All posts by laurahinnj

Seasons, Snapshots

Hellebore

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Springtime and its frantic longing for anything new and fresh and green brought me to the horticultural park today, desperate for a change in scenery from the browns and grays, as much as I’ve been enjoying them. I’m in a Spring state of mind and arrived fully anticipating a display of flowering trees and tulips more to be expected in late April than late March.

What was I thinking?

Early Spring is subtle and its quiet splendors ask only that you look past the melting snow and dead grass and mud puddles to find beauty in the delicate green of a hellebore at your feet or the blushing red maples on the hillside. Every year, every Spring, I need to remind myself that Spring isn’t really a season unto itself, but rather a collection of moments and, above all, a time of transition. A period of waiting and watching. The signs now are mostly small and easy to miss, but they’re there.

“Once a day and sometimes more
I look out my day-dream door
To see if spring is out there yet
I’m really anxious, but mustn’t fret.
I see the snow a melting down
and lots of mud and slush around
I know the grass will surely sprout
and birds and flowers will come about.
But why oh why does it take so long?
I’m sure the calendar can’t be wrong.
Sunshine fills my heart with cheer
I wish that spring were really here.“
– Edna T. Helberg, Longing for Spring
Whatever

Confession time

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I have phone issues. More specifically, phone company issues. I’ve just finished writing out the monthly bills, and among them was a $16.52 check to AT&T, who is our long-distance provider. I don’t need long-distance service; in fact I haven’t placed a long-distance call in the last three months, at least. So why am I getting a bill from AT&T for $16.52?

Non-usage.

AT&T makes me pay them $5.00 a month plus taxes and surcharges because I don’t use their service. Isn’t that un-American? Unpatriotic even? Sneaky and underhanded? Like bad business?

The last time AT&T decided to charge a monthly non-usage fee I called them and signed myself up for a plan that avoided the non-usage fee by paying 25 cents a minute on any long-distance calls. 25 cents a minute is a lot to pay to call my brother who lives in the next county (somehow considered long-distance), but I went along with the plan to avoid paying for something specifically because I was not making use of it.

Now AT&T has decided to charge me 25 cents a minute on any calls I do make, or the monthly $5.00 non-usage fee – whichever will put more money in their bloated pockets. Is At&T that desperate for money?

Dissing AT&T feels sort of like sacrilege to me. My father worked for them for his whole career. My brother worked for them for his whole career until they layed him off as my father lay dying (nice – thanks AT&T!)

Part of me feels silly for fussing over it at all. I pay three times that amount for a cell phone I hardly use – mostly for calling my brother (to avoid that 25 cents a minute charge) and for emergencies – but it’s the point of the thing, you know?

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –


My other brother, Brian, the real writer (and poet) in the family has finally decided to stop lurking and left a comment (and a poem) on this post the other day. Have a look!

Bunnies

3/21/07 Mid-week bunny fix

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I’ve been trying to get a photo of the bunnies that shows their size relative to one another, but I’m afraid this isn’t it.

😉

If nothing else you get an idea of the kooky things I try to let everybunny have a little freedom without hurting one another in the process. Cricket is the big, big-eared bunny closest to the exercise pen that serves as a temporary fence. Little loppy-eared Peeper is on our side of the fence waiting for Cricket to get close enough so that she can attempt a bite at Cricket’s nose through the fence. Boomer is reclining in a sunbeam in the background, unconcerned with the feminine territorial battle being played out before him. As long as he has a comfortable spot to nap in, he’s happy.

Peeper weighs less than half what the Flemmies weigh, yet she is the more aggressive one and spent all her *out* time at the fence, rather than exploring the rest of the house. Once I got tired of keeping her from biting off Cricket’s nose and put her back in *her* room, she promptly fell asleep for the remainder of the afternoon.

Exercise pens make a great safe place, indoors or out, to exercise a bunny that lives in a cage. They’re also an excellent alternative to cages, so long as your bunny isn’t a jumper. Peeper could never live in one because she can jump higher than the pen when she means to.

Whatever

Word cloud 2

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I posted one of these last year around this time and thought I would try it again to see how it had changed. The idea is that it analizes your blog and lists the most common words in the *word cloud*. The nicest change since last year is that I see many of your names there. Thanks for your continuing friendship.

In case you’re feeling mindless also and would like to give it a try – click here.
Garden, Seasons

Winter bloom

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Maybe yesterday’s greenhouse beauties were too gaudy for your taste – it’s easy to be bold and beautiful when you’re lovingly tended by paid staff and live in a temperature and humidity-controlled environment.

Is your preference instead for the frilly fragrant blooms of this witch hazel in the snowbound garden? Do you find their ruffled paper-confetti flowers more beautiful, or admirable, for their brash defiance of the snow and ice?

Just asking!

Maybe I’m looking for meaning where it doesn’t exist, or playing with metaphors just to amuse myself, but not a single person paid any mind to this plant as they passed it by on their way into the greenhouses yesterday during my visit to the garden center. Primroses and pansies and coddled orchids were worthy of attention, but not this common plant putting on its vernal show for all to witness for free.

Spring is where you find it and, of course, where you choose to look. I’m at the point that any flower, or other sign of spring, however humble, causes me to stop and take notice. All the little steps away from winter bring us closer to warmth and the greening of the landscape.

When the retailers decide to flood the market with colorful flowers really has nothing to do with spring. If we followed them, we’d be celebrating Halloween in late August. We laugh at that idea, but are willing to buy into it in late March when we’re desperate for an end to winter and cold. But if you have a garden or are attentive to the signs, even the green shoots of snowdrops and crocuses, without any blooms yet, can work their magic and convince you that spring is on its way, however reluctantly it comes sometimes.

The miracle of March is working, mostly unseen. By May, when all the world is green and humming with life, we’ll have lost all sense of proportion. For now the first crocus or the simple witch hazel are a gentle reminder that spring isn’t just a dream.

Garden, In the neighborhood

Spring tonic

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What better antidote to snow and rain than a visit to a greenhouse! I was smart and left my money at home and just wandered around enjoying the moist warm air and the colorful flowers. I was very tempted by these *designer* baskets (with price tags to match), but think I could put together something just as nice with things I already have once I find some little pansies that need a home. I feel a little silly taking photos in a public place, but find them useful later when I’m looking for ideas and inspiration for container plantings.
Whatever

Don’t like the weather?

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Not much to say today, but I do have an addition to the list of things I love about my job. The weather for the last week has been unseasonably warm; near to 70 degrees on Wednesday. But late yesterday a cold front came through and it’s been raining ice and snowing all day today. The view outside the copy room window at the office was very wintery: I often stand at this window and watch for a Great Blue Heron that visits our *pond* – usually there’s a few Canada Geese and some Mallards. Last summer we had a bunch of baby snapping turtles dig their way out of the banks of the pond and under the chain link fence that surrounds it. I was talking about the weather, wasn’t I? See how easily I get sidetracked by birds! Anyway… so it was very cold out today. Winter on the outside.


But inside it was a balmy 81.5 degrees! Yesterday it got up to 84. A summer’s day to go with my coworker’s tropical postcards there in the background. It’s so nice to be dressed for the winter weather and have to sit at your desk and sweat day after day! I love it!

The summertime is even better because I can go to the office and freeze my ass off! I have this pretty blue serape from Mexico that I wrap myself in for the summer months because it’s usally about 50 degrees.

I’m trying to be funny, but I sense that I’m not fooling anyone here. So I’ll end this with an invitation to any of you that are suffering through the last few months of winter in the frozen north to come and visit me at work someday. Whatever the weather, you can count on the opposite once you step inside. I’ll be the one alternately fuming or freezing in the back corner.

Finding water, Small truths, Wanderings

Where is your Walden?

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Thoreau believed that we all have our solitary places; places we go to in order to escape a world that closes in on us; a place neither physical nor geographical, but instead mental – a state of mind that exists within all of us and which offers the chance to think and to listen.

Thoreau called his place “Walden” and I’m wondering about what name I might give to my solitary place. Where is it that I take myself to be away from the here and now? Would it be a place like this sand trail through the Pine Barrens? Is that solitary place more about being very present in the moment and separate from memory and its weight? What view in my mind’s eye quiets the thoughts and endless questions from an overactive mind?

There is a place that I feel peace and safety apart from the world, but I don’t know that it’s one that I can photograph. It’s part blue sky and loneliness, the music of water and birdsong, the dazzle of sun and the whisper of wind, and the question of what lies ahead, just around the bend and out of view.