment

I felt it coming as I was reading that morning, and it did several times. The words on the page set the tone for the whole day. The tears came again as I gave Mom a good morning hug, and again in church, and again as I talked with my friend, and oddly, again when I stopped to “air up” my tires at the WaWa station.

I’m brought into these seasons of crying not by hormone imbalance – that I recognize and this isn’t it. It happens when I realize that I’m on to something important, maybe life changing, certainly life enriching. It happens when I become aware that I’m learning something, not by my own doing, by through God’s hand, his methods, his inspiration. It’s so cool, it makes me cry.

Suddenly, I feel kind of raw, hyper-aware of people and circumstances around me. There is possible meaning, potential meaning in EVERYTHING because I feel God in action and I have no idea what he’s going to do next.

I guess, to start with, I’m just so impressed that he’s dealing with me, on a personal level, giving me something I didn’t have before. That happened, with the aforementioned book. Later, the same subject came up with a little more to think about as I listened to the sermon. And the friend thing… I think it’s pretty common to lose it when a friend who knows you well notices that something is going on. All it took was a sympathetic word and I was crying again. Sorry Christine (haha, and thanks).

The hyper-awareness part comes when I realize that I’m being taken care of by someone in high places who is listening in on every conversation, every thought and is literally everywhere around me, even as close as the air I breathe. Small favors are no longer coincidences, they are blessings and assurances.

How does the gas station work it’s way in there, you might wonder. Lately I seem to be searching for air pumps at gas stations all the time. I felt pretty lucky when I started finding that they accepted credit cards and I didn’t have to hunt for change. But last Sunday when I pulled into the WaWa, I found an air pump labeled FREE AIR! What unexpected generosity… It was a sweet machine with good instructions. It gave me a digital reading for each tire before it pumped it up to the amount I punched in. And I was crying again because it was cold and raining and I was grateful for something that worked, worked well.

Today, to match this season I’m in, the sky is also crying and I feel somehow aligned with it. We were made to have seasons, the sky and I, and I’m glad for that. Just sayin’…

Spring Up North

May 28, 2014May 28, 2014 Shirleyjdietz1 Comment

NOTHING compares to a fully loaded lilac bush

flowers seem more exciting and glorious after 6 months of winter

I’ve been “up north” waiting to see spring come, hoping I had my timing right. I think it’s here. The children have lessening interest in their schoolwork, rain has made greenness appear everywhere and swollen the ponds and marshes. The woods are full of trilliums and fiddle head ferns. Mosquitoes follow us in clouds and dandelion seeds float in the air like snow. The garden is 80% planted and the reliable onions and radishes are already making their rows visible. Tulips and petunias are in place. And the lilacs have purple buds almost to the point of opening up – one of the things I wanted most to experience. The sun brightens up the horizon at 4:30 am and it’s still light at 9 pm, reminding me that the longest day of the year is less than a month away. It’s spring, but only for a little while.

There are no days to waste, no extra hours in the spring. Last night the weather cleared after an all day rain. My brother had bought seed corn and potatoes and was not willing to wait until today to plant – after all, he had to work at his “other business” during the day and there was no guarantee that it would not rain again. Best to get at it. He could hardly sit still through supper. We planted 12 rows of corn and put up the electric fence to keep the deer from eating the tomato and squash plants. I know it works because I tested it accidentally. The gardens have a good start this year, almost two weeks ahead of last year’s schedule. Hopes are high. It’s hard to realize that it still could freeze and one cold night could set everything back.

But today is beautiful and sunny, alive with birds (and mosquitoes) and plant life. Spring up north, how I have missed it and how wonderful it is. Just sayin’…

garden, with precautions for possible freezing weather (No, no, no!)

Winter comes.

December 2, 2013December 3, 2013 Shirleyjdietz4 Comments

Hayward, Wisconsin is a place where it snows. The flakes were flying as we drove into town last Thursday for Thanksgiving. The white blanket covered the ground and the fallen logs where we walked through the woods the next day. Every gust of wind through the branches of the pines sent snow raining down all around us. At first, the cold was frightening but as I stayed out in it and worked up a sweat, I got used to it. Now, four days past Thanksgiving, it is snowing again and this time it’s a storm big enough to deserve a name. Cleon.

Our trip into town proved the roads were icy with wet slush. The sky is one solid, gray cloud that descends down to meet the horizon, cutting the visibility to about a quarter mile. Variations on muted gray, black and white with a little brown thrown in are the only colors nature has today. Things would seem dull if it weren’t for the colored lights and Christmas decorations up and down the streets. Hayward is a small town, a very small town, but it is the only real town in quite a large area of forests and lakes. And it is large enough to have a Walmart, which was a very busy place today.

I grew up here, in the country outside of Hayward. I left and came back after I was married. My children were born while I lived here and although I’ve been away again for more than twenty years it is still very homelike to me. My parents and my brother and his family still live in a development on the edge of town, on land that once belonged to my grandfather. We visited Hayward last June when it was all shades of green, brilliant blue skies, fields full of flowers, flowing rivers, and more than it’s share of the world’s mosquitoes. Now it is different. It is white, very quiet, dark a good deal of the time, and there are no mosquitoes at all.

It is really quite magical to be able to stay in one place and have it change all around you. You would think you had been transported. I’m just sayin’ I am glad to be here for this first big snow of the year.