Of Homes and Honeysuckle

There's a shift that happens in late April - the temperature of the air remains the same, but the temperatures of the breezes change.  In early Spring they are chill and lively, they whisk in rain and mist and cool evenings and cause endless perplexity regarding the warmth of one's wardrobe.  But by May Day they are warm and comfortable, peaceful movements of the air, as if it just wants to let you know every so often that it's there, and it likes you.  That is the breeze that surrounds my thoughtful spot today.

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Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
​But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.

- Christina Rossetti, Who Has Seen The Wind?

​​I sit on a deep old porch filled with ferns and birdsongs, where I've been watching the determined efforts of a house finch trying to build a nest.  She is not the cleverest of her kind, it seems, as the ledge above the porch that she has chosen is barely an inch wide, and her construction materials seem to consist primarily of long, unwieldy lily leaves. Every time she balances two or three of the wily leaves on the ledge, our friendly breeze sends them sailing picturesquely earthward.  Yet she persists. For three days now I have watched her steady efforts, and I have dearly wished she would consider other real estate.  There's the stately spruce tree not four feet from where she's trying to build, or an old walnut just a little farther, and if she'd consider the other side of the street, which is just as lovely I'm sure, there's the deep quiet eves of a little brick church that are already home to at least one other of her compatriots. Yet she must build on her tiny ledge, she will persevere, and I rather love her for it.  
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“Hope” is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
​ That kept so many warm -

​- Emily Dickinson, “Hope” is the thing with feathers
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In a charming contrast to the risky architectural choices of the finches,  a pair of wrens have constructed an avian hobbit hole deep in the geranium pot beside me. It's the coziest looking home I could imagine, and today I spied, deep in its soft cavern, three tiny, yellow beaks. Their little grumpy frowns are just barely visible in the shadows of the grass-woven cave, they seem the epitome of security and comfort in their little home.
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​Spring drew on...and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning brighter traces of her steps.”

- Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

​The honeysuckle and privet blooming season is in full swing, so even in the midst of town every breeze is laden with clear, sweet fragrance.  I love the permeating power of honeysuckle, it isn't heady or perfumed, like a hyacinth, and it only takes a few of its pale, unassuming blooms to scent a room.  Recently my evening meanderings have taken me to a hay field behind the school, a wide open field of ragweed and vetch in the middle of town that takes your breath away in the late afternoon light.  Along the way there's a mulberry tree, (Morus rubra) covered with its odd red berries.  I'm hoping to catch them at that precise moment when they've just turned ripe and black, but before the birds devour them all!  It truly is the perfect story book tree, with its slender trunk and shaggy head of green that looks like it could be drawn in crayon curlicues, it makes me think of silk worms and travelers and ancient Chinese fairy tales.  The single wizened hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) that I've found in town is shrouded now in heavy lace, and the yarrow is popping up in full bloom by the roadside, creamy patches of white in both the tree line and the grasses like little bits of ribbon embroidery, clusters of white French knots against ripples of green satin. The lushness of that green, the brightness of the blue sky, it all is just too giddily good!  The companionable breezes follow me on a Thoughtful Walk, and I think May Day is a mite grand, don't you? 

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​Don’t you know what that is? It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is.
​And when you’ve got it, you want—oh, you don’t quite know what it is you DO want,
but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so! ​​

- Make Twain, Tom Sawyer
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