SHADES of MARCH and SPRING

"Now great winds boar down the canyons of the sky. Branches crash, brooks race, snow scuds along greystone walls. The world is incredibly clean as the strong vibrant music of March pounds in the pulses and invades the chilled lungs of winter.

As for the wind, despite the scientists I feel nobody knows whence it comes or whither it goes. The dark of north woods is in it, the white breath of polar ice, and underlaying this just a whisper of melting warmth as is passes some sun-warmed hollows where the secret little flowers of spring woods are already stirring, oh so gently, so strongly under the sheath of moist earth.

How it blows away the settled feelings of snug heart and flickering candelight!" ~ Gladys Taber in STILLMEADOW DAYBOOK

"The snowdrops are out around the 22nd. The lovely pearl-white bells seem too delicate to bear the brunt of that March wind, but they do. The first clump that opens is a cause for special celebration. The scilla is fragile, too, and so is the first pale amethyst crocus. Bloodroot and dogtooth violets --- all the flowers of spring seem too frail to last out the end of the cold. And they are all the more exquisite because they seem so alone in the world.

When the peepers begin to cry in the night, I like to lie awake just to listen to the sweet, thin crying. No music can compare with it, for it is the voice of new life beginning, or a new season coming; it is the final period to the silent sentences of winter." ~ Gladys Taber in STILLMEADOW SEASONS

Ever since reading one of Gladys Taber's books when I was first married, I have loved her stories of everyday life at Stillmeadow, her 17th century house in Connecticut.

I have read them all but only own 2 so my dream is to one day own the entire STILLMEADOW series :-)

[SPRING WALK by David Coolidge]
[CROCUSES in SPRING SNOW by Steven Emery]