SPRING (STEPPED OUT OF THE ROOM FOR A COUPLE OF DAYS)

Off to the shore for Memorial Day weekend.  Lots of memories of such weekends, usually culminating in a picnic at the old Lake Lenape park in Mays Landing.   I’m sure there were rained out holidays but I don’t remember one as cold and windy as last weekend.

The wind was blowing 25 to 30 knots out of the west, cold and churning up a vicious chop breaking on the west edge of Mordecai Island.  The chop seems moderate in this view but this is a telephoto of a scene almost a half mile away.  It was raw enough that the fire felt very comforting, particularly as we watched the wind rage on the waters and around the house.  Clearly we weren’t going to be having drinks on the deck so the porch furniture remained where it had spent the winter.

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Of most concern was that the club’s annual spring commissioning and opening was scheduled for Saturday night.  With over 400 people pre-registered the prospect of moving it indoors from dockside was not greeted enthusiatically.  One look at the flags, secured in preparation for being raised during the ceremony, made the decison clear:  indoors!  The decision made, the evening went  forward beautifully, celebrating the hundred and first such club opening.  When the Fleet Captain, Tom M., opened with that announcement I could feel the clubhouse timbers shivering.

 

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As you might well then guess, last year was the hundredth anniversary and it was a busy and exciting season.  The club adopted a special logo for the centennial year, comprised of the 1912 burgee and the burgee of subsequent years (there had been a conflict with the original design).  I thought the logo begged to be done in stained glass and so it went…the second project from my glass bench this winter.  As my late wife, Marty Lou used to observe, these deliveries are frequently accompanied by outbursts of blue words, and so it went as well.  A difficult piece but, as usual, when it’s done I’m glad I did it.  Comments on its construction can be seen by clicking on the tab above marked “Some of My Stained Glass Work“. 

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SPRING SPRINGS

From gray-brown, bare limbs to this ….. seemingly in only a very few days.

What a pleasure to see it all again.  I’m annually in wonder over this massive miracle, these great beautiful bandages over the sores of winter.  Welcome back!!

Where have these blooms and leaves been?  Wrapped tightly under their coats against the icy cold.  It’s what we do as well: we wrap our warmth and color within our warm spaces, holding on while the days drag on to

SPRING!!!

Sunny, mild, balmy days, perhaps a soft breeze, the birds singing.  Oh, the birds!

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I wonder at all of the beauty and I’m in awe of its construction…from the simplest wild flower asserting itself from the forest floor…..

…..to the complex, lush, delicate beauty of these Camellias.

From my computer days I wonder if the plants and the trees all have some kind of plant firmware that enables them to do what they do.  If so, it’s highly complex code, and so well written to produce such beauty.

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These crabapple blossoms just enjoyed a sprinkle and, smiling,  seem to be looking around to see if it’s Ok to come out.  I smile back in return, thankful for their short but wonderful visit.

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A Queen of the season, the daffodils in many varieties are seen all over the campus, like bright lemon lollipops.

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The return of spring helps me.  I can become full of doubt about life in the face of much that happens that is sad or evil.

I accepted years ago that it isn’t a Norman Rockwell world;  recently it has come home to me that it isn’t a Thomas Kinkade world either.

Yet, here comes spring again, the annual rebirth to continue the species.  A lot of life keeps on working right.

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