Springtime Thoughts

Springtime Thoughts

April - Quotations

"O Day after day we can't help growing older.
Year after year spring can't help seeming younger.
Come let's enjoy our winecup today,
Nor pity the flowers fallen."
-  Wang Wei, On Parting with Spring

"When the time is ripe for certain things,
these things appear in different places in the manner
of violets coming to light in the early spring."
-  Farkas Bolyai

April - Quotations

"Every spring is the only spring - a perpetual astonishment." 
-  Ellis Peters

"April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain."
-  T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922

April - Quotations

Beltane Celebrations

Beltane, May Day, Easter Celebrations

Neo-Pagans, Druids, Wiccans

Spirituality and Gardening

"Many Wiccans and Pagans celebrate Beltane.  It is one of eight solar Sabbats.  This holiday incorporates traditions from the Gaelic Bealtaine, such as the bonfire, but it bears more relation to the Germanic May Day festival, both in its significance (focusing on fertility) and its rituals (such as May pole dancing).  Some traditions celebrate this holiday on May 1 or May day, whiles others begin their celebration the eve before or April 30th. Beltane has long been celebrated with feasts and rituals. The name means fire of Bel; Belinos being one name for the Sun God, whose coronation feast we now celebrate. As summer begins, weather becomes warmer, and the plant world blossoms, an exuberant mood prevails. In old Celtic traditions it was a time of unabashed sexuality and promiscuity where marriages of a year and a day could be undertaken but it is rarely observed in that manner in modern times. In the old Celtic times, young people would spend the entire night in the woods "A-Maying," and then dance around the phallic Maypole the next morning. Older married couples were allowed to remove their wedding rings (and the restrictions they imply) for this one night. May morning is a magickal time for wild water (dew, flowing streams, and springs) which is collected and used to bathe in for beauty, or to drink for health."
-  Beltane by Herne 

The Green Man in our Sacred Circle Garden

Burn Me with Your Beauty Then

"How many million Aprils came
before I ever knew
how white a cherry bough could be,
a bed of squills, how blue
And many a dancing April
when life is done with me,
will lift the blue flame of the flower
and the white flame of the tree
Oh burn me with your beauty then,
oh hurt me tree and flower,
lest in the end death try to take
even this glistening hour..."
-  Sara Teasdale, Blue Squills, 1920  


April:  Quotes, Sayings, Lore, Chores

The Forces of Green

"There lies within
A hidden glen
An altar made of stone.
Creeping vine
And moss entwine
To hide this ancient throne.
Tangled thorn
Grows thick to scorn
Those who seek to enter.
For though they strive
No man alive
Shall ever reach its center.
Known as Pan,
To some Green Man,
This glen is his sacred place.
He dons his hood
Of wildwood
To hide his leafy face.
The roving clans
That raped the lands,
Cut down his beloved trees.
And so, alas
As time did pass
The Green God fell to his knees. ..."
- Kristina Peters Moone, The Green Man


"The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks."
-   Dylan Thomas, The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower

The Green Man

Lore, Legends, Tales, Celebrations, Springtime Symbols, Folk Stories and Plays
From the hypertext research notebooks of Mike Garofalo

This cabbage, these carrots, these potatoes,
these onions ... will soon become me.
Such a tasty fact!
- Mike Garofalo, Cuttings

Portrait of the Emperor Rudolph II as Autumn.By Arcimboldo, 1591, Held at the Museo Civico, Brescia. 

Vernal Equinox

A Repost from 2017

This will be our last Spring Season living in beautiful Red Bluff, North Sacramento Valley, California. We will be moving to the City of Vancouver, Washington State, on April 14, 2017.

"Here the white-ray'd anemone is born,
Wood-sorrel, and the varnish'd buttercup;
And primrose in its purfled green swathed up,
Pallid and sweet round every budding thorn,
Gray ash, and beech with rusty leaves outworn.
Here, too the darting linnet hath her nest
In the blue-lustred holly, never shorn,
Whose partner cheers her little brooding breast,
Piping from some near bough. O simple song!
O cistern deep of that harmonious rillet,
And these fair juicy stems that climb and throng
The vernal world, and unexhausted seas
Of flowing life, and soul that asks to fill it,
Each and all of these,--and more, and more than these!"
- William Allingham, In a Spring Grove

"The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month."
- Henry Van Dyke, Fisherman's Luck

"The air and the earth interpenetrated in the warm gusts of spring; the soil was full of sunlight, and the sunlight full of red dust. The air one breathed was saturated with earthy smells, and the grass under foot had a reflection of the blue sky in it."
- Willa Cather

"I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils."
- William Wordsworth

Spring: Quotations, Sayings, Lore, Poetry

The Spirit of Gardening: 3,800 Quotations

Months and Seasons

A Million Aprils Came and Went

"How many million Aprils came
before I ever knew
how white a cherry bough could be,
a bed of squills, how blue
And many a dancing April
when life is done with me,
will lift the blue flame of the flower
and the white flame of the tree
Oh burn me with your beauty then,
oh hurt me tree and flower,
lest in the end death try to take
even this glistening hour..."
- Sara Teasdale, Blue Squills, 1920



"The year's at the spring,
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in his Heaven—
All's right with the world!"
- Robert Browning, The Year's at the Spring


Spring: Quotations, Poems, Sayings

Snowing in April

This week, day after day, cloudy, overcast, gray, and raining.  Today it snowed all morning.

Proceeding With Packing 4

Tami and I moved three loads to the storage containers today.
The furniture for the AV center, one load, was very heavy.
Tami is quite strong.
She has been a reliable and hard worker, and quite skilled at house painting.
We have today finished with moving all the heavy furniture items to storage.  
I was tired at the end of the workday.

April in the Garden

April Gardening Chores in Red Bluff

Mow lawns and field.
Watering as needed.
Clean up and weed vegetable gardens.
Dig, roto-till, and amend garden soil.
Clean up hiding places for bugs.
Clean up dog feces. 
Protect new tree trunks from sun - white paint.
Fertilize berry vines.
Enjoy the many roses, pyracanthas, trees, lavender and bottlebrush in bloom.  
Spray trees and shrubs - borers.  
Plant summer vegetables. 
Shape shrubs.
Weed, weed, weed ....
Fertilize lawns.
Prune shrubs after flowering.
Write a poem.  Keep a garden journal.
Plant perennials.
Prune evergreens.
Plant seeds.  
Hummingbird feeders cleaned and in place.
Remove dead branches and trees.
Use straw as mulch.
Don't get sunburnt.
Flush driplines and check to make sure they are working properly.
Sit and observe.   
  

"All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines— 
Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches— 
They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind— 
Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf 
One by one objects are defined—
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf 
But now the stark dignity of
entrance—Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted they
grip down and begin to awaken."
-  William Carlos Williams, Spring and All

April:  Quotes, Sayings, Lore, Celebrations

Rooted They Grip Down and Begin to Awaken

April Gardening Chores in Red Bluff

Mow lawns and field.
Watering as needed.
Clean up and weed vegetable gardens.
Dig, roto-till, and amend garden soil.
Clean up hiding places for bugs.
Clean up dog feces. 
Protect new tree trunks from sun - white paint.
Fertilize berry vines.
Enjoy the many roses, pyracanthas, trees, lavender and bottlebrush in bloom.  
Spray trees and shrubs - borers.   
Plant summer vegetables. 
Shape shrubs.
Weed, weed, weed ....
Fertilize lawns.
Prune shrubs after flowering.
Write a poem.  Keep a garden journal.
Plant perennials.
Prune evergreens.
Plant seeds.  
Hummingbird feeders cleaned and in place.
Remove dead branches and trees.
Use straw as mulch.
Don't get sunburnt.
Flush driplines and check to make sure they are working properly.
Sit and observe.   
  

"All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines—
Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches—
They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind—
Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined—
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf
But now the stark dignity of
entrance—Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted they
grip down and begin to awaken."
-  William Carlos Williams, Spring and All

April:  Quotes, Sayings, Lore, Celebrations