How I Want to Tell Time
Not by the hands of a clock...
“Soon a host of lovely flowers
From vales and woodland burst;
But in all that fair procession
The crocuses were first.”
— Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
Friends, I’d been planning to share a different story today, a new one, but something happened this weekend that inspired me to change things around:
I saw the year’s first crocuses.
I spotted a few on Saturday, little isolated groups of tiny purple flowers. But the next day, at the zoo with the girls, I saw great swaths of them. And there was just something about these first emissaries of spring that made me want to weep — from their beauty; from their color; from the way their petals were like arms held open to the sun, and to each other.
And so today, I’d love to revisit a story I wrote during our first spring in Belgium, a story in which crocuses take on a starring role. It’s called “How I Want to Tell Time,” and it continues to be one of my favorite illustrated essays I’ve ever created for Dandelion Seeds.
Here’s to stretching our arms out to the sun, and to one another.
With love,
Candace
Marking life by the changes of seasons.
Quail roosted in a pine tree close to my office window all winter. They are gone now, off making a family somewhere. Soon they will be double time marching across my road with a fleet of fuzzball babies who quickly grow and leave the nest.
If it’s a good year, they will do it all over again amidst the wild sunflowers that line my road in the fall. Not longer after, when the snow starts falling again, they will roost in the pine tree close to my office window, fluffed up against the cold to mark the passing of another year.
This is the best way to tell time. I haven't seen any crocuses making an appearance here yet. But the snowdrops are here and I was so glad to see them!