Blasting forth from the loins of the mother earth

Spring has ushered me in hurredly as if I were a late guest at a special variety show. This week surrounding the equinox has spun me around in a whirlwind of productivity, bizarreness, business and emotion. Not surprising. It is March; The winds of change are re-activiating the Wood from its winter dormacy. The blood is thinning. The waters are raging. Life is again stirring from the fiery loins of the planet we call home.

Nadine called me Friday night.

All night.

I do not know Nadine. Or rather, I should say, I did not know Nadine before Friday night. She acquired my cell number from "I really do not know where," and she used it. A lot. Despite anything I insisted otherwise, she really and truly believed that I was the ex-wife of some man who I can only assume was her boyfriend. She texted me at least 20 times, four of which were the above picture with various texts to accompany, and the rest were messages spanning from 11:00 pm to 3:42 am, increasing in urgency and conveying the following in a nutshell: You are D Queen, and you have a son. You have cursed your husband and done him wrong, and now you are avoiding both him and his girlfriend. He misses you and his son and wants you back. He has been extremely hurt by you. Even though you say you are not D Queen, you really are. Really. You are the problem- not me.

Do not worry, I turned the phone off when I went to bed. I enjoyed the grand finale of the text saga when I woke up Saturday morning. The last message, which came in at 3:42 am, merely read: Come get your husband.

2) I built a hoop house with the awesome and most enjoyable help of several rounds of friends. Frank T helped with the frame and skeleton. Todd M assisted me in getting the end walls up. Illiana and James W helped me get the plastic over the whole thing and secured very tightly and well. We joked and laughed and carried on. The thing is almost done and ready for some seeds!

Illiana and I topped off the day with a modified two person pyramid

3) As I stood my equinox egg up on the counter top last night in honor of the balance of day and night, a freak snow storm occurred while it was still 45 degrees out. It was crazy weather! The wind was blowing hard, and snow was all of a sudden pouring down heavily and quietly. But it wasn't cold out! The ground was still warm. It was outrageous! I woke up this morning to a beautiful but unexpected white springtime wonder.

Simultaneously, the days are stretching longer and longer into the night sky. The air has the occasional smell of fresh line dried linens. Turkey toms are starting to display, and the vultures are probably mating as we speak, so to speak. Human tempers are passionate and volatile. Sleep is bumped down a couple notches on the priority list, and placing one's body in the direct path of the sunshine is bumped up a few.

We are blasting forth from the loins of the mother earth.



And to top it all off, I find out that March, 2013 is the 30th annual "National Frozen Food Month!" These people are killing me, metaphorically. Every time I purchase frozen food with my Ingles Advantage Card until March 30, I am automatically entered for a 4-DAY FAMILY ORLANDO VACATION! Because frozen food and Disney are like brothers from another mother...





North Carolina Severe Weather Awareness Week

In honor of the last day of North Carolina Severe Weather Awareness Week, I offer you this ominous looking cloud picture, compliments of Mr. George Cooper of Wilmington, NC.

Apparently the winds were so strong earlier this week, they bent the flag pole of Mr. Cooper's American flag. The winds were also strong here. Large pieces of tin covering stacks of wood went flying around crashing here and there, loudly like artillery. Severe weather is no laughing matter.

More North Carolina news:  North Carolina's state beverage is: MILK.

Prelude

I'm so glad I left last year's Maypole up. It turns out a wrapped Maypole is quite stunning in the snow. It still stands in the middle of the garden, erect, last years bright colors faded slightly but not much. Red, yellow, pink, green, white, brown, checkered- all woven tightly to mark human activity in this cove. Are the lovely old depression era country songs of the Twilight Broadcasters, who kept the cadence of the May Dance, also woven in there? How about the smile of Eleanor Gentry (aka "Shorty"), whose old fabric we used for the ribbons? She spent the 40 best years of her life down there in the holler in the now dilapidated house where those fabrics were salvaged and then brought up the hill to be put to work. And the awe and fear of 3-year-old Sylvia Sparrow upon witnessing the Blue Man with antlers emerge from the woods and, silently, encircle the outer perimeter of the ring of dancers with his staff and his kilt, pawing the ground and snorting like a territorial buck?

What does the piliated woodpecker, watching from one of its MASSIVE holes in a nearby poplar tree in the woods, make of me standing in the snow pondering the pole? Will it watch from that hole this spring, as the friends, families, children and lovers wind new ribbons around a new pole? Or perhaps will it lose all sense of self control and fly right over the whole ordeal, laughing and cackling in polyrhythm with its undulating flight pattern?

The snow does not fool me. Spring is upon us.

Angelo beholds the pole