A handful of happiness

As I walked toward the front door one day after work, I was startled by the scent of lilacs. I looked to the left, toward the lilac bush we planted 20 years ago and gave up for dead a dozen times since then, and there they were: lilac blossoms, festoons of them blooming on a tall bush near the corner of the house. I could have cut a handful of stems to put in a vase and fill my house with the lovely aroma, but I'm happy to leave them growing where the pollinators can benefit from their long-awaited blossoms.

I could have cut a handful of stems but I can't comprehend a handful of scientists. Lately I've been listening to an audiobook in which the author uses the word handful over and over to refer to small groups of people or things, which is fairly normal I suppose, but hearing the phrase a handful of scientists produced in my mind a bizarre visual image of a bunch of lab-coated guys with Einstein hair squeezed inside a giant fist. Since that time, I've been experiencing cognitive dissonance every time I hear handful used to refer to things that cannot be easily held in the hand, like oak trees or elephants or Seventh-Day Adventists. 

This morning, though, I was happy to have my camera in my hands again. Nasty weather and a many-meeting marathon have conspired to keep me out of the woods, but this morning the sun was shining and I was determined to go out and see what I could see--and hear, starting with the brown thrasher running through its vast repertoire of songs high in a tree next to the driveway. Any day that includes a kingfisher sighting is a good day, but this one also included red-bellied woodpeckers, cardinals, towhees, all manner of sparrows, and a Louisiana waterthrush.

I thought I'd entirely missed bloodroot and twinleaf season this spring, but I found one tiny twinleaf blossom poking up out of the leaf litter in the woods. Elsewhere I saw mayapples budding and pawpaws blooming and all manner of blossoms: Dutchman's breeches, squirrel corn, trilliums, wild geranium, phlox, blue-eyed Mary, perfoliate bellwort, Solomon's seal, purple loosestrife, rue anemone, redbud, dogwood, mitrewort, wild columbine, purple violets and white violets--oh, and plenty of dandelions, of course. My daughter makes dandelion jelly that tastes like honeyed sunshine, so I refuse to see these cheerful blossoms as worthless weeds. 

Yesterday we watched a white-crowned sparrow gathering bits of dandelion fluff, presumably to line a nest. If the dandelions in my front yard can keep a sparrow happy, then who am I to complain? Especially when the whole place smells of lilac.

The clouds look quilted.