Springan (and a Blood Moon)

     The Old English word springan meant to "leap up" or to "burst forth." And that's our season alright.
     (Thanks to Harlin for the following six images captured as their subjects were leaping up last week.)

     Early this morning I was able to wake up at about two or two-thirty and notice that the usual white landscape outside the windows was dark. That would be the shadow of the earth covering the moon and leaving with it just a faint reddening of sunlight imitating what it does for our own sky in mornings and evenings.

     Four complete lunar eclipses will appear over about a year, starting last night. The right reverend pastor John Hagee, of Texas’ Cornerstone Church, says God is trying to communicate with humans through these celestial signs. As if God can't speak in clear American to tell us what is so important on his mind. Televangelist Hagee claims the four blood moons are evidence of a future “world-shaking event.” Well, that is a prophesy, indeed. 
     Though mine lacks his thunder, it equals his in specificity: "I prophesy that because a 15 pound limestone rock fell on my finger yesterday while I was building a wall, during our next presidential election the country will be divided politically; and during the next year the stock market will perform in ways nobody could have predicted exactly; and this next year Iran will upset fundamentalists in America, and America will upset fundamentalists in Iran. And, worst of all, the Great Left Toenail of the Beast out of Revelation (which we all know is Bill Moyers) will say one thing that is True and one thing that is False, proving that liberals are intent on deceiving the rest of us god-fearing authentic Americans just wanting another hour's sleep after being up between two and three o'clock last night watching blood moons and wondering if it's not the Holy Mother of God's time of the month."

Light and Dark (April 7 and 8, 2014)

  From the sighting of a ringtail cat on our road up the hillside, to morning's light in the Great Oak, to screech owls' tremolo a couple hours shy of midnight, this Creek's canyon moves us to stillness. I am not leaving.

And a few others of flowers out yesterday.

Spring 2014

  This one below is the only Creek photo for this entry. But The Creek is moving nicely and supports plenty of fish, frogs, snails, clams, algae, turtles, larvae, and the rest.
  The remainder of the photos focus on life a bit farther up the hill, including a turkey that walked into the yard yesterday noon.

Beaver trail leading out of the Pond, up across
the small trail, and to the oaks and cedar cut down.

The first mulberry I've seen. Barely more than a
sapling growing near the Beaver Trail.

Always look forward to buckeye in bloom.

Invasive beauty. Chinaberry. 

thou answerest them only with spring

So we inherited a little dump on the Creek property.

Someday we hope to do something about it, but until then, Spring moves right in without any comment at all. Nature doesn't know this is a dump. What does it care?  The earth really doesn't have any thoughts about pollution and will not cry because of it. Environmentalism is for humans, not the earth.

 sweet spontaneous

earth how often have

the

doting

 

fingers of

prurient philosophers pinched

and

poked

 

thee

, has the naughty thumb

of science prodded

thy

 

beauty, how

often have religions taken

thee upon their scraggy knees

squeezing and

 

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive

gods

(but

true

 

to the incomparable

couch of death thy

rhythmic

lover

 

thou answerest

 

them only with

 

spring)

--e.e. cummings