The Anglo-Saxons called March ‘Hlyd Monarth’, which means ‘loud’ or ‘stormy month.’ And I can confirm that March, 1,600 years later, continues to be stormy.
The rain didn’t stop all day, and the clouds were some of the most ominous I’ve ever seen, but I had this unusual lightness about myself. I’m looking forward to getting knees-deep into a new month. And considering where I wander, i.e. off the paths, that isn’t going to be difficult.
February was a month of incredible highs and terrible lows, though it passed in a blur. If you were to ask me to give you a list of all I did in February, you’d be waiting a while for me to remember.
This post will be an ‘all over the place’ post, a bit like Spring itself, actually.
Whenever Spring beings to ease itself into three months of rule, I always think of the scene of Mole spring cleaning in the still shot model animation and film rendition of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind and the Willows. We had it on VHS when I was a kid, and my youngest brother was so obsessed with it, it was rarely not playing.
And, of course, as I was a Waldorf kid and am a mother to a half-Swedish daughter, I always think of Elsa Beskow’s artwork depicting March as an old man.
March is an old man,
old and cold,
grey beard and weary.
He sits there
melting the snow,
tempting the catkins,
the pussy-willow twigs,
watched by the coltsfoot,
the first signs of Spring.
– Elsa Beskow
I rounded up some spring quotes for you too. I do that at the beginning of a new season; it’s become a ritual in recent years.
Celebrating the strange and the shadowy, the damned and unseen 