by
Jean Hughes
March 25, 1996
Once upon a year there comes the week of spring when thin-cloud air rides on the wind and makes me light headed and light hearted -- giddy as a balloon.

I have the spring-air condition. The stuff won't get into my lungs with normal breathing. I taste it, smell it, hear it, feel it, but I still can't get enough of it.

* * *
Spring has come just in the nick of time. The birds were getting cranky and quarrelsome. At the end of winter, late in the afternoon, the sparrows and snow birds fussed so loud in the bushes across from my house that I couldn't hear the wind. Now, all is twittering and spring songs.

It takes March winds to shake the earth alive. Spring perfume wends through the woods. Today is a thawed earth, leaf mold, sweet-aroma day.

I languish in the field, gazing up at the blue sky and watching spring hurry by on cloud and wing. After winter's hard earth, it is a joy to lie on springy ground.

I finally get myself up and mosey into the rose thickets along the woods' edge. Down on my knees, I find the first purple bittercress blossom unfurling, and a carpet of gray-purple buds waiting to bloom. Flower-spring has begun.

I travel down to the hillside where the first trilliums bloom. I lean into the hillside, with my face a few inches from the ground, and scan the area. Four trillium buds are almost touching my nose. A white bittercress blossom peeks from behind a leaf, and I spy spring beauty buds clinging to the hillside.

Searching for the first flowers of spring is the same hide and seek game as stalking morels. I spend most of my springtime days crawling uphill or sliding down hillsides on the seat of my pants. Roller coaster rides are mild compared to sailing down a slick, wild hillside. Wheee!

The sunshine is warm and the middling creek is only a few steps away. From under a big tree root, a spillway sings the water songs of spring most sweetly. I walk in the center of the creek for several blocks, meandering along the edge only where the water is deep. In most spots it is not boot high. The creek is clear, and with the sun at my back, the rocks on its bottom reflect a thousand rainbow colors.


The rhubarb is just pushing through the ground and will soon be ready to make my favorite pie.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie
Prepare pastry for a two-crust pie and line pie pan.
Mix lightly: 4 cups 1/2 inch rhubarb pieces, 1 small box 
frozen strawberries, thawed, 2 cups sugar and 1/2 cup flour.
Pour into prepared pie pan. Dot with: 1 T. butter.
Add: top crust and sprinkle lightly with sugar.
Bake at 425o for 45 to 50 minutes, placing foil over edges of 
crust, if it becomes too brown.

In the late afternoon, I take the children and we walk along Sugar Creek. We gather shells that the high water has left behind. The sand is perfect for making sand castles and for sand writing, and I leave the children to play, and walk into the woods, to a grove of sycamores.

The sounds of flutes, clarinets and organs, soughing like a melodia, float from the tree tops in the welkin-air wind. After half an hour of enjoying the sycamore music, I call the children to listen.

To quiet five dogs and two children is no task for the faint hearted, but it is the top of joy when Chris throws off his hat and says, "It sounds like horns." Merry shivers when the hears the high flute notes. No other trees sing wood-wind songs like sycamores in March.

At twilight, we walk up the hill to home. Geese scurry through the sky and we hear a robin sing his evening song. The first call of a woodcock sets us to searching the sky until we see its maker flying round and round, his wings singing his amorous song.

Back home, I stand out in the last pale blush of sunset. In faint moonlight, the stars are winking at young trillium blooms.

Once upon a year there comes the week of spring.

Copyright 1996, Jean Hughes.

Jean's book of ramblings and recipes "A Country Mile of Winter" and her book of poetry "The Earth's My Home" are available for $4.95 each plus $1.30 for postage and handling. Ten of Jean's favorite recipes will be included free with each book ordered. Order from...

Country Mile Publications
616 E. Monroe St.
Delphi, Indiana 46923

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