Miss March

My Lilies

March is fickle, so they say.

I think of March as an elder woman, going through menopause, hot one minute, cold the next, who pees when she sneezes. Don't be offended, I mean no disrespect to the last month of true winter and into the first month of earliest spring.

March, as they say, comes in like a lion. She huffs and puffs and brings the sudden, unexpected snow shower, the damp rain, the first fogs and the first warm days. March is when you prepare the earth and get it ready to grow flowers and herbs and vegetables. It is the mucky month, as liable to be muddy and soppy as dry and frozen. Mom called and said that she saw a big black cricket, the fiddler of the field, hopping about in the leaves she was raking, leaves that had fallen down behind the huge saw blade I painted last spring just before I went to Virginia. She planted my multi floral lilies on each side of it. I wish I could see it. I wished I could put my hands in dear old mother earth and smell her richness and feel the dampness of her on my hands as I prepare her for the fertility of the season.

I long for the early morning symphony of the mockingbirds that nest in our holly tree, the repeating call of the south fat robins and watch the cocking of their heads as they listen to the minute traffic of the earthworms below the ground. I want to watch the swallows shopping the several bird houses trying to pick the right one where their young can be hatched and raised and finally fly away. I want to sit still in the evening and watch the starlings squabble over the bird bath. They come in a large group and I imagined them, like little vacationers. I could see them with little beach towels around their necks, one of those tiny inflatable float rings, little ray bands on their heads. Now I'm getting silly. But I wouldn't be surprised to see a tiny beach ball floating on the tiny ripples of the bird bath.

But March is the promise of spring.