Friday Ramble - On Our Way

Beyond our windows this morning are clouds, drifting fog and a forlorn copse of skeletal maples and ashes doing their best to put out leaves, catkins and flowers. Springtime is late this year, and the tree people have a long way to go before leafing out, but they are working on it. The first flocks of Canada geese are returning, and it is good to hear their happy honking as they fly overhead.

In the street, a west wind cavorts in gutters, ruffles dead leaves and other detritus like playing cards. It eases around the corner of the little blue house in the village and sets the copper wind bells on the deck in exuberant motion.  So ardent is the wind's caress that sometimes the bells are almost parallel to the ground.

The air is warmer than the ground below, and the meeting of the two elements stirs up something magical. Somewhere in the early murk, a few robins sing their pleasure, and a woodpecker (probably a pileated from the volume of its hammering) is driving its formidable beak into an old birch. Now and again, he (or possibly she) pauses, takes a few deep breaths and gives an unfettered laugh that carries for quite a distance. Even a bird in the fog, it seems, knows the value of taking a break from its work now and again, just breathing in and out for a minute or two and giving voice to a cackle of raucous amusement.

I can't see either the caroling robins or my whomping woodpecker, but that is all right. Their voices are welcome musical elements in a morning that is all about the nebulous, the wondrous, the mysterious and unseen.

In the kitchen, coffee is in progress and and a little Mozart (The Magic Flute) fills the air, but something more is needed. Miracle of miracles, yellow crocus are blooming in the protected alcove of a neighbor's garden. The little dears are lit from within, and I swear, they could light up the whole village.

At the end of last year, I thought my photographing days were over, that I would never again feel like peering through a viewfinder or framing a scene with my eyes. Now it appears that photography not given up on me.