by jphilo | Apr 1, 2016 | Daily Life
Walking outdoors is one of my favorite things. Except when it’s cold and windy. So lately I’ve had to talk myself into walking outside in the morning. This post from 2013 proves this year is just like years gone by. But more that that, today’s Fantastic Friday post explains why walking outdoors is worth the cold, the wind, and the internal battle that get a person’s feet out the door.
The Cardinal Says It’s Spring
These April mornings,
When my walks begin.
I need a pep talk to push my feet
Out the door and down the lane.
The grass is brown.
The tree branches grey,
The wind is cold,
The landscape bare.
Still the cardinal,
bright red with promise,
Sings words to warm my frozen, winter soul.
“It’s spring! It’s spring.”
What says spring to you? Leave a comment.
by jphilo | Apr 12, 2011 | Walking Down the Gravel Road
Talk to people about this winter’s weather, and they say it’s been a long one, a hard one, with a March that clung to the cold with chilly, determined fingers. Around here, we’re all feeling long suffering, put upon, quite saintlike, really. We agree that never, never, never has a winter lasted so far into spring.
Apparently, we have short memories as this post from April 8, 2009 shows. A day earlier, seven inches of wet, heavy snow fell. Good thing I blogged about it, because the memory is completely gone. As the post below shows, this spring’s weather (minus the Mapleton tornado and egg-sized hail in NW Iowa) has been pretty much par for the course.
Sunshine Song
Thirty-two degrees and a slight breeze makes for a chilly morning, so I waited to walk until the sun was bright enough warm my back and seriously damage the remaining snow cover and, hopefully, warm my back. This April day I look ready for Christmas, stuffed into my down-filled coat, a scarf tied around my neck and over my hat, thick gloves covering my hands.
The sun is April strong, but this morning I doubted it’s power until a cardinal’s song lifted my eyes from the cold road beneath my feet. I searched the treetops and found him perched near the top of a neighbor’s tall tree, on the crest of the hill. Sunlight bounced off the small bird’s feathers, and he glowed, dazzling bright against the spring sky.
The little bird sang, oblivious of the cold, warmly dressed in his down-filled coat and pointy feathered hat. Had he been singing since sunrise? Or did he wait until he could serenade the pitiable, earthbound humans walking on his road? Whatever his reason for being there, the glow of his feathers against the intense blue sky and the buds swelling on the branches gave me what I needed – beauty beyond description and patience to wait for the warmer days ahead.
by jphilo | Mar 15, 2011 | Walking Down the Gravel Road
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Both the cardinals and Daylight Savings Time have returned as they do each spring. And this post from March 16, 2009 is a hopeful reminder that just like the cardinals serenading our gravel road, I can sing.
I Can Sing – Recycled
This morning, I checked the forecast: sunny and highs in the sixties. Bright and early, not wanting to miss a minute of such optimistic weather, I strapped on my camera and lugged the tripod on my walk, determined to photograph the cardinals I’d seen and heard everywhere the day before.
The dawn was grey at first, the sun not even visible. Twenty minutes later, when the sun finally woke up and showed itself, the tripod had worn out it’s welcome, and the camera was a lead weight. Apparently the cardinals are still adjusting to Daylight Savings Time, because it was another twenty minutes before they woke up.
By then I’d wrestled with the tripod and camera twice – once to photograph a red-headed woodpecker on a telephone pole, and again to capture some wrens setting up housekeeping in a bluebird house up the road a ways. Finally, outside my kitchen door at the end of my walk, a cardinal began singing from the top of our neighbor’s giant spruce.
The tripod, now an experienced traveler, waited patiently while I mounted the camera and started snapping.
One bright red bird, small but able to fill the enormous blue sky with song, reminded me of the tasks on my to do lists this week. I am too small to complete them. They are too elusive for me to capture. But they are the song I’ve been given by the Creator of birds and sky.
In His hand, I can sing.
by jphilo | Apr 21, 2009 | Walking Down the Gravel Road
Photographing birds is always a challenge, but one day last week was particularly frustrating. The weather that day was lovely – sunny and warm without much wind, a rare exception to the string of cold, blustery mornings that have defined this spring.
The neighborhood birds were out en mass, singing as they perched on bare tree branches to sun themselves. Robins pecked in the ditches, crows argued on the fence lines, a wren sat on the blue bird box she’d commandeered and bragged about her conquest. A dusky, blue dot flew across the road and perched in a redbud tree. A bluebird, I thought, but by the time my camera was ready, the elusive little thing had flown away.
The same thing happened over and over. The cardinals flitted here and there, the robins were too busy to pose, even the crows were skittish. Were the birds dedicated construction workers, determined to get their new homes finished be for their good weather building permits expired or just camera shy?
Whatever it was, my photo shoot was a bust. Even the blue jay, usually content to sit on its throne in the cedar windbreak and issue constant, bossy proclamations, was on the fly. I aimed my camera as she glided over the road and snuggled in the crook of a walnut tree. As I depressed the shutter, the flighty thing dive-bombed and landed in the field, hidden by corn stubble.
With that, I decided photography was for the birds and zipped the camera into its case. If you can’t beat them, join them, I thought, and dreamed up spring construction projects all the way home.
by jphilo | Apr 8, 2009 | Walking Down the Gravel Road
Thirty-two degrees and a slight breeze makes for a chilly morning, so I waited to walk until the sun was bright enough warm my back and seriously damage the remaining snow cover and, hopefully, warm my back. This April day I look ready for Christmas, stuffed into my down-filled coat, a scarf tied around my neck and over my hat, thick gloves covering my hands.
The sun is April strong, but this morning I doubted it’s power until a cardinal’s song lifted my eyes from the cold road beneath my feet. I searched the treetops and found him perched near the top of a neighbor’s tall tree, on the crest of the hill. Sunlight bounced off the small bird’s feathers, and he glowed, dazzling bright against the spring sky.
The little bird sang, oblivious of the cold, warmly dressed in his down-filled coat and pointy feathered hat. Had he been singing since sunrise? Or did he wait until he could serenade the pitiable, earthbound humans walking on his road? Whatever his reason for being there, the glow of his feathers against the intense blue sky and the buds swelling on the branches gave me what I needed – beauty beyond description and patience to wait for the warmer days ahead.
