A little Madness in the Spring

• Notes from Kathryn

It's finally warm enough to get out in the garden.

A little Madness in the Spring

Is wholesome even for the King,

But God be with the Clown –

Who ponders this tremendous scene –

This whole Experiment of Green –

As if it were his own!

(Emily Dickinson)

So it is hard to believe that three months ago there was almost six feet of snow in our backyard and now we linger in our garden through the twilight. Above like a mantilla of dark lace are the branches of just leafing immense trees—tupelo, an oak and a hemlock where a screech owl spent two years in the owl house we put up. He—or she—has flown off, but there are so many other critters up there, busy with their secret lives. And I begin to ponder this scene. So we stay longer as the dark blue eats the gray of twilight and then the blackness comes and light of the stars trickles through the mantilla. I am the clown in my own backyard.