Seasons of Reflection

this year's zinnias

I love art shows, but I’ve never exhibited in one. Since I visit local art galleries, I sometimes receive invitations to exhibit, and I received one of these invitations the other day. Art exhibitions  always have a theme, a theme you are supposed to work into the art piece you submit. The one I received recently was titled Seasons of Reflection.

The word seasons made me think of seasons of the year, spring, summer, autumn and winter. I quickly related these to seasons of my life and thought, childhood, college, marriage, family and widowhood. Oops, that’s five seasons. At first I thought, laughingly, that maybe I should add hurricane season. We have that here in Florida, always the end of summer and the beginning of fall. I realized it actually fit my life. Children can be little hurricanes and illness almost always comes before widowhood, illness is a hurricane of sorts.

Then, I tried to think of outstanding memories of each of these seasons of my life. Although I grew up as an only child, I wouldn’t say I was lonely. I had many friends, I was always a reader, and I was interested in almost everything and everyone I encountered. If a friend tapdanced, I wanted to do that, too. If another friend played the piano, it was “Please, Mommy, can I have a piano?” And so on until I finally got over myself! But it did keep me busy. I was a good student mainly because I did not want to be embarrassed in class by not having done my homework. And my best friend was practically a genius! Competition was in my genes.

Preparing for college was a given, and when the day finally came, my expectations were enormous only to be deflated quickly. My genius friend who had skipped 12th grade was like a stranger when I finally arrived. She had moved on…my first disappointment. Classes were very different from high school. Nobody cared (especially the prof) whether I did my assignment or not. The classes were huge, and I was one tiny blip in the audience. Listen, don’t listen, turn your assignments in…or not…up to you. My motivation had disappeared and my good grades along with it. But Friday night dances were the bomb and late night trips to the student center for chocolate fudge sundaes kept me happy as a cat in a dairy barn.

I got the shock of my life when my first transcript arrived. It had a D on it in Physical Science, obviously something I needed to study. So I changed my ways and got down to business, but it took me an entire semester to realize I couldn’t skim by on my looks…just kidding. And the season of summer quickly transitioned into autumn, marriage and children.

Autumn starts out hot but eventually cools down. That’s how marriage usually goes. Everything is bright and new to begin with, lots to learn, lots of new experiences with the bright blooms of summer making everything colorful and glorious. But blooms must turn to seed to ensure the next generation, and seeds need care and attention, and the new season has a life of its own. New seeds bloom and the dried petals of the old flowers float along to a new resting place, and eventually their purpose is spent. Along comes winter.

Some plants are annuals, and that’s the way with humans. One year of seasons is all we get, and although each of us is an annual, seeds have guaranteed our longevity, millions of years already.

Four very different seasons for reflection but all tied together by unique human beings. Each season could be many different paintings.

And so, I have an idea for a painting, an empty flowerpot, a seedling, a full bloom, a spent bloom, a year’s worth of a seasons of reflection.

A Room with a View

I spend a lot of my time in one room of my home which I have named Connieann’s Corner although it is a room with four corners, and my name is Connie, not Connieann. Connieann’s Corner is also the name I chose for my blog on Google’s Blogger website. How Connieann came about was from a spelling error on my original Social Security card. Someone forgot the space, and so these millions of years later, on my blog, I revitalized Connieann.

The room I refer to as Connieann’s Corner is actually the third bedroom of my three bedroom home. 

It is filled with drawing and painting supplies, art in progress, books of all genres, my computer, and most important of all, a comfortable chair and a window with a view of the outside world. I sit in front of that window now. My Chromebook rests atop my drafting/drawing table and fights for my attention with birds, plants, neighborly walkers and even a squirrel. By raising my gaze I can report on the weather, the traffic and the time of day. In this stay-at-home time this window is a direct link to my sanity.

In the morning I enter Connieann’s Corner carrying my breakfast bowl of oatmeal topped with yogurt, strawberries, blueberries and a few walnuts or pecans. As I twist open the blind, it is not unusual to see cardinals, chickadees, wrens, sparrows, finches, jays and even a mourning dove eating from the feeder or drinking or splashing in the birdbath. Since the squirrel is a recent guest (I say that word loosely), he may be hanging upside down from the porch post with his nose in the feeder as well. 

The feeder and bath, a turquoise dish in a jute sling, hang from porch beams. Both are so familiar to the birds that they sit in the bushes nearby as I clean and refill. The squirrel backs up a few feet but remains in sight as though questioning my authority.

About three feet in front of my window is a six foot loropetalum bush which routinely blooms with tiny pink flowers attracting bees and butterflies. Closer to my window but still hanging from a porch beam is a red glass hummingbird feeder. I have seen many different hummies drinking and sitting on the homemade hangar. If I should go out onto the porch while they are feeding, they confront me with their buzzing noise and reluctantly fly a short distance away until I retreat back inside and they can resume drinking their sugary water cocktail.

On the ground directly under the window in the right angle made by the join of the porch to the house is a concrete birdbath. The roof valley above naturally keeps the bath filled with rainwater and no doubt is one of the reasons the squirrel and other wildlife find my porch so attractive.

When the weather is cool enough, I open the window and can better enjoy the birdsong chorus and squirrel chattering and hummie buzzing. Mopsy, my cat, loved to sit on the inside sill of the open window and stare down the lizards that traversed the porch rail. She made that little clacking noise in her throat and the anoles red-throated balloons would expand as they came on guard. She never seemed interested in the birds, somehow knowing they were beyond her reach. And the birds never minded her, hardly glancing her way. The squirrel came calling after her passing.

The most unwelcome visitor I ever saw was a lengthy black racer. 

One morning when I opened the blind, he was slithering up the porch post headed for the feeder. I am sure I gasped at the sight of him. He hung around for quite some time, basking in the sunshine, waiting for a meal, but when no birds appeared, eventually he slithered away, back to where he came from. Another unlikely sight was a hawk that swooped past my window, gliding under the porch and on to his unknown destination. I am sure I gasped that time, too. And I have seen numerous egret and ibis families strutting around the front yard with their long legs and curved necks possibly pretending to walk their kids to school.

Recently, turtles have been a popular sight with a street crossing directly in front of my house. Several cars have slowed with some stopping for the driver to exit and deliver the turtle to safety in my front yard. I read online that it was best to let them continue on their journey as they do not roam far from home.

I am grateful for the wildlife that parades in front of my window, and I try not to miss anything, but of course I do. It saddens me that it is possible and even likely that sometime in the future, there may be a silent spring as Rachel Carson predicted. I hope we will have leaders that fight for laws that protect all wildlife so that my grandchildren and their grandchildren will know the joy of watching a cardinal spray a sunlit fountain of tiny water droplets into a clear blue sky. For now, this is something Covid-19 has not changed.