Spring 2024 and the Growth of Memory

A general reflection on the times and the season

Spring is in the air. It is also all over the ground. As dandelions, thistles, and a hundred dozen other grasses and flowers begin their bloom across this mid-Missouri landscape. As if the Painter himself dropped a few paint drops from his brush before making the broad strokes of color across the green fields and yards of where I live.

picture of a redbud tree taken by the author

 I enjoy Spring as I know many of you do as well. What makes Spring so enjoyable? Is it the freshness that comes with the breeze? Or all the things growing for the first time this year? The redbuds and dogwoods showing off the majestic colors. Up here they are starting for the first time, but down south, where we were for Easter, they were already preparing for the summer long-haul of green-ness. 

One could mention the chilly mornings that give way to windy and brilliantly bright afternoons. Maybe we could connect on Midwest thunderstorms, which there seems to be not enough of according to my great-uncle. That great tense stillness that brews before the distant rumbles becomes the crashing freight trains and exploding lights of our favorite pastimes. My wife and I enjoy those together. The rain pelting our asphalt shingle roof reminds me of the time I spent overseas. 

Spring is the birth of a new year. The Great Preparation. Outdoor jobs go into full swing as grass grows, livestock flourishes, and the rain seems to make everything grow faster than we remembered. Spring seems to bring with it an element of chaos too. Everyone is helter-skelter getting their plants in the ground, but not too early, but not too late. Taxes are due and garages need cleaning.

Window Seat, still researching cushion options

 Everyone breathes a sigh of relief as winter seems to have passed. The Spring has come and gives us new life. We pack away winter clothes and pull out the summer ones, and maybe keep out one or two winter jackets (for those pesky cold snaps). For me, Spring feels like a season to do the new things. I recently built a window seat and I have plans for many other projects as well. My seasonal dreams of homesteading and farming increase and I think of my favorite poet, Robert Frost, a bit more often. 

As I have written elsewhere, my wife and I read a chapter of the Bible and then read a poem to mark the end of dinner in an effort to form a family tradition around the dinner table. We recently read a poem by Carl Sandburg that I will share. It reminds me of Spring. It is titled "New Farm Tractor"

The rear axles hold the kick of twenty Missouri jackasses.

It is in the records of the patent office and the ads there is twenty horse power pull here.

The farm boy says hello to you instead of twenty mules—he sings to you instead of ten span of mules.

A bucket of oil and a can of grease is your hay and oats.

Rain proof and fool proof they stable you anywhere in the fields with the stars for a roof.

I carve a team of long ear mules on the steering wheel—it’s good-by now to leather reins and the songs of the old mule skinners.

I am fond of any poem I can find that mentions Missouri. This poem by Carl Sandburg does a great job of describing the change from the old to the new way of doing things. And for us, even boy-driven tractors are becoming old news as automation and technologically advanced farming are on the rise. The Spring of a new era is approaching. Technology and automation are sprouting and its first blooms are visible. 

To some, this is the first sign of a winter that looks cold, dreary, and long. The kind of winter that is hard and cruel and drains the life from you. For others, this marks a kind of spring that brings new life and vitality. A spring of limitless possibilities. I guess it all depends on which way you look at it. Tech-optimist or tech pessimist? Or maybe somewhere in between?

I think I fall into the in-between camp. I like good tech and enjoy its many benefits. Like someone who enjoys a good rainstorm, but also acknowledges its dangerous potential to create flash floods. I believe most tech is a slippery slope. TV, smartphones, smart, smart, smart... the list goes on. And it all is advertised as an increased convenience of life. A life of the pursuit of ease. But I digress...

I planted a tree today that my sister-in-law gave me. It is a cherry tree, planted that puppy right in the backyard about 10 feet off the side fence. I hope it grows. I hope my son can climb it one day. I hope to have planted a memory for him. Something that grows apart from me but will one day grow in him. I hope a love for trees, for things that grow, for the outside world and the lives that fill it. 

Spring is in the air. It is also all over the ground.

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