Just south of the quaint village of Luray, Virginia, Willow Grove Mill stands between the east and west branches of the Hawksbills Creek. As interesting as the old mill was, it was the old, one-lane bridge that crossed the creek that intrigued me. The bridge was straight as an arrow, but as soon as you crossed it, the road took a sharp left turn.
“The Bridge to Willow Grove Mill” is my Photo of the Week.
© Bruce Stambaugh 2021
Now is the time to enjoy them
Now is the time to get outdoors. Nature is in all of her rejuvenated glory.
No matter where you live, there are likely plenty of opportunities to explore and enjoy the blossoming beauty. It could be the mauve of your neighbor’s crabapple tree. It could be a local park, where multiple options abound. Maybe it’s your own backyard.
The location is insignificant. All of nature is coming alive right now in the Northern Hemisphere. But as the daffodils have shown, this beauty won’t last. Enjoy it while it’s here.
When a friend invited my wife and me to see their magic garden in full bloom, we didn’t hesitate. We had been there before and knew what a treat it would be.
Our friend Mary guided us through the glorious garden filled with various vibrant flowers, all native to the Shenandoah Valley. A pastel pallet of creeping phlox that lined the sidewalk and driveway served as our greeters.
As we wound our way around the house and down into a lovely shaded area, blooming azaleas and cultivated wildflowers popped into view. Mary’s husband Glenn sat on a bench surrounded by Virginia bluebells and their smaller imitators lungworts. Their spangled leaves accented the dainty pink and blue blossoms.
The vivid colors of our friends’ personal arboretum.
Mary and Glenn made us feel at home in their little slice of paradise on earth. I’m sure that’s the case for everyone who visits. They are as welcoming as their heavenly arboretum.
The previous day Neva and I had visited the noted Edith J. Carrier Arboretum on the James Madison University campus in Harrisonburg, Virginia. A free wildflower tour happens every Wednesday when the wildflowers bloom.
Our guide led us around the pond into the woods, frequently stopping to point out the various wildflowers and blooming trees. Of course, the Virginia bluebells stole the show.
Not to be outdone, the deep burgundy of the toad trillium nicely contrasted with their white cousins nearby. Redbuds, both pink and white, provided a pretty umbrella for the gentle, steady rain.
Late-blooming spring beauties and buttery daffodils with orange trumpets caught our attention. The last of the white-petaled bloodroots had to be impressed with the Dutchman’s britches dancing in the raindrops.
The deep red pawpaw buds were still tight, waiting for warmer and sunnier days to open. Several in the group told stories of the delicious pawpaw fruit. Others had their doubts.
Wild blue phlox and lungwort tried their best to distract the visitors from admiring the rose azaleas. Warblers and woodpeckers achieved that goal for me.
We saw and learned about scores of other flowers, plants, shrubs, and trees in the conservatory. Something is always blooming there in the springtime. You can drown in wildflowers.
Back in Ohio, the Wilderness Center at Wilmot and the Secrest Arboretum at the OARDC in Wooster were always my favorite places to visit, especially in the spring. Wildflowers, ornamental trees, and birds and butterflies kept me busy for hours.
Of course, just traveling hiking and biking trails this time of year is a real treat. Different flowers seem to appear daily, along with the migrating and resident songbirds.
My friend and author Julie Zickefoose said it succinctly, “There is so much living to be done in spring when everything is so beautiful.” I couldn’t agree more.
You likely have your favorite places to visit in the spring to view the wildflowers and enjoy the colorful birds. Even if it’s your own backyard, get out and enjoy the glorious show.
© Bruce Stambaugh 2021
Shortly after my wife and I arrived at a local arboretum, the overcast skies began to leak. The raindrops stirred this already murky pond, but the redbuds still reflected their beauty.
“Reflections on a Rainy Day” is my Photo of the Week.
© Bruce Stambaugh 2021
In a family of months
I’ve known a few characters in my lifetime. I bet you have, too.
By character, I mean a unique individual who enjoys life outside the expected societal norms. Every family, workplace, and even church seems to have at least one individual who fits the profile.
I’ve learned that you don’t have to be human to be a character either. Our long-departed rat terrier Bill fit that category.
Bill’s personality far outsized his small frame. He once jumped up to try a catch a Canada goose that flew low over our Ohio home.
Other non-human characters include our backyard blonde squirrel and a pair of mallard ducks that frequent our neighborhood.
Just being blonde and a squirrel is character enough. When other squirrels approach, Blonde rapidly flips her beautiful golden tail to defend her territory. Satisfied that all is clear, she stretches out on the cool grass in the shadow of the maple, relishing in her most recent victory.
The ducks are a different story. Even though our suburban home’s closest water sources are swimming pools, this pair flies around the neighborhood, landing on rooftops. From there, they scout out nearby birdfeeders and go house to house foraging for breakfast, lunch, and supper.
Characters, however, don’t have to be living beings or animals.
Take our Julian calendar, for example. Months have dynamic personalities, too. April earns head of the class and not necessarily for alphabetical reasons.
Among her 11 siblings, April can often be a bit obnoxious. That’s especially true when it comes to weather.
April showers bring much more than May flowers. April’s repertoire dishes out tornadoes, snow, frost, floods, 80 degree days, and more. Sometimes only hours separate those diverse conditions.
No matter where you live in the United States or Canada, April can be a stinker. She doesn’t rely only on April 1 to fool you. One day, it’s 15 degrees above average. The sun is shining in a clear blue sky, while songbirds fill the warm air with luxurious melodies. The sound of lawnmowers echoes far and wide.
The next day the fog is so thick the sun can’t even breakthrough. Soon the wind picks up, and storm clouds race across the landscape, pelting rain, hail, and producing winds that exceed the speed limit. It would be justifiable if the weather service issued an arrest warrant for April for perpetrating days like this.
It’s not that we don’t expect variety in the weather. It is spring, after all. But it would be pure pleasure to know it’s safe to store the ice scrapers and snow shovels for at least a few months.
I have anecdotal evidence of such events. One early April day, 20 inches of heavy, wet snow brought much of Ohio to a halt. Volunteer fire departments ferried medical workers to and from hospitals.
On April 3 and 4, 1974, massive and deadly tornados hit Xenia, Ohio, and many other locations in more than a dozen states. Holmes County was in the path of the storm, too.
The sky turned pea green, and everything grew still. The tornado never touched down, but instead, tattered and torn objects from Xenia drifted to earth. People found checks and personal effects from 150 miles southwest.
April continues to be a Jekyll and Hyde. Just as our redbuds were about to bloom pink and bold, back-to-back days of 20-degree mornings deadened their potential pink beauty. I hope they can recover from their frigid encounters.
April is a character, all right. She still has time to repent, however.
© Bruce Stambaugh 2021
Please excuse the pun
My wife and I participated in a guided spring wildflower walk at the local arboretum yesterday in Harrisonburg, Virginia. While other participants eyed some other floral beauties, I spotted this clump of wild blue phlox, phlox divaricata, growing hard against a bolder of the area’s noted blue limestone. I thought the rock and the bouquet make a nice couple.
“Phlox on the Rocks” in my Photo of the Week.
© Bruce Stambaugh 2021
An aptly named wildflower
Look quickly, or you might miss this lovely spring wildflower. Bloodroot blooms March to mid-April here in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.
There is much to like about this aptly named wildflower. This lovely perennial herb with a simple leaf formation blooms across much of the midwest and eastern United States and into several Canadian provinces. As this photo shows, however, the blooms are short-lived. Some are at their peak, while others are beginning to wither, while still others are beginning to unfurl in the full sun. The flowers close at night.
Look for these beautiful wildflowers in the leaf litter of deciduous forests. Their buttery centers are surrounded by multiple frilly white pedals. Native Americans used the blood-red juices produced by their root stems to dye baskets and clothing. They used the coloration for war paint and insect repellent. The juice, however, is poisonous if ingested. The generic name, from Latin sanguinarius, means bleeding.
“Bloodroot” is my Photo of the Week.
© Bruce Stambaugh 2021
When my wife and I lived in Ohio’s Amish country, there was one sure sign of spring that I always relished. Our Amish neighbors plowing the first furrows of soil always said spring to me.
I never tired of the witnessing the annual tradition. Powerful and beautiful workhorses pulling the farmers seated upon one-bottom plows sealed the spring deal for me.
The jingle of the horses’ harnesses, the smell of freshly turned soil, the encouraging voices of the men calling the names of the horses to keep going created a reassuring feeling. Though the vernal equinox had already passed, this scene always invigorated me. Of course, the longer days, the chorus of songbirds, the pale blue sky, and the budding flowers didn’t hurt either.
“A Sure Sign of Spring” is my Photo of the Week.
© Bruce Stambaugh 2021
March has always been one of my favorite months for several reasons. Mind you, I don’t get as excited as youngsters on Christmas morning, but it’s close.
March is a transitional month, especially for those who live in the northern realms of the northern hemisphere. That’s especially true for March weather, though I don’t give much credence to the “in like a lion, out like a lamb” folklore.
March serves up a meteorological smorgasbord. Rain, sleet, snow, sunshine, and severe weather can all appear in the month’s 31 days.
The day I cherish most is the vernal equinox, which is March 20 this year. Let’s hope that the green of St. Patrick’s Day carries on over into April. I won’t hold my breath, however.
March marks the official transition from winter to spring. If the ground isn’t too soggy, planting vegetables and flower gardens commences, and farmers prepare their fields for sowing crops.
When we lived in Holmes County, Ohio, I always marveled at the hardiness of farmers, usually teenagers and young men, who braved the elements to plow and disk the fields. It may have been sunny when they left the barn, but somehow it always seemed to snow or rain when they hit the fields. Still, their teams of beautiful workhorses plodded on.
Here in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, it’s giant-sized tractors and the consequences of zipping in and out of fields that drivers have to watch out for on the ubiquitous narrow, winding roads. Unfortunately, the sticky, red mud is difficult to clean off of your vehicles.
Speaking of mud, I never knew about schools closing for mud days until I moved to Holmes County. Curiosity cured me on the first trip down a rural gravel road. When I became a township trustee, I positively hated when gravel roads turned to mush or hard surface roads disintegrated.
March usually means the end of sugaring time. By month’s end, the tempo of warm days and cold nights that encouraged the sap to flow has ended.
Birders live for spring, and March often provides the first rush of migrants returning to nest or passing through to destinations farther north. Is there anything more exciting than hearing a flock of sandhill cranes honking overhead in the twilight?
March means color returns to the deadened landscape. Green shoots of plants and flowers push through the barren soil, even if the majority are dandelions.
A walk in the woods reveals nature at work at many levels. Look down, and patches of spring beauties carpet the ground. Listen, and choirs of spring peepers fill the warm evening air. Look up, and you might find owlets staring you down, nervously jostling on a limb.
Photos of royal crocuses, buttery daffodils, and perhaps the season’s first tulips fill social media pages. It’s society’s 21st-century expression of joy and relief.
Of course, March means work. Winter’s litter of sticks and last fall’s leaves piled in corners far from their mother tree get recycled. Folks are eager to get outside and fuss about the appearance of their yards. They crank up their mowers even though snow is in the forecast.
I put out my hummingbird and oriole feeders in the hope of attracting any early arrivals. While I wait, I am more than content with waking to a competing chorus of robins and cardinals each morning.
Of course, I’m partial to March for personal reasons, especially this year. It’s our anniversary month. Welcoming March for 50 years together is singularly reason enough to celebrate the third month’s arrival.
© Bruce Stambaugh 2021
The vernal equinox is March 20
Crocuses are some of the very first flowers of spring. They are emerging all around our neighborhood here in the Shenandoah Valley. Of course, spring doesn’t officially arrive until March 20. But we are glad for the floral showy expressions after this long, cold, wet winter.
“Spring!” is my Photo of the Week.
© Bruce Stambaugh 2021
Vigilance is still required
Patience is a virtue. The exact origin of that proverb is hard to determine but about as straightforward in its meaning as can be.
In “Piers Plowman,” William Langland wrote about a man searching for faith in the 14th century. This work marked one of the earliest references to patience. A line in the poem reads, “patience is a fair virtue.”
What does that mean exactly? To me, it says that instead of rushing ahead on our own, we should pay attention to what is actually happening, no matter how weird or repulsive it may seem. The coronavirus fits that description.
In this case, patience requires us to depend on those who deal with such anomalies daily. Scientists, doctors, and researchers all belong in that category.
Throughout the pandemic, vigilance remains required. We continue to need to wear masks when we go out or visit others. We also need to keep our social distance and wash our hands. Those were and continue to be simple instructions that I embraced because they benefited others besides me.
Still, practicing patience is hard to do. The ongoing pandemic is proof positive.
Impatient people bolted ahead, behaving as if everything was as it had been in the world, when in fact, it wasn’t. Refusing to wear a mask, physically distance, or alter daily routines has prolonged the virus’s life.
Consequently, the pandemic is also a teacher, and we all are in the same classroom. Some pupils listen and learn, while others misbehave or fall asleep.
The pandemic has taught us a lot about people and their willingness to accept scientific facts, the reality of a new disease and the unknown, and realize the consequences of an infection run rampant.
It’s important to note that being patient has its benefits. The pandemic forced me to slow down, relax, notice, care, and listen. Since we were together even more than usual, my wife and I gave each other expanded personal space and time than we had previously.
It’s not like I didn’t know patience before the pandemic. After all, the Cleveland Indians are my favorite sports team. It’s been 73 years since they last won the World Series. If following that team doesn’t require patience, I don’t know what does. I learned early on the mantra of “wait until next year.”
Well, it’s next year. A new baseball season is upon us. Perhaps this is Cleveland’s year. Only time will tell. Like enduring the pandemic, patience will be an essential virtue with this team and every aspect of life.
Patience requires us to stop, breathe, observe, sense, and move slowly. Patience is and will continue to be essential for mental, physical, and spiritual survival during the pandemic.
Ephesians 4:2 reads: “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.” I learned that it’s critical to apply that to myself, too. I realized that it was okay to feel down with all that the pandemic brought and about activities that we couldn’t do, especially with those we love.
Patience modeled.
We have waited patiently for an effective vaccine, and now it is here. People are receiving inoculations against this deadly virus. Still, we will continue to follow the crucial guidelines of wearing a mask, physical distancing, and washing our hands for 20 seconds or more. As Yogi Berra famously mumbled, “It ain’t over until it’s over.”
Patience became the watchword of the pandemic. It will continue to persevere until we all work together to conquer this unwanted virus. That will prove patience a valuable and vital virtue, indeed.
© Bruce Stambaugh 2021
Wildlife Photos From The Chesapeake Bay Region
Culture and Communities at the Heart Of India
Artist and nature journalist in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
Photographer Of Life and moments
Personal Blog
Art is the only way to run away without leaving home. -Twyla Tharp
Writing generated from the rural life
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El amor cruza fronteras / Love crosses borders
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