Spring Forward

My favorite season used to be the Fall.
Perhaps it was the promise of dove season after the first cool front blew down from the high plains, bringing with it hummingbirds and butterflies?
Perhaps it was the advent of my favorite sedentary sport: football viewing with friends.
Perhaps it was the reprieve from the brutal Texas summer?
I'm not sure anymore.

My backyard is astir with life: it is the Spring.
Flowers are blooming, the ash tree is replete with green, and the crippled old mulberry tree digs deep to begin the process of soon making mulberries.
The dove are ridiculous in their amorous advances, while other feathered friends begin their own forms of persuasive speech, that annual festival of plumage and performance that echos millennia of fitness to a listening female audience.

In the midst of this expression of life is this thing: Lent.
It is something that spurs the pilgrim towards self-flagellation, a fitting counter to the indulgences of a fat Tuesday much like that post-holiday penance perpetuated on the parish: New Year's resolution... Except it is deemed more sacred. The story goes that Passover draweth nigh, a time of remembering and feasting: perhaps this Lenton season is the backdrop behind which such festivities are better appreciated, a contrast of bright upon grayness? And in this metamorphosis of chrysalitic emergence blossoms the pinks, yellows and purples of Easter-- an important, important reminder that, like Lent, the grayness of life will pass into something beyond, a hope unimagined except in the purest of dreams.

Two friends bury their wives this week.

Bird Nerd: update Feb19

Figures.
About the time I invest in a fresh new bag of thistle seeds for the myriads of American goldfinches that were attacking my thistle-socks, they've gone. Poof. Nada. Zippo.
I thought the last few days it must have been the abundant rain, which shut down most of my regulars except the white-wings, but with the sun in full-beam, my backyard is astir with my feathered buddies.

CrazyCreek chair at open back door, best seat in the house.

The pair of Carolina wrens that live in the woodpile by my back door are doing their usual circuits: fly over to my grey rainwater catchment (redeemed trash can), up to the suet feeder (currently loaded with cayenne goodness to thwart squirrels), occasionally landing at my feet on the back porch just to make sure I'm ok, and then back to the wood pile.

A pair of Carolina chickadees make their rounds, flitting between the 3 tube feeders suspended above the back yard, then up to the evergreen Ilex, over to the green ash (appropriately verdant with this spring's leaves already), then back to the feeders. One stops and fusses at squirrel that is licking the peanut butter off a stale loaf of french bread that is impaled on dead limb of my sickly Morus tree... my favorite tree in all my life, sick with fungus, yet never refusing to provide my most spectacular migrating visitors a spring meal of ripe, white mulberries: rose-breasted grosbeaks, orchard & baltimore orioles, waxwings, painted and indigo buntings. Dear Abba, in all selfishness I plead for more years of life for this beloved tree.

As usual my mourning and white-winged doves are swarming over every flat surface that might contain spilled seeds; my platform feeder is ridiculous about 8 am with a scene fairly equivalent to a Tokyo subway in bird-world. My neighbor kids me about it, because you can see from the street the 30 to 40 dove starting to congregate in the top of the Morus, waiting for the house sparrows to come in and give the "coast's clear" signal for swarming to begin. Today the male white-wings are quite amorous in their calling... the Fraxinus' auguries must be right: spring is in the air.

A pine warbler now joins an orange-crowned warbler that has been flitting between the peanut butter smeared on the tree and the cayenne suet by the back door. About the time I think the yellow-rumped warbler has also fled northward, a male catches my attention in the top of the Morus and flits its way downward, pausing so I can confirm it with my binoculars, it's back to the afternoon sun so that its yellow rump explodes with radiance that says: I AM SO COOL!... it's times like these I truly wish I knew what kind of camera to purchase for wildlife shots like these.

A pair of blue jays must have seen or heard the doves; they just came through in their typical, raucous manner, the second lingering with it's eery clicking rattle noise that has 'velociraptor' written all through it. They apparently are less interested in the food offerings, and more interested in harassing the pair of cardinals that were there before them. It's not long before the male play's the role of slut-monkey and starts courting every available female from the boughs of the prominent trees... in fact I hear one now, about a block away, shrouded by the calls of doves, including the mourning dove (who have now joined the white-wings's call "who's cook! are youu?")... with their name-appropriate call: "I'm soo, soo bluuuue."

...and not a single goldfinch. I will post it later if they were merely out on holiday this weekend, and missed being part of my backyard bird count.

Thrice since typing I've seen the orange flutters of butterflies, gone before I get a good look. Surely they were fritillaries and not monarchs. Right? What has happened to winter?

If April showers bring May flowers, what do February showers bring?
My guess: Spring.

May God be with you: the Creator, Redeemer, and truly good Father. You are his precious child. May you experience new life in all that Jesus has for you, like Creation awakens from the lull of Houston winter. May the sunshine of his love warm you from the inside out.
Blessings,
Jim.