the leaping greenly spirits of trees

Photo by Liana Joyce

Sorry folks, but the garden has just gone ka-BLOOM with spring, and jobs that I was too lazy to attend to during the autumn and winter can no longer be ignored. So I will be spending more time outdoors pruning, staking plants, clearing flower beds of their winter debris, mulching, wrangling a recalcitrant willow igloo into shape and, hopefully, stealing a march on the weeds. At least until hay fever drives me back inside. Oh what fun my gluteus maximus is already having from my exertions which began in earnest last week. Naturally, I reward myself handsomely at the end of a hard day's graft with a very large whisky, or even two. Anyone who thinks I would subject myself to so much pain just for the pretty flowers is being hopelessly naive. Go munch on a Hallmark card.

I'm also taking advantage of Legs and Noodle still being on Easter break this week, thus making them eminently handy for slug and snail patrol duty. Obviously, they'd rather be indoors watching YouTube or listening to endless repeats of the daft but catchy "Walking on a Dream" by Empire of the Sun, so I shamelessly resort to my old maternal stand-by: bribery by chocolate. How can someone who enjoys gardening as much as me be so terrified of slugs and snails? Totally pathetic, I know. Living in rainy Belgium means we're doomed to having the little bastards around in vast numbers three seasons out of four, no matter what preventive measures we take. They give me the heebie-jeebies. I simply cannot bear to touch them, especially slugs, not even with a long stick, and I would sooner run a mile than crush them underneath my wellies. Eeeeeeeww. When I'm alone and no one's around to rescue me from these disgusting slimy creatures, I keep a salt shaker in my overalls pocket, all the better to send them to a painful demise by meltdown. I didn't mean to get side-tracked, but now y'all know my Achilles heel.

Till next post, I'll leave you with one of my favorite spring poems by e.e. cummings, he of the bolshy punctuation and the lower-case orthography. He was unconventional, funny, romantic and deeply spiritual, a poet after my own heart. I'm certain he never wrote poetry about slugs.


i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)


ee cummings (1894-1962)