POSTCARD: The Hill of March
Another something new—an update from over here!
Yes, many new ‘columns’ here as I try to impose a little order to my thought process (ha!). Here’s a new idea, a personal idea: A little update from Owl’s Head every-so-often. Just, you know, what’s new over here. We’ll see how it goes—always feel free to let me know what you think!
I have noticed people like to get kind of spooky about March. Lions, lambs. Like it’s meant to scare you a little. Pre-resurrection mood, I suppose. I recently found myself deep in a certain Maine vernacular area of the internet, which spoke about the “hill of March.” Apparently, if an elder makes it over this hill, they’ll live another year. The general approach to March is unnerving.
Which is in pretty stark contrast to the actual feeling outside. As if by magic or magnets, here come the spikes of green, here comes the longer light. We had a little snow last night and there’s more predicted for Saturday, but it feels playful (“gotcha!”), not menacing. The daffodils seem unmoved; there’s no stopping them now. The energy is starting to burble out there; the birds are freaking tf out. Here come the tight purple-streaked spirals of wee crocuses. It feels exciting, like a drumline, it feels like we’re marching.
I’m reading two books that couldn’t be more different from each other. Downstairs, in the morning, after my pages and before everyone else gets up, it’s me and The Leopard—balmy, opulent, rageful, egotistical, and decaying Italian aristocracy. It really sets the tone for the day. At night, I can only get through about two pages before I start bobbing, Euell Gibbons’ Stalking the Wild Asparagus sings me to sleep with visions of future foraged meals and a playful, guffawing reverence for the obvious riches that exist outside our ridiculous, made-up human structures.
Everyone’s getting ready, and I am not different. Summer is a wild mid-year crescendo of visitors, and heat, and irregular schedules, and going away and coming back, and the outside loudly, semi-obnoxiously calling. Cacophony of cymbals. It’s not a good time to put out a monthly zine, I have now found. So, I am motoring away over here, producing six zines in three months (that’s March-August in March-May). Can she do it? I feel like the daffodils, man, I’m not scared.
(As point of fact, there might never be a ‘good time’ or ‘enough time’ to do anything. When I started the zine, I told a friend and she said, “And you’re going to do this every month?,” subtext: Honey, don’t. And I said, “Yeah, I guess!”, subtext: “No one can save me from myself!”)
I started some flower seeds inside and have been endlessly looking up plant facts. “Are foxgloves annuals?” I am the forever novice, always climbing uphill with this stuff. “When to remove humidity dome?” I have never been quite so bad at something I like quite so much. “Is cardboard mulching bad for worms?” I think that’s called being a hobbiest.
“Can crocuses survive the snow?” I was worried about the little green spears with the weather coming. Come to find out: “Tough little crocus seems to make it through any spring weather event.”
The old LL Bean catalogue approach: Put a Lab on it. Works every time. (LINK)
Who needs doorknobs? These are great. (LINK)
A Frank Llyod Wright for $790k. Full stop. (LINK)
