It's Happening
Spring is emerging quickly and yet I want to hurry and hold it.
It happened after the thunder rolled on the hills and lightning flashed. I knew the energy of the storms would bring the green to the open spaces around us. Overnight, the fields began to green, and the ramps in the woods emerged. The daffodils have bloomed, and the lilacs are nearly ready to open their leaves. I track it all in a note on my phone as if I am hunting for something, tracking the conversation and where it is going.
The emergence of spring in the north is slow and subtle. In some ways, it is agonizing. It can be like unrequited love in the way that we know it will come, but it feels for all the hope we have, it only gives us a drop of it in return. Then one day it happens. It happens like a crashing wave on the shoreline. The birds bounce and chase one another in their attempt to make new babies on this land we share with one another. New life emerges all around. The tick checks become common practice. The layers of sand and mud cover the floor regularly, and the last of the snow gives way to green in even the lowest points in the most shaded spaces.
I find spring to be a time I ache to pass quickly, but also desire to hold in all its tenderness. It is quite easy to wish away the drab layers and skeletal shapes of the trees, but in the faint light of the morning, I notice the trees are changing, too. The branches have bulged with buds, and we sit in the evening, enjoying the warmth of the westerly sunlight and discussing when the day of full leafing will happen. It’s a quiet arrival, typically. Winter can feel harsh in its cold, just as spring can be soft in its appearance. Yet, even in my desire to make it go quicker, I can also feel the most intense desire to marvel at it all.
Spring in the north can blink past us, and summer can feel full and alive in ways that we feel aren’t sustainable, but we rarely want to go too quickly as well. I try sometimes to find words for the feelings I have about the shifting seasons of the north. They bring about emotions, memories, nostalgia, or even the passing of chapters in my own life, but they also remind me of the smallness of my existence. The way everything knows exactly when to jump into rhythm, and I desire more than ever to find my place there instead of the fray of the modern hustle of the world. I desire to hear the call to the soil as the tender and caretaker as much as the birds know when to migrate. Year over year, I find my place more and more in the rhythm of the land here, and it gives me deeper peace in a way that the human world continues to do the opposite.
It’s happening. Green is emerging all over the hills. While I long for it to go quicker than it has this spring, I also wish for it to remain slow and stagger in its steps towards full-on summer. As much as I want to feel the sun heat my face and sweat in the sunlight while working hard in the soil, I also ache for it to take its time.
I want to linger at the arrival of the first leaf on a favorite tree. I want to hold the tenderness of the blossom, and marvel at every sound of the birds at dawn. I want to name them as if they are parts of me I am just now discovering.
The thing I am reminded of continually as spring emerges in every direction, whether at the speed I desire or not, is that I deeply trust in nature. I trust in the rhythms and the movement. I trust that when the daffodil blooms, we aren’t going to go backwards now. I trust that when the bluebird arrives, spring really has emerged. I trust that the peas can be planted before the last snow. I trust in it so intensely, yet I can do nothing to control it. Trust usually goes hand in hand with some level of control. We trust someone with our life if we know we control the depth of our relationship or the parts they see, even in our most intimate relationships we have. We can also trust the blender we use not to hurt us because of the way we put the lid on and control it. It’s an interesting practice I have explored in my life over the last few years. How much we allow our trust to be given with our ability to control something, yet with nature, I trust it with abandon, and I have no way of controlling the weather or its rhythms, instead, I lie in the waters of its movement and let it take me where it desires.
I find myself pondering these things as I wander the woods, taking in the colors of the lichen and the first sight of the ramps in the forest floor that emerge from the layers of fallen leaves. I learn the layers of the textures and how they don’t just identify the tree, but offer lessons to learn and mimic as a human in my work. I find, once again, after a cold winter where the woods felt blank, that I have a renewed passion, trust, love, and even a melancholy feeling about the forest and all it has to offer me and all the ways I desire to protect it.
Spring is a precious time. Eating the first ramps of the season as the garlic has sprouted in our kitchen window and tastes bitter compared to the new arrival of the wild ones, I sauté them in my pan now. I watch as one thing blends into another, like the lapping of the water. It offers something at every tick of the cycle of the year we move along. I think about it all in ways that, in every other season, can feel a bit harder to see, but when all the things are new and emerging, we see how the loop closes, and I want to marvel at it all. I want spring’s speed to slow just enough that I take in every single thing I desire to be enchanted by, yet I want to feel the heat of summer, too.
After the clouds and cold, the sun feels like a gift that is hard to put words to other than simply euphoric. So we sit on the porch on the steps because we have yet to bring our chairs back out. We sit in the sunlight to have dinner in late April. There are no leaves on the trees yet, so the entire landscape feels like the early moments of dawn, where not everything is yet to awaken. Despite the lack of leaves, the sun heats our souls like the sauna did all winter. We play shadow puppets on the house as the sun sinks below the hills at nearly 9 now. What a gift it is to know we once again passed through winter not without scathing, but instead with space for new growth, also in ourselves. Space created from another winter of reflection, discarding, shedding, and healing so our soils are ready once again to grow something splendid and life-giving in all new ways.
Every season, I make a new playlist, and with the beginning of spring comes a playlist as well. I love taking time to make these lists and pull together new sounds for your season, and selfishly, I love it for myself, too. I hope it brings a good background sound to your season ahead.
Building a Regenerative Garden
Saying that you will do this this year is quite silly, because my garden that I consider resilient and regenerative at this point has taken nearly 8 years to build, but what you can do is strategize for a resilient garden and put the wheels in motion now for the future that will follow it.
If you know my work and gardening approach, you know I approach things from not just a sustainable place but from one of regeneration. A garden is an ecosystem. It isn’t a bunch of lines that lead nowhere. It isn’t one plant grouped together; it is an integrated and deeply connected system. Plants communicate in more ways than I believe we know, and they use bees, insects, and animals to do this.
I have spent years observing and trusting in the plants I work with. I have seen that when we create a network for them, they do the rest. Plants grow and then shed, and when we embrace that process, they rebuild the soil on their own. One small acre can feed us more nutrients than 10 times a monoculture crop could. It is true when you get into the numbers, and I am continually challenging myself to perceive more ways to shift our mindset on this.
To do this, we must start integrating plants. We need to look to the forest and consider how we can use the models there to teach us to build our own systems in our backyards. This will create abundance that is better for the earth, for us as humans, and that can be shared in our communities in various ways.
That said, I am starting a new series that will not be gated about our own journey with this. My goal is to share my knowledge in order to inspire and encourage others to do something similar themselves. I want others to feel empowered in a practical way. So look for this series coming in May. I shared a little note about it here, but more to come in the coming weeks!
On my mind this week
Just some things happening and that I am thinking of lately:
Sandwich by Catherine Newman: In one of my girlfriend groups, we all shared books that had really struck us, and this one was shared. I immediately hunted down a used cop,y and I can attest, this short book set in the summer in a tiny cottage with a multi-generation family is the most beautiful and textural expression of being a woman aging while being between aging parents and semi-grown children. I feel there are stories of this genre that don’t feel angry in some way. I felt this one was a true, honest picture of womanhood, aging, love, grief, and the layers that happen within a family held together imperfectly. I loved it. I cried and I laughed. My only caveat to it is that it entails stories of abortion and miscarriage, which for some women could be healing or triggering.
Learning Land: I am in my final week of my practicum course and should be complete by this time next week with all of my coursework for my design certificate from Cornell, which feels insane after nearly 2 years of doing this work while parenting and running a business. In the process, though, I have learned immense things about the land we tend. I have learned about all the layers, pockets of cold, plants, and even the history. It is like learning a new language and also reading a great book with layers, you continue to discover the more you read it over and over again.
Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway: Speaking of land and gardening, if there is a gardening book I would recommend, it is this one. I have sat with it at my chair where I have coffee every morning, and learned new things even after having it for years. It is a powerful and beautiful example of applying Permaculture to the home-scale garden, and the knowledge here is immense.
Volunteering with Local Conservation groups: Our lands and forests need us more than ever, and local conservation groups may be the best place to put your passion and effort right now. For instance, in Leelanau County at the Leelanau Conservancy, we have some amazing projects that need volunteers. Many of these projects could help shift our forests, and if you have the ability, please participate with some volunteer time. If you aren’t local, don’t worry, look up your local conservancy or conservation district and get connected! There are opportunities all over, and they are constantly in need of young, passionate people to get involved. It’s also an amazing place to meet some extraordinary humans as well.
Soil: I love the smell of it. I love the texture of it. I love moving it. I love being in it. I love it being under my nails. I like having damp knees on my pants with it on it. I love it, and after a week of rain and cool weather, the upcoming warmer days excite me beyond belief. It’s time to clean the gardens, and I have all the materials to get the work done.
Planting trees: This time of year is an excellent time to plant trees. The kids came home this week and asked if we could plant a tree, and I said, we actually have a hundred to plant just this year alone. It was a moment where I realized the impact of my work. Some of my clients have a blank palette where we will be rebuilding forests, and I began to realize we may need to quantify how many trees we have planted at Perma Studio this year.
The spring guide is here! It is for our paid subscribers so if you aren’t one yet, you can get a discount below to join and get access to a new guide every season. I have big updates coming to the summer one so sign up now.
The playlist is so good! Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for the inspiration!