Spring is here. Up until a few days ago, the temperature was dipping well below freezing – it seems like we’ve had winter since late October here in Ottawa. But steadily, slowly and very surely, spring has pushed winter away and confidently shown her beautiful fresh colors.

At Dow’s Lake, on the grounds of the upcoming Tulip Festival, the crocuses are pushing up between the old leaves.

So delicate, and so strong and confident – the very first flowers. What an incredibly welcome sight…

…especially this year as it’s beginning to feel as if this baby is never going to come out. Just like spring, just like the crocuses (or is it croci?) he too will be born.

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We planted some seeds (our favorites – cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplant and basil) by the window to encourage spring to hurry it up a little. When the rain turned to snow for a while a few days back, at least the sweet plants were there to remind us that spring truly was here, if not around the corner. Last year our little raised bed gardens were already planted at this time.  This is a reminder that everything has their own schedule – the seasons, nature, and certainly this little kicking (and hiccuping!) baby.

As she admired the first little seedlings earlier this week, my 4 year old said, concerned “But who are the parents of these plants? Where is the mama for these seeds?”

I chose to keep quiet, as I’m trying to do so much these days, and let her think it through without my strange adult interruptions.

She looked out past the big wooden windows into our backyard, and said “The nature outside must be their parents. Yes, that’s how it works.”

Indeed.

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A few weeks back, we noticed this stunningly beautiful flower craft here and ended up with a different, sweet version of our own. There’s such beauty in watching the wonder and fantasy of a child as they go about making an idea their own. I now see that as one of my primary roles and goals as a parent – helping my children learn not by rote but with their own imaginations.  Instead of teaching them a set of discrete, defined, repeatable tasks, my job is to foster the space, love and conditions for her own ideas to take flight. I’m still working on it. Every day.

We started by cutting up a cardboard egg box, leaving many of the single egg cups as is, but cutting others in flower shapes.

Then, using paint (real Tempra paint as the watercolors just didn’t seem vibrant enough), my daughter painted them in her favorite neon colors.  Layering paint, especially on the edges and inside.

Then, using a large circular piece of cardboard, she painted the background and then decided to add some free form birds – a mama and a baby (of course).

Using hot glue, she arranged the flowers around the cardboard, and we used my biggest needle to poke a hole and attach some hemp string for hanging.
Now her art is hanging on our sapphire-blue painted 100 year old wooden front door where it seems to be telling spring to “hurry up just a little bit” (this baby really needs to come out!

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It’s so very close – the emergence of the tulips and crocuses, I mean. And the sprouting of this big boy I’ve been carrying around all these months too. Each day seems exponentially warmer, sunnier and more spring like. It happens so fast here in Ottawa. Sometimes if you blink you’ll miss the change of the seasons. It went from about 0 to 20 degrees in a matter of a few days here, it felt like. No complaints from me though. Birthing our son into snow, in late April, just didn’t seem right.

Our little lavendar plant made it through the snow and ice, and our garlic is emerging more every day!

And that stubborn bit of ice is melting more every day.

And it’s never too young to learn to till the soil. Especially in one’s own personal little garden.

Wishing you lots of wonderful spring adventures.

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As the sun’s rays come closer to the earth and the sun on our faces feels that much warmer, and as the little boy stirs in my belly, I feel new creative juices flowing. So many new ideas for things to create, to sew for the shop (oh, so little time!) And around us, the life sap of the trees is flowing too. Oh the wonderful sweet sap.

Is this inspiration spontaneous and spur of the moment? Or is it the fruition of ideas and thoughts that have been brewing and formulating all winter long? Just like the plants and trees that build energy through the winter, preparing for the spring?

For the first time this year I thought of the sap time as being connected to the fertility of nature, to the cycles of life & energy.

There’s a wonderful place to visit within the Greenbelt of Ottawa, called Old Log Farm. Lots of great hiking trails, a log house + farm built in 1854 to explore, and old school bucket maple tree taps that children can help with, using buckets to collect the dripping sap.

Maple syrup is so precious – seeing each drop of sap drip into your pail, and then seeing how 40 gallons are boiled down to just one… just one gallon of beautiful golden liquid…. makes you really appreciate it.

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These early spring days in Ottawa are delightful.

Right now, we see the warming grass breaking through the last bits of ice.

 

The first bits of green.

Raincoats and wind jackets instead of woolens.

Little icebergs breaking off from the Ottawa River ice, charging through the chilly waters.

We just can’t seem to wait to grow things outside, so we started a little windowsill garden.

And made a gear box with a cracker box, shish-kebab stick, some potato pieces and toothpicks.

And baked some delicious Sally Lunn (for all intents and purposes, a challah) bread.

And made our own rainbows with the fabulous Stockmar window wax crayons… and some recycled ones of our own in the tiniest little muffin cups I’ve ever seen.

And delighted in the warming sun.

 

And the growing boy.

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The snow is still piled high on our (little tiny urban) frontyard, but the signs of spring are everywhere.

(photo, above, via Flickr) 

Yesterday on our walk in the neighborhood (ahh, a little a lot slow thanks to a sore 3rd trimester mama) we noticed all of the colors of spring mud, the grass peeking out of the last remants of ice, the burgeoning buds, the smell… that spring smell…

And with the fullest, biggest moon hanging in our sky tonight, we will have a balance between light and dark in our day. Such a magical time. And a great time to check out the moon, since it won’t feel this big again until 2029. My daugher will be 22. Oh my. 

In honor of the coming spring, she made some sweet clay ladybugs and a caterpillar at our favorite pottery studio recently. Can’t wait for the parade of bugs and root children to come up from under the earth now… what a very welcome sight they will be.

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