Yesterday was vernal equinox: the first official day of spring.
This is also the week of my birthday. So I took six nights of solitude to cruise into the new season and celebrate myself in an out-of-the-way location, secure in my berth. Snuggled up under three layers of bedspreads plus my thick sleeping bag, I’ve had the perfect little view out a porthole onto the red flowering currant as it leafs out and blossoms:
I love the way the wavy busted glass(?) keeps everything looking rained on and dreamy:
My wife is the one who spotted and identified all of Ribes sanguineum surrounding my rental capsule when she dropped me off. Every year she points out this leggy shrub at home when it starts showing its buds as one of our first/early heralds of spring, usually in February.
A sunny view from the other side of my porthole and the unfurling fuzzy pink and green parts of the flowering red currant:
I love how this plant serves up many delightful characteristics from other pacific northwest favorites with its colors and fuzziness and leaf shape and more, from the pale-to-blushing-bride pinks and reds of bleeding hearts and gernaiums, to the leaves that remind me of salmonberries, the fuzzy stems and bits like salal, and the tiny flowers in their dripping clusters and individual sweet open glory.
It has been lovely to spend the past six days withdrawn from the normal busy runaround of work/life/home, focusing more on observing the slower magic of springtime unfolding on the Olympic Peninsula. And when I say “slower” I do not mean “slow” because it is SUCH A TRIP how fast this unfurling happens from one day to the next. This is my fifty-second spring equinox, and it STILL delights and surprises me.
Springtime never gets old. I love how my birthday signals the end of winter and the whole touchable world around me being reborn and behaving forever young.
From now on I celebrate REBIRTHday(s).
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