Star Gazing

Date: 14 April 2017

Time: 9:00pm

Temperature: 65°F

Star light, star bright.

First star I see tonight.

Wish I may, wish I might,

Have this wish I wish tonight.

I’ve always loved star gazing. Out here, in the middle of nowhere (or close as I can get sometimes), the stars are abundant and bright. I love laying in the grass and watching the stars, watching them move through the sky as the summer moves forward. Light pollution from our street lamp (as well as the bon fire and kerosene lamps) lighten the almost endless darkness, hiding so many of the tinnier, further away stars.

I’ve read so many facts about stars in the past, some I know are true and some I’m awfully skeptical about. Here are some I can remember off the top of my head: The closest star is eight light-years away so if you’re wishing on it, you’re wishing on a star from the past, on a star that could be dead. Space (the center of our galaxy) smells like rum and tastes like raspberries, according to some astronauts. Stars twinkle; planets don’t.

Here are some facts that I know to be true: Stars really are just large balls of gas. They are held together by their own gravity. The sun is also a star. It’s a dwarf star actually, which should tell you something about how small our own galaxy is. When larger stars die, they explode into a cloud of dust and gas called a supernova (what a way to go).

I do not know many constellations, but almost a year ago, I found an app that helps me see what is up there. It’s called “Star Chart.” It helps the average star gazer to see different stars, constellations, planets, messiers. Because it was a free app, the information I get is a little lacking, but it gives me what I need. Instead of just being able to find the Little Dipper (Ursa Minor) and the Big Dipper (Ursa Major), I can see Scorpius, Draco, Hercules, Andromeda, Canis Major, Cassiopeia, and so much more. Granted, it has to be a wonderfully clear and especially dark night to see some of these, but the point is, I can.

Our galaxy (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto) is so large, that it takes years, years, just to get a satellite camera to its outer edges. That’s just our universe, our universe in the innumerable realm of universes. We are part of something so much bigger than we can even imagine. I’m one person in a cog, in a system of people at Chatham, in Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania, in the US. We’re just one planet in a solar system, in a galaxy, in a tiny corner of the universe. We’re a small speck of dust on history. We can’t even fathom the possibilities out there. And that’s a beautiful thing.

April Showers

Date: 2 April 2017

Time: 4:30pm

Temperature: 60°F

Another week, another blog, another classic phrase on spring…April showers bring May flowers. April showers—aka a whole ton of rain in an almost non-stop, around the clock timeframe throughout an entire month—brings us flowers in the following month. A precious gift to cherish after the onslaught of gloomy skies and endless rain, a little bit of pretty for all our suffering.

Clearly, whoever came up with this phrase, ignored the flowers we have in April (and sometimes the tail end of March): light purple crocuses, delicate white snowdrops, bright blue hyacinths, powdery fresh dogwoods, pink eastern redbuds, two-toned yellow daffodils, and pink, red, and yellow tulips. These flowers were not gifts from April showers but from the melted show of January and February.

Not to mention that April showers bring sooooo much more than just May flowers. I listed some things (as many as I could think of in a ten- to fifteen-minute time period, while sitting next to my tree) that this little phrase forgot to mention (probably in favor of saving time). But before we get to that list, let’s break down rain itself really quick.

On Earth, it rains water, but on Venus, it rains sulfuric acid (just imagine that next time you complain about weather in Pittsburgh). When liquid water forms droplets from condensed atmospheric water vapor, it precipitates and falls to the earth’s surface as rain. Antarctica has the least amount of rainfall per year. Rainforests, on the other hand, get no less than seventy-five inches of rain every year.

Before it rains, you can smell it. Well, you can smell the ozone layer descending lower into our atmosphere, brought in by the thunderstorms downdrafts. After it rains, you can still smell it. Well, you can smell the petrichor, the disturbed and displaced molecules on surfaces, especially the drier ones, that are carried into the air from the rain.

April showers bring:

·      May flowers (and those, as we know, bring Pilgrims)

·      Forsythia bushes

·      Wellies, umbrellas, slickers

·      Poison Ivy

·      Mud, puddles, potholes

·      Floods

·      Mulch and Manure

·      Mother’s Day, Easter, Passover

·      Bon fires

·      Shorts, Bathing Suits, Diets

·      Concert Seasons

·      Picnics, Dog Parks, Yard Sales

·      Misquotes

·      Lawn maintenance items (grass fertilizer vs. weed killer)

·      Babies: deer, bunnies, robins, ducks, chickens, squirrels, etc.

·      Summer

April showers bring all that is spring. You can feel it. And no, it has nothing to do with the “Color Me Spring” Starbucks cup I’m sipping hot cocoa out of, or the onslaught of television commercials advertising for spring/summer. But spring is here. It’s settling in. You can smell it in the worms that litter your sidewalk. You can taste it in the air, in the petrichor. You can feel it in your bones and memorize the way it roots itself in your muscles. You can hear it in the early morning bird songs and the evening calls of peepers (which are always so much louder than you remember).

Spring is here. Revel in it, bask in its glory.  

Please, feel free to add to my list of things that “April showers bring”.

Change

Date: 19 March 2017

Time: 4:30pm

Temperature: 38°F

I sit beside my tree and just take everything in. So much—and yet so little—has happened in the past few weeks. The temperature has risen and fallen numerous times. It rained, sleeted, snowed. Spring peepers made their first appearance but disappeared again. Buds have continued to lengthen, continued to fatten. Deer, turkeys, and even robins have wondered into the area during the warmer days but hide again as the temperatures drop.

They say that March could start out nasty and end calmly—in like a lion and out like a lamb. Likewise, March could start out calmly and end nastily—in like a lamb and out like a lion. However, with all of the back and forth, all of the two and fro, it is hard to tell how we started March out, making it near impossible to tell how this will all end.  

Tomorrow is the Spring Equinox. It signals the arrival of a new seasons, of spring. Again, we’re being given change. The biggest change: spring brings new life. Daffodils, daisies, dandelions. Fawns, chicks, babes. It also brings rain, mud, floods, but without these “bad” things, we wouldn’t get the “good” things.

The Spring Equinox is also when the sun crosses the celestial equator—the imaginary line in the sky above Earth’s equator—from the south to the north. Similarly, this is also when the sun is directly above the equator. Unlike the Summer Solstice—the longest day of the year—the Spring Equinox is one of the two days of the year—along with the Autumn Equinox—where the day is nearly as long as night.

Unlike an eclipse, you cannot see the Spring Equinox. There is no flash, no bang. The start of spring is something we celebrate but cannot see, cannot feel. We know the signs, we know the astronomy, but we rely on faith and science to show us this change.

We are in a balance of new and old. We are leaving winter, leaving death and destruction. But we have not arrived at summer, at full life and abundance. We’re stuck in the middle, in a central point between life and death. Yes, things are growing and breathing, but at any moment, that can be lost. Frost can kill plants overnight, and predators can overpower newborn animals with ease. Maybe the constant teetering between rain and snow, between winter and summer, is starting to make sense now.

Maybe we can’t rely on the old proverb in like a lion/lamb and out like a lamb/lion. Maybe there’s been too much change—or maybe there’s been too little change.

Either way, here’s to April showers bring May flowers.