new

New sights: daffodils, bluets, crocuses. New sounds: house wren, song sparrow, red eyed vireo. Coltsfoot, the first wildflower of the season, is appearing in profusion. You ready, Shawn?

Back from sesshin. Returning to a vivid world.

stilettos

Daffodils, like little green stilettos, emerging through the mud. Wondering if the shape actually helps them as they push up into the sunlight. Robins walking their robin-walk in the back field. They scurry a few steps then stop, scurry and stop. Baseball practice observed at St. Peters field in Rutland. Gone for a week.

The Great Lesson is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one's daily life, in one's neighbors, friends, and family, in one's backyard.
Abraham Maslow
Zen page-a-day calendar

turquoise

The snow is mostly gone now. The other day I was walking by a pile of snow that had been shoveled out of the walkway at home. Little pockets of turquoise could be observed in the snowpack. This photo doesn't do it justice, but you can see it if you look. It was as if pieces of blue sky had somehow been caught under the snow pile, and was peeking out at me, waiting for warmer weather to be returned to its rightful spot in the celestial realm.

Rain

Rain yesterday, rain again tomorrow. Sump pump working hard in the basement.

Rain
The rain is raining all around,
It falls on field and tree,
It falls on the umbrellas here,
And on the ships at sea.

Robert Louis Stevenson

whiff

By mid-week, most of the snow from the big storm we had a couple of weeks ago was gone. However, we had another snow "event" on Friday which was a little discouraging. Spring is very slow to come to this neck of the woods. Drove by a neighbor's sugarhouse on Friday afternoon. They were boiling, steam escaping through the vents in the roof. The wind was such that I was able to get a good whiff of the vapor as I drove past. If heaven smells like anything, it is the smell of the steam from a Vermont sugarhouse in spring, indescribably wonderful. Such is our life here in the north country.

baseball

A lot of transitions observed over the weekend, the most important one being that the baseball season has arrived!