Although everything is late, spring has finally come to Maine. The hermit thrushes are back with their pan-pipe songs. Yesterday, I saw a hummingbird—time to put up the lovely red feeder Clif bought me for Christmas. It’s been sunny and warm enough for lunch on the patio, and mild enough, even, for an hour on the patio when Clif comes home from work. Best of all, the black flies, the scourge of the north, have yet to rear their ugly little heads. Dare I hope that this will be a sparse spring for black flies? I sure do!

In the garden, in the woods, by the road, flowers are blooming, and plants are unfurling. Here are a few pictures I recently took:

Such a busy time of year. For the next few weeks I will be digging, planting, and, in general, grubbing in the yard. There is also a lot going at our library, with the expansion entering its public phase. (I’m a trustee and a volunteer.) There will be a kick-off celebration next week, and—surprise, surprise—I was the one to organize the food.

Busy or not, I’m still cooking dinner every night, of course. Clif and I hardly ever eat out, and I even have a recipe to share—chickpea cutlets—and another to experiment with—chili made with black bean “meat balls.” But these recipes will have to wait for either a rainy day or June.

In the meantime, here is a picture of the chickpea cutlets, adapted from a Mark Bittman recipe. My, my, they were tasty, if I do say so myself. A definite make-again dish.

This Sunday is Mother’s Day, and at the little house in the big woods, there will be a waffle brunch, complete with home fries, fruit salad, and an egg dish. I’m told there will even be chocolate cupcakes for dessert.

Happy spring and Happy Mother’s Day to all!

Spring in Maine continues to be cold and gray. I am still wearing my winter garb—turtle neck, sweater, big corduroy shirt—and that is inside the house. Outside, I am even more bundled up.

Despite the recalcitrant weather, the grass is turning a bright green, and undeterred by cold, the perennials in my garden are bravely emerging from their winter sleep. However, I’ve heard that many farmers are behind in planting peas. The soil is just too cold for seeds to germinate.

But right on schedule, the maple flowers have started falling from the trees. Although May brings many delights that are much showier than this delicate flower, I’ll miss the cheerful red fringe on the maple trees in my backyard.

Until I took a picture of a maple flower and then cropped the photo, I had never really examined this little flower. I had never noticed the wave of stamens, the burst of petals, the lighter center. Instead, I had seen them the way an impressionist painter might, a welcome dab of red in a landscape just beginning to show color.

The maple flower is a reminder for me to slow down, to look closely at what surrounds me. All too often I rush through my days, checking off one chore after another: Vacuum, make bread, tidy the kitchen, work in the garden, do laundry, write, type the minutes for the last library trustee meeting, bike to the food pantry to volunteer. Chores certainly need to be done, but there must be some kind of balance between doing and looking. Listening and smelling should also be added to looking. Perhaps a better word would be noticing. Or observing.

After all, what kind of life do we have if we are so busy doing that we never take the time to notice, to observe?  Whether you live in a suburb, in a city, or in the countryside, there is always something to notice—the changing of seasons; nature, even in cities; the weather; sun and rain and clouds and sky; other people; buildings; animals. There is so much to observe, wherever you are.

Best of all, you don’t have to have a lot of money to observe closely. This is something the greedy financiers, who have grabbed and ruined so much, cannot take away from us. Despite how much actual money you might or might not have, a life spent observing, looking, and noticing is a rich one.

I’m thinking it might be time to buy a magnifying glass, so that I can look even more closely at the little marvels all around me.

Another Day in March. This morning, the thermometer read zero, and there is frost on the windows. Another storm is blowing up the coast, and although there are small patches of blue in the sky, there are plenty of hazy clouds to indicate bad weather is coming. The prediction is that the storm will be mostly coastal, and I am hopeful that central Maine will be spared the worst. Even better would be for the storm to be entirely coastal, as in completely out to sea, but I suppose that is too much to hope for.

On the stove, there are chicken bones simmering with garlic, peppercorns, a bay leaf, salt, and an onion studded with a few cloves. After it has simmered for several hours, the broth will be strained and then go into the slow-cooker to be combined with drippings from a chicken meal we had on Sunday, when I put sweet potatoes under a whole chicken sprinkled with garlic and herbs. When the broth and drippings have simmered for a bit, I will blend the leftover sweet potatoes into the resultant stock and add leftover chicken. Noodles will be cooked separately to add at the last minute, and Clif and I will have some warm soup on this cold March night. I’ll either make biscuit muffins or bran muffins to go with the soup.

While the stock is simmering, there will be a walk in the woods with the dog. There is still plenty of snow in central Maine, and the trail we walk on is packed hard by snowmobiles. It doesn’t feel like spring at all. It still feels like winter. But the days are getting longer, and the birds have begun their spring songs. I tell myself this as I bundle up in my heaviest coat and put on my hat and my heaviest gloves.

In the woods, at the end of the trail, are sap buckets. Unfortunately, it has been too cold for much of a harvest. Nevertheless, those buckets are a cheering presence at the end of what has been a long, hard winter.

Surely warmer weather is just around the corner. Surely spring is coming. Surely sometime before July, the snow will be gone from the yard of the little house in the big woods.