Marching through the Archives

Straddling the Seasons

Is this the month where things truly begin?

Dan commented that March should be the beginning of the new year, not January, which often feels like the credits rolling on the year before. In that case February would be a bit of a void, or perhaps the embodiment of eve energy.

This is the 13th March we’ve spent together, but I decided to pull photos from 2017 until now to see what the vibe’s been like, historically. As a month that’s 2/3 winter and 1/3 spring, it’s no surprise that our archives tend to include a mix of snow, indoor seed starting, things beginning to blossom outside, and our dogs enjoying it all.

Up until this year our winters and springs were leisurely, and largely spent daydreaming about what comes next, and how we’d get there. This year our schedule is packed, making it all a bit of a blur. If this is the beginning, we’ve already got a head start on making sure we make it to the end successfully.

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

2023

2024

We’ve barely got two feet in March 2024 so I’ve only taken a few photos so far, but the visual themes and threads remain predictable. What’s unpredictable is an event we’ll be hosting on the farm this weekend - our first this year, and our most ambitious to date.

So here’s to March, the gateway month where beginnings abound. May we grow gracefully.

Originally published on March 3, 2024

Wake Up

And Say Goodbye to Winter

For several days now the screen door has been open as the ceiling fan spins overhead.

Shorts have been worn, and everyone seems to be brushing the dust off their bikes on the nearby trail. There is color emerging across the acreage, albeit it in tiny pops, and frogs are copulating in a cacophony of croaks that fill the evening air. You can also hear the literal sponginess of the earth, which I imagine is the sound of a million worms wriggling to life.

Spring is knocking from the ground up.

There’s 8 days left of winter, officially, but it’s in these in-between stretches that the line often gets blurred. I’ve spent more time scrutinizing the shift each day because this is the time of year when the most dramatic moves are made. A different world emerges every morning.

Which daffodil will be the first to burst? How much did the peonies push up overnight? Which fruit tree will win the race to blossom? Will snow, or ice, or something else disrupt the momentum in the works? Questions abound.

We hosted an event on the farm this past weekend for students in an upcoming class. The group was invited to partake in a willow harvest in the field, which unfolded under perhaps the most beautiful sunshine of 2024. Executing an experience like this on the land we call home, and Foggy Blossom, was nerve-wracking and exhilarating and everything in between.

We’ve long desired to become more of a learning farm, a classroom farm, but the dreams of such endeavors are far different than the real life details when the rubber meets the road. Still, the event was a success and felt like an awakening of a new chapter. In Foggy Blossom’s sixth year, maturity is moving in.

Besides the frogs there is an ever-present soundtrack of squishy mud, bird songs and buzzing honeybees. As we get to know this land better and better there are fewer surprises, but spring still holds magic. I know there are morels around the corner, as well as trillium, tulips, tadpoles and fresh bird’s nests being built.

The ticks are crawlier than ever, and I shudder to think of the soft snake eggs in the making (we always find the remnants). Temperatures and commitments will continue to rise, eclipsing all the spacious quietness here in winter. Still, knowing the best and worst of what’s to come does breed a certain sort of intimacy. With each passing season a brick between us and our relationship with this land feels solidified, building a stronger and more robust foundation.

Winter has been difficult for me personally as I’ve battled more seasonal sickness than I can remember for many, many years. Like much of the dullness around the acreage it feels as if I’m also shaking off the dust in my own body, eager to come back to life with a refreshed fullness. Unlike spring, I know my own strength will be a slow regeneration.

Some of the willow is leafing out with alarming fanaticism, tuning our antennae to the timeline we’re working against. There are living structures to establish, trees to train, and maintenance, both minor and major, required in all of our growing spaces.

As we approach the return of the fullness of life, spring’s refrain gets louder and louder: Ready or not, here I come.

Originally published on March 10, 2024

Following Light and Life

One Hour at a Time

It was forecasted to be a beautiful day, so I set my alarm to ring out every hour, letting me know it was time to go out and find a new photo. What I captured was a set that showcases the quiet light and life here on the heels of the vernal equinox.

8 am

The slightest glimmer of dew was aglow as the sun ascended, providing an arc for the Daffodil’s heads to follow. My eye, however, was drawn down to the ground where the verdancy develops more vibrancy each day. There is still so much monotonous muck all around, but soon life will overwhelm the senses.

9 am

The growing sunlight lit a fire behind the first Nanking Cherry blossoms, magnetizing me to their delicacy. Their papery petals offer one of the first hints that the future holds fruit.

10 am

We’ve left more Willow uncut than ever this year, the catkins of which have served a staggering number of visitors. It’s a joy to see the honeybees fill their pockets full of pollen from one of the only sources available this time of year.

11 am

Dan has already been in the Willow fields for hours. Still in his sweater as the sun continues to rise, the leafiness around him serves as a constant reminder than he’s not the only one at work. In what could feel like a race against the clock, his diligence to a modest and thoughtful pace makes the marathon manageable.

12 pm

So many of our Elderberries are gigantic shrubs at this point, but this little fellow is far fresher. I love the exuberance of its branches stretching side to side, almost as if it was holding a set of open arms towards the sun.

1 pm

The Honeyberry veins looked electric in the midday light, reminding me that their oblong, violet fruits will soon return. They’re Blueberry lookalikes, members of the Honeysuckle family, and one of the first edible treats of the year.

2 pm

By now Dan’s sweater has been shed, as have many more Willow rods at the hands of his shears. It’s a scene that has been a daily occurrence for months now, with the finish line coming into view. When spring arrives in just a few days, the focus will begin shifting away from the field.

3 pm

I used to confuse Coltsfoot for Dandelions, but these yellow pops always show up first and don a more disc-like shape. They erupt in the dullest corners of the landscape, offering a refreshing burst of warmth amongst the mud, or along the edges of the ponds.

4 pm

Speaking of ponds, our 4 hand-dug reservoirs serve as great reflecting pools for the atmosphere overhead. By this time of day the sun was dwindling fast, as mirrored on the gray surface. Just below it, however, lie floating clusters of frog’s eggs.

5 pm

It wasn’t supposed to come until much later in the evening, but rain is about to drop in buckets. This last capture returns to the cherry blossoms, which have fully spread open throughout the last 8 hours. Their abundance pulls focus from nearly every vantage point, reminding me how quickly life arrives this time of year.

Originally published on March 17, 2024

Invisible Beginnings

Acknowledging the Imperceptible

Spring arrived covered in snow, toppling the Hellebores and stenciling shapes where the deer sleep at night.

Their favorites paths were stomped into the layer of fluff throughout the woods, which I followed, relishing the contrast that illuminated what’s normally invisible. Soon our micro-forest will be too wild to explore in this exposed way, along with much of the acreage that’s budding with robustness, despite this wintry welcome.

In tandem with a new season, we began a new teaching endeavor this past week. For many months we’ve been preparing this 8-week program designed to build basketry skills one at a time. The intention is to focus on honing each part of the weaving process, along with an intimate understanding of the material, rather than racing towards a final product.

As we’ve learned throughout our short tenure as educators of this craft, no plan plays out exactly as desired, but we were happy with how the first session unfolded and are looking forward to the rest. Everything, always, is an experiment.

Spring is still stepping into place as the memory of snow melts, but it’s already palpably shifting the ground underfoot. There, in darkness, the earth is stretching to make space for a mix of new roots and descending decay.

Life throughout these next few months will advance through layers of stops and starts, rewinds and fast forwards. Any notions of “stagnancy” in the off-season have been quickly swept away.

Already we’ve seen flower petals freeze and thaw, puddles swell and sink away. We wake up to a world that could be framed by the rigidity of frost or hugged by soft fog, which feels similar to the experience of waking up in a body approaching mid-life.

There’s dust to be cleared from our minds and bones as we adjust to a new rhythm and schedule. The cognitive overhead that goes into preparing for a class is remarkably intense, and begins far before we meet the students. There’s also the physical labor of harvesting and preparing the material, which ultimately arrives in the classroom honed into an out-of-the-box kit version of its former, feral self in the field. A workshop is never contained to its mere 3 hours, but book-ended by hours upon hours of invisible construction.

I’ve often written about how we arrive at summer with a lushness that seems to have suddenly appeared in place. Like growing hair, it’s impossible to track the minutia of every micro-millimeter of maturity the outside world advances through. One day your hair is just long, and all the limbs have their leaves back. Any attempts to actually watch these things happen would divert all other duties, but here in the first few days of spring, it feels apt to acknowledge the imperceptible advancements.

A year ago, we were preparing to teach our first ever basketry class. A year before that, Dan hadn’t yet taken an in-person basketry class himself. I won’t even attempt to foresee what we’ll be focusing on a year from now, as all attempts to charge in a specific direction tend to get nudged a bit (or a lot) off course by life.

Six days ago I started taking photos for this post, and the writing began four days after that. By the time I finish these paragraphs, and Dan proofreads them, it will take me less than ten minutes to record the voiceover and finish the job. But this tiny endeavor, like every big one, and like spring itself, has invisible threads that tether it back to a million past pieces. Together they add up to a sort of sum that serves as a snapshot of the whole, of life itself - the beginnings and endings of which are indiscernible.

Thankfully this time of year there are ample opportunities to witness growth returning to the surface, reminding us that it never truly stops.

Originally published on March 24, 2024

An Unlikely Muse

Keeping Creative Cogs in Motion

Long before Willow became our most prolific plant, Daffodils reigned with their relentless abundance.

When we moved here in 2017, there were sporadic clusters of these familiar, sunny faces growing wildly along the edges of our woods, several of which we quickly multiplied by re-homing them in our burgeoning perennial nursery. Since then we’ve planted neat rows of five different varieties there, which yield hundreds upon hundreds of blooms each spring.

In the early years of Foggy Blossom - when very little was growing in the way of perennials, and flowers were a primary focus - they were always such a delight to see emerge each spring. They still are.

Beyond the innumerable Daffodils we gather and disperse, there are always dozens more leftover. Since 2018 the overflow has served as my unlikely muse, and like clockwork I seem to be inspired to arrange them in a variety of configurations and installations throughout this time of year.

I’m not sure what compelled me to begin doing this, only that there’s a definite pattern of Daffodil-centric creations. In 2019 I even spent an afternoon crafting a dress out of them, which felt like wearing spring itself for one spectacular moment.

Daffodils aren’t exactly special, and can be found on both manicured lawns and unkempt roadsides, but despite their basic qualities, and copiousness, I feel inexplicably drawn to their luminescence like a moth to a flame.

Perhaps the long stretches of dreary, wintry confinement make their arrival all the more radiant, or maybe the genesis of my fascination lies within fond childhood memories. Back then my sisters and I would help our grandmother gather bucketfuls of heady blooms on cold spring mornings, which always makes me smile to recall.

One year I made this haphazard daisy chain out of different varieties, which lazily floated across the sparkling surface of one of our tiny ponds. I captured it in a mesmerizing time-lapse video as it drifted and broke apart for hours.

Oftentimes my artistic inclinations wane drastically throughout the winter. Despite my penchant for exploring just about every artistic medium imaginable, the well does, confoundingly, run dry. But the humble Daffodil, of all things, has served as a beacon with the power to replenish my spirit and get the creative cogs back in motion. Only in retrospect has this cycle become clear.

To be completely frank, however, I am not gobsmacked by any of this work. I feel hesitant to share it at all, but I am proud of the consistent effort to answer the call. It’s not the images that stir me so much, it’s the reminder that I’m capable of coming back to life, creatively.

The Daffodils have just begun their waves of successive blooming this year, but I haven’t yet thought of what I could do with them. Thanks to these Field Notes and all of our willow/basketry endeavors, I don’t feel as imaginatively withered as usual, but the call is still coming loud and clear: Effort begets effort, and spring is the perfect season to begin again.

Field Notes Archive - March 2024