Tuesday, February 22, 2022

It’s 22222... and that means...

If you believe in numerology, there’s a significance to the repeating number of today’s date. For the cynics in the crowd, it’s an interesting question of how to apply an idea that everything will soon be okay to the situation in Ukraine, or in the US, or the UK, since okay would have very different meanings to different groups. No doubt there are numerous (see what we did there?) other situations in which an okay outcome would vary widely, perhaps even wildly.

Here in the North Country on 2/22/22, it’s cold (still) and snowing (again). Our antidote has been to slowly fill the living and dining rooms with an ever growing number of green and/or flowering plants. The Better Half has a birthday coming up and has requested a number of presents related to spring planting. It will require a major exertion of will power for some of us to purchase such presents, since we are coming to believe that spring may be canceled this year. We may be in for one of those years in which there’s six inches of snow on Monday one week and by Friday of the same week it’s 85℉ and stays in that vicinity for the next three or four months. (Yes, I am letting my streak of malcontentedness show.)

feeders during February snowfall
feeders during February snowfall
Photo by J. Harrington

Today’s snowfall has brought a multitude of birds, mostly goldfinches and chickadees, to the feeders. How long until spring migrants visit on their way further north? At the moment, things are feeling too much like the time loop in the movie Groundhog Day, with the weather roller coaster just repeating its trip up and down, around and around, again and again. It looks like our only hope for breaking our of the  pattern is patience. Eventually, warmer weather, in one form or another, will arrive. Right?... Right?


Work Without Hope

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair—   
The bees are stirring—birds are on the wing—   
And Winter, slumbering in the open air,   
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!   
And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing,           
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.   

Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,   
Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.   
Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,   
For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!    
With lips unbrighten'd, wreathless brow, I stroll:   
And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?   
Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,   
And Hope without an object cannot live. 



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