Photograph of bluebells by LeAnn Spencer
Patience
The iris are easily fooled. As are the imported pear tree, the burning bush, the minty groundcover. And, as for those swelling tips on the magnolias and the rhododendrons, they are destined to shrivel just as soon as these fickle, sunny skies rewrap themselves in cold steel.
In the prairie, the coneflower, the cup plant, the monada are not beguiled by a few March days of early warmth. Thanks to 10,000 years of evolution, they know that a few above-freezing days are not the time to be poking green shoots above the ground. Despite the temperature, the prairie stays snug in its cloak of muddy taupe.
Each spring, my husband Steve begins his worry over the milkweed, the butterfly weed, the queen of the prairie. While the bluegrass begins to preen itself in green, those natives just sit there like plain Janes. Each year I remind him that they have no use for the weather whiplash that jerks the temperatures from the 40s to the 60s to the 20s and back again.
We may have to wait an extra week or two or so for the prairie to rise from the dead, but when those natives do show, they waste no time racing to touch the sky. And, you’d better pay attention. First comes just a hint of emerald, followed by shoots that reach almost to your knees, and before you know it, you can’t see the sky for the waving turkey foot of the bluestem.
In March, while we’re still swaddled in wool and mittens and the hawks are huddled in the naked Osage orange trees that drip sleet, spring is a tease. I am pushed to look for beauty in cold detail: in the contrast of powdered sugar snow on rutted, leafless bark; in the sheen of icy mud next to the pond; in a clutch of crinkled, empty seed heads. In this season of waiting, I am caught in a lingering winter dormancy; it keeps me watchful and still, and like the prairie, I’m camouflaged from my own true self.Copyright © 2008 LeAnn Spencer. All rights reserved.