Waiting for Spring's "Green Raiment"
A Quiet March and Some Early Seedlings
I read Tolkien’s translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight back in January, and this description of the seasons passing at the start of the year has remained in my mind…
…after Christmas there came the crabbed Lenten
that with fish tried the flesh and with food more meagre;
but then the weather in the world makes war on the winter,
cold creeps into the earth, clouds are uplifted,
shining rain is shed in showers that all warm
fall on the fair turf, flowers there open,
of grounds and of groves green is the raiment,
birds are busy a-building and bravely are singing
for sweetness of the soft summer that will soon be on the way…
It can’t be a coincidence that “crabbed Lent” comes just when you get most sick of waiting for spring to finally come and “make war on the winter.” November gets a bad rap as the most dreary month of the year, but I think March gives it a run for its money. The fields and branches around my farmhouse still seem so determinedly bleak and brown and barren. I have to remind myself that even now the sap is rising in the silent trees, and unseen life beneath the soil is gathering strength and preparing to burst forth.
Eager for a little “green raiment,” I have already started a first flock of seedlings in a sunny window indoors. Seeds often appear as a metaphor for faith in the Bible, and I remember, a year or so ago when I was first really going in on seedlings, discovering just why that is. It seems almost preposterous, taking what looks like no more than the merest speck of a pebble (seeds are extraordinarily unprepossessing in appearance) and putting it under the soil and expecting something to happen. For the first week or so, it can feel as if you’re watering a plain pail of dirt to no purpose, and that nothing will emerge…but of course it’s not just a pail of dirt, it’s a source of new life. And then it feels like a small miracle when the new leaves do in fact appear, even though it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Not only did those little seeds from previous plantings put on a beautiful summer show, but they also produced this new generation of seeds which are now peeking hesitantly out of their pots, preparing for another season. I already have some little morning glories and moonflowers and even a dahlia sprout or two. There was one moonflower plant from last year which I brought inside in the autumn, and my mom and I have carefully nursed it through the winter indoors (there was a quick glimpse of it in this recent reading vlog). It is putting out winding vines rather prolifically, and, astonishingly, the little dear even has a few buds! It’s rather inspiring.
March has been a quiet month after a busy February with Febregency and The Book of Cymbeline II. The beginning of this month marked my YouTube channel’s 10th anniversary, and I was glad to get a decade retrospective video finished, I’d had it at the back of my mind for awhile.
I took Jordan Peterson’s Understand Myself survey once, and my top two traits apparently are conscientiousness and creativity. They’re not necessarily predilections that play nicely together. The “orderly” side of my personality wants there to be a plan and for everything to go according to that plan, but the “open” side of my personality is always after the unexpected and unusual, the new and different.
As I mentioned in the video, my inner Don Quixote seems to call the shots when it comes to my channel, and my YouTube endeavor can be summarized more as tilting at windmills rather than pursing a practical plan. But as much as my inner Sancho Panza likes to moan, I think my channel has been a good exercise in discipline, having a creative deadline and holding myself to it, and also a good exercise in gratitude, because even when I’m having a gloomy time, I’ve always kept my videos as a scrapbook of the lovely things that have brought brightness to my life. And there are always blessings to be thankful for, even in the middle of bare and bleak times.
There will be a new reading vlog up on my channel on Monday, and I’m planning to do a bookish March wrap-up here on the blog with some favorite quotations as well, so stay tuned for that!