Of Snowballs

See that snow-covered little tree next to the already white arbor?  That's my favorite plant.  That's why it's next to the back gate.  It's my personal welcome home every day and the last thing I see whenever I leave.  It's hard to see in this picture, between the snow, the fence and the trees across the street.  But trust me, it's special.  And what is it, you might be asking.  I'll tell you.

It's Viburnum Macrocephalum.  It's a deciduous shrub (in my area) that can grow to ten feet.  It doesn't mind shade and it blooms in the spring.  The viburnum family is pretty large and I like a lot of them.  I have two others, which I also am terribly fond of, but this one, Macrocephalum, is my favorite.

Common name:  Chinese Snowball.

Chinese because it is a native of China.  Snowball because in the spring, it is covered in bright white 8-inch round clusters of florets.

While out shoveling (yet again) today, I was struck by the humor or perhaps, irony, of my snowball bush up to its midsection in snow.  In a more typical March, I'd soon be noticing that the flower buds, that had already formed last year, beginning to swell, change color from dark to pale green to bright white.  It's stunning in full bloom.  I've actually had people come up to me when I'm out working in the garden to talk about it, admire it, ask for cuttings to take home.  Even though they aren't a suitable cut flower and it kills me to do it, I do share.  It's nice.  Someone knocked on my door once to tell me how much she loved seeing my Snowball in bloom--it reminded her of her grandmother's house.

An aside ... this is one of the benefits of living "downtown" and close to the street ... people interactions and chance conversations.

There was a Snowball in my Mom's garden at our first house in Windsor.  It was in a corner of the perennial borders that outlined our backyard.  Because it's such a large shrub with more of a tree-like shape to it, I remember I used to squeeze in behind it, hiding out (or so I thought) between the branches and the fence.  It was my little hiding spot.  In the spring, when the air is slightly damp and heady with all sorts of fragrances from spring blooms to fresh mulch, there was nowhere else I'd rather be than out in our backyard.  I remember once as my Mom was making her way around the garden doing the constant chores that all gardeners are familiar with, she shook the branches and the Snowball actually "snowed" its flowers down all around and on me.  It was entrancing ... magical.

My grandmother (from whom, I suspect, both my mom and I inherited our gardening genes) had a Snowball also.  She had a really large yard compared to her neighbors' yards and it was filled with roses, hydrangeas, vegetables and two cherry trees.  She also had a real "little house" in her backyard but that's a story for another time.  The snowball was in a side bed and somewhat overshadowed by the large old cherry trees.  Her well-established and carefully tended garden had that effortless look of having been there for ages.  My mom's place has that look too.  And maybe mine will too, one day.  It has pretty good bones.

I know this seemingly never-ending winter will, indeed, actually end one day soon.  And things will turn green again.  I will see the grass that has been hidden since early January.  And my Snowball will bloom along with the other viburnums and azaleas and peonies and daffodils and tulips and irises.  It's just a little hard to picture it today.  But I do have these to help me:

Viburnum Macrocephalum, May 24, 2014

Snowball "snow," June 4, 2014

Rink

For John.

I was a French major in college.  I was also a Music major.  I don't recommend double majoring to anyone; I'm not sure I got really good at either thing.  That's a story for another time ... And I digress.  Again.

One of the classics we read, of course, was Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu, or In Search of Lost Time.  It's not the easiest book to tackle in English, let alone in French.  I'm pretty sure there were Cliff Notes involved back then.  About the only thing I remember is the iconic passage of the book, that sets the stage for the rest of the storytelling, when the narrator indulges in the simple act of enjoying a madeleine (a cake-like cookie) and tea.  This prompts a flood of memories that unfold in the rest of the book.  Or something like that.  The madeleine was the trigger for a cascade of memories for him.


It was Saturday and I went for a walk in the cold but brilliant afternoon.  It was really a beautiful day and I opted for a slightly longer route than I'd been doing lately.  I headed over to Cedar Lake.  As the road turned toward the water, I could see boys skating behind the houses.  One sat on a dock, donning his skates.  There were nets and hockey sticks.  That was my "madeleine."

I grew up in Canada in a typical post-war subdivision neighborhood of mostly small ranch houses.  They were good times with lots of children and our most immediate neighbors were all families with similarly aged kids.  We grew up together until my family moved to New Jersey.  We played complicated games outside, using our imaginations to act out stories and we had lots of traditional outdoor toys.  We'd jump rope for hours.  There was a cherry tree in our back yard and in the summer, we'd move the jungle gym to beneath it and sit up high and eat enough cherries to spoil our dinners.  And in the winter, we skated.

It would have to snow enough and stay cold enough but if the conditions were right, our parents would bank up the snow in our backyards and use the hose to spray the area.  It took several night of spraying to build up ice thick enough to skate on.  

As I walked along with my thoughts shooting back over the decades, I came upon another space on the ice, cleared for skating.  I would pass by several more on my long walk through the lake.  It occurred to me how easy these parents had it.  The lakes here in town are small.  Many are man-made so not very deep.  They freeze pretty well all the way across.  We threw a fun skating party one New Year's Day when my ex-husband and I lived on one of them, many moons ago, before kids.  When the conditions are right, the ice is smooth and glassy without the need for hoses.

Now I wonder ... how did our parents stand out there, in the freezing cold, many nights in a row tending to those little rinks.  Because after a half a dozen or so kids skate on the little ovals, they'd need to sprayed down again.  No such thing as a backyard Zamboni.  Just dads in boots and hats with the hose in their gloved hands.  I think my mom took a lot of those shifts too and I'm sure it was she who shoveled the lawn into the shape of an ice rink and banked up the sides while my dad was at work.

I walked along, remembering all the fun we had.  I can recall playing "crack the whip" with the strongest skater at the front of the line, pulling the rest of us behind.  He'd take a sudden, sharp turn and we'd all let go and let the force of the turn send us flying across the ice.  There must have been some hockey going on but I can't picture it.  But hockey was played year 'round, ice or no ice, so there must have been.

Our parents took turns hosting these skating evenings.  That way, the ice that wasn't being used could be undergoing the respraying process.  The moms would make pitchers and pitchers of hot chocolate.  They would sit together in conversation, watching us whirl around.  I'm sure we must have been out there on school nights.  You wouldn't know how long the ice would last.  A huge snowfall or a couple warmish days in a row would doom your smooth sheets of  glassiness to pocked and cracked messes that were really impossible to bring back to their former usefulness.   You had to skate while the skating was good.

I bet we were actually not out there all that long--especially if it was a school night.  Our moms bundled us up to the enth degree, laced up our skates tightly, put mittens over mittens and tied our scarves in the back.  Then they'd make the hot chocolate.  It seems in my childhood memories as if we were out under the stars for a long time.  But I bet it was only an hour (or maybe even less).  What a lot of work it must have been for our folks.  

How idyllic were those winters ... Where I lived in southern Ontario, there could be a lot of snow ... or not.  My lakes (Erie and St. Clair) didn't really freeze--maybe in patches along the shoreline.  But those are lakes.  Real lakes.  The Detroit River used to freeze all the way across back when my parents were children.  That was before the river was deepened for the freighters that carry every sort of cargo you can imagine from Lake Superior all the way out through the St. Lawrence River.  I remember skating to school on one day after it rained and froze over the snow.  We skated there in the morning but walked home for lunch after the sun warmed up the lawns.  

There was no such thing as a "snow day."  We went to school in every kind of weather.  One year, there was so much snow on the roof of the gym that it collapsed under the weight.  No one was in it at the time, thank goodness.  But no one closed the school either.  We didn't have gym class while we waited for the repairs to be made.  We just went along with whatever the weather dealt us.

All these thoughts came rushing up from some deep well as I walked along under the brilliant blue sky.  How lucky we were ... simpler times with simple pleasures that our parents made happen.  We were blissfully secure in our neighborhood of families who were up for hours of frozen fun in the winter and porch sitting and catching fire flies in the summer.  Talk about being privileged.  It was pretty close to perfect.

The ice.  Those rinks.  Madeleines. 

Walk Journals: The Winter Walks

Making Tracks ...

Not so many walks this winter--weather and road conditions have been less than cooperative.  I've lost track of the number of snowstorms we've had but we've used six snowdays at school this year so there's six right there.  We stayed open during a couple snowy days and there was at least one snowy weekend.  I've had to content myself with shoveling for my workouts.  As it turns out, shoveling is counted as an activity in my Weight Watchers app (10 minutes of shoveling equals 1 point) so the hours spent clearing away light fluffy flakes, water-laden slush and shards of ice have counted for something (besides aching muscles).

But ... a few days were above 22 degrees (my bottom threshold for spending a couple hours outside) or were dry enough or had a brilliant sun that lured me out to see what my world had to offer.  

And there was plenty to see and admire and wonder about.  The Rockaway River was spectacular locked in ice in January.  With many consecutive days failing to reach over ten degrees, she had frozen in several places from shore to shore, pushing ice over the banks and encasing everything in her path in a glassy coating.  The January sunsets cast an orange and pink glow in the winter sky that failed to warm despite the flushed hues.  But they do bear the promise of warmer times to come.  These days before the huge snows were such a gift.  The paths in the parks were still passable and sidewalks were clear.



 There were a couple of nice days that allowed for walking across the highway to Indian Lake. 

It's always been amazing to me how the days really do grow longer after December 21.  I mean, I know they do but in the depths of winter, it sometimes feels like it's never going to get light again.  But every minute of light counts and the slightly longer daylit days of January also speak of the promise of spring--and allow for longer walks making visiting the lake a real possibility.  Once upon a time, there was a New Year's Day skating party on this lake (we lived a block from the little beach at the time).  The lake was frozen clear across and the day was brilliant.  I remember we skated limbo-fashion under this bridge, the entrance to Lenape Island, a tiny miniature island with maybe a dozen homes where I'd dearly love to live.  We skated for hours and hours that day.  It's one of my fondest memories of our little cottage by the lake.

Where the water from Indian Lake spills over a little dam into a lagoon, the water wasn't frozen.  These swans were captivating.  This is the first time I've seen swans in the dead of winter.  We have several different pairs that stop by in October for a few weeks on their route to their winter homes in the south and then return for a few weeks, usually in March, on their way north again.  Perhaps I've never been in the right place or maybe this is the first time a few stuck around for a New Jersey winter.

This sign has been on Franklin Road near the little beach bridge for quite a while now.  Whatever road work the town has been doing here seems to be stalled and I can't help but thinking that is a metaphor for this winter.  With all the snow and ice, there've been no end to the bumps and slow going.  Or maybe it's a metaphor for those rough, icy patches in life.  Some of the winter walks have been like that ... 

Slip sliding ...

and it's all night.*

We all have our bumps in the road and icy patches that cause us to slip and slide.  This is why I love these walks so much:  they often cause me to reflect on the evident connections that are to be made between the walking and the living, between the sights I see and the memories they trigger, between the ups and downs, the rough and the smooth going--it's obvious, I know, but that whole "journey" idea has been bubbling close to the surface the last year or two.

Before the snow got too deep, walks to the pond were possible too.  Lately, even the sidewalks that far up the road have been impassable but a few weeks ago, if I set out early enough I could make it up that far before sunset.  The pond seems so plain in this state ... no sturdy lily pads, no waving grasses, no ducks, geese, dragonflies or frogs jumping out of the danger of my footfalls.  But there is a sort of forlorn beauty in the starkness of the bare trees, the dark reflections and the encroaching ice.  

I keep thinking I need some new places to walk.  I've walked these roads and paths so often, photographed the river, the lake, the pond from almost every angle and in all types of light.  But the truth is, I love these places and visiting them in every season, in all types of weather, on sunny days and dreary ones--it all recharges me.  They're my places and are important parts of that more recent journey of the past couple of years.  I will find some new places to walk but these local spots--they'll always be my favorites.

~~~

*if you've read these pages before, you'd have guessed this is a Gavin DeGraw lyric and you'd be right:  Leading Man

Winter playlist, eclectic sampling:

Hot Chelle Rae - Don't Say Goodnight
Pharrell Williams - Happy (or if you have 24 hours to spare ... 24 hours of Happy,) 
Joey DeGraw - Miracle of the Mind