Update: Suddenly Spring!

Or not that suddenly, since it’s March 3rd. But quite spring-like, since it’s a warm-ish day, but damp.

I am dithering. Is it time to start flower seeds under lights? If you start seeds too early, then the weather is bound to be dreadful in May, and all your little flowers will be crying out for more space and banging their heads on the lights and trying to flower while still crammed together in cell packs. If you start seeds too late, then early May is lovely, while your tiny seedlings are an inch tall and only have about four leaves apiece. It’s a yearly conundrum. I believe I will muse upon this dilemma for another week or so and start seeds in mid- to late-March, on the grounds that starting seeds a little late is less likely to be a problem than far too early.

I will start super easy seeds, by the way: marigolds and zinnias. The deer and rabbits don’t bother them … much … although I SWEAR that this year I will get the deer repellant out EARLY and prevent those MONSTERS from eating my hostas and biting the tops off my butterfly weed (Asclepias), which the deer ABSOLUTELY did last year, several times, and don’t tell me that butterfly weed is deer repellant. Not at my place it’s not.

I need strong colors, vibrant orange like this, bright yellow, deep red, because this is the sunny strip along my driveway and pale colors disappear in strong sunlight. It’s not a huge area, but not that tiny either, and therefore I prefer to start seeds myself because I want a fair number of plants. Also, I prefer the single marigolds, Lemon Gem and those types; and very short, single zinnias, and those aren’t that easy to find at nurseries.

I guess I might start a few vegetables too. The long, thin types of eggplants that you can’t get at a normal grocery store, things like that.

MEANWHILE, enough musing about spring. I’m kind of avoiding admitting that I didn’t do anything with Tano’s next book last week. BUT I DID finish “MIDWINTER,” so, I mean, there’s that.

Here’s something else to muse upon:

Should I call it “Midwinter” or should I think of a poetry title for it? I hadn’t intended to treat it like a real book, but it’s nearly as long as Shines Now and, for that matter, markedly longer than The Year’s Midnight. It is therefore a real book in the series, and how about that, I sure didn’t expect that to happen when I started it.

It’s not Thursday, but let’s do something fun with poetry —

Here are the two John Donne poems from which I took the phrases for the four book titles. I’m bolding and italicizing the book titles, not that you could miss them. I wonder if anything else in these two poems might be useful for this book? Appropriate images would include midwinter, but also spring. Along with phrases already used for book titles, I’ll bold and italicize phrases that seem potentially to fit “Midwinter.” St Lucy’s Day is, by the way, celebrated at midwinter and would fit beautifully for that reason.

A Nocturnal Upon St Lucy’s Day

‘Tis the year’s midnight, and it is the day’s,
Lucy’s, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;
The world’s whole sap is sunk;
The general balm th’ hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed’s feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr’d; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compar’d with me, who am their epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring;
For I am every dead thing,
In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness;
He ruin’d me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not.

All others, from all things, draw all that’s good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have;
I, by Love’s limbec, am the grave
Of all that’s nothing. Oft a flood
Have we two wept, and so
Drown’d the whole world, us two; oft did we grow
To be two chaoses, when we did show
Care to aught else; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death (which word wrongs her)
Of the first nothing the elixir grown;
Were I a man, that I were one
I needs must know; I should prefer,
If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love; all, all some properties invest;
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light and body must be here.

But I am none; nor will my sun renew.
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
At this time to the Goat is run
To fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all;
Since she enjoys her long night’s festival,
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
Both the year’s, and the day’s deep midnight is.

*** *** ***

A Hymn to God the Father

Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.

Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallow’d in, a score?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.

I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And, having done that, thou hast done;
I fear no more.

*** *** ***

I’ll have to think about this. And consider other Donne poems. I would want to stick to Donne, probably, since all four of the earlier books draw on Donne’s poems.

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