The Sun rises higher and higher in the sky each new day. At first glance it appears as if the world is still encased in winter, but look more closely and there are signs of life stirring all around. Nature is aroused. The love-making has already started. I see the spore-filled phallic catkins on the leafless Alder, Birch, and Hazel trees and the erect cones on the evergreens. I see the leaf buds of Indian Plum, the sweet-smelling sticky leaf tips of Poplar, and the flower buds on the tips of Blackthorn branches.
But it’s just slow, soft, gentle caresses until the more passionate affair between bees and sensual flowers comes with the warm breezes of Spring. Then comes the orgasm that is Beltuin. The waters will swell and the buds of green growth will rise bursting with luscious pregnant fruits and berries in Summer carrying their seeds to term.
Then the flowers and fruits and plants will die, but their children will live on. Little specs of life fallen to the Earth –a womb made of millennia of decaying ancestors nourishing the seeds acting as second mother like Cerridwen for Gwydion. From these seeds, fed by death and the swelling waters of life, the plants who conceived them are reborn. As are our own ancestors reborn with each new generation.
Like leaves on trees the race of men is found,
Now green in youth, now withering on the ground;
Another race the following spring supplies;
They fall successive and successive rise:
So generations in their course decay;
So flourish these, when those are past away.
Homer, The Iliad
Ah! Nice one Sarah…..I walked through my Garden this morning and it whispered to me that it is readying itself for the process of exhaling and coming to rest and preparing for the big slumber and I reacted with shock…not yet, I said, not yet!…and softly it caressed me and bid me look at my own cycle…I am Crone, I am Grandmother now….my own blood is welling in my granddaughter and I will forever live through her and her offspring just as my ancestors live through me and mine…..a time for everything. The cycles never fail!
There is still snow on the ground in Connecticut, but I feel that caress of spring.
I see it in the sky blue Veronicas in the ditches, along with the Henbits, Bittercress and Chickweeds as I jog along!! The blush of the Red Maples adds some Spring color to a truly harsh Winter in the south. I love your posts Witch of Forest Grove!
Beautiful earthy tribute. I have also been watching young nature rise after the desperate dark of winter. I feel my mood lift with each new species to show a bud
Lovely post. Where I live (upper Midwest) we’re having our first rainfall of the year as I type. While it’s still a chilly 36F, I can tell that winter is winding down for spring. Lately, the scent of the air is different and more humid and it’s nice to have the sun up in the sky after 4pm. Both my pets (a cat and a dog) are getting more anxious to spend time outdoors and to exercise.
Beautiful, i cannot wait for spring to arrive in full force. The cherry blossoms just started budding on the trees out here and i’m finally seeing opened pink camellias ^_^
The willow branches here are turning chartreuse, and the apple buds are just barely starting to dare to unfurl the tiniest bit. And last night we had the first rain of the year, unheard of in these parts until March at some point. Spring is usually a long time coming to Colorado.
was scrying into a dark brew of accorns last night…watched the green earth and all her leafy spawn “drinking in” the radient sunlight…you could feel everything swelling and bulging with life. its summer in New Zealand at the moment. bliss
Everything seems to breathe the change of seasons. Everything’s vibrations shift and the dirt becomes alive.
Great post, Sarah; beautifully written.
Simply and wonderfully profound post Sarah, I know that I’ll be coming back again and again to that Homer quotation.