Wildflower Dispatch 1

It is always incredible (but unsurprising) how much house work I get done after I open a new document on my laptop with the intention of writing. An inverse Pavlov's response, where I dread the contant pop-ups telling me what storage tools are full, that I need to update to Windows 11 (No. And no thank you), that I need to update any of my other applications because this hunk of junk- the entire keyboard (or what's left of it) bending under the weight of simple light typing, plugged in the second it turns on to keep the battery going, strategic planning of ice packs if I want to watch even a short video- sucks so much and is due for a replacement.

Not happening any time soon. Unfortunately.

But my dishes are washed and the floor swept and the toilet bowl scrubbed out.

All I wanted to do this morning was write about the wildflowers that have been emerging this last week. I had heard rumors that Lake Como had early buttercups two weeks ago, but didn't have the opportunity to head out and look for myself. It wasn't a long wait though to find them; first a small yellow-gilt meadow behind the vet's office where I walked Willa just last week, and then this morning in the soggy draw that cuts into the local gulch in front of our neighbor's house.

This winter, creatively named such for all that it felt like perma-fall in reality, wasn't harsh. It didn't even have the cold nights needed to render the mountains blue (caused by gases put off by pine needles, it distorts the light and everything is indigo for several months), but the yellow spots are impossible to miss.

but, first come the songbirds. Then the flowers. The birds move up the gulch. Decending to our mailbox, one is dropped into HD surround-sound booth by them, roosting in the trees; tiny bodies hidden against the needles so much so that it sounds like the clouds themselves are the ones singing. Our place is open- more sagebrush than trees, and we don't get summer birds until the western bluebird and their slice-of-sky males claim the nest boxes and other homes for the season, followed closely by kingirds that hunt insects from the garden fencing. This morning I also heard the first western meadowlark song, a joy shared by also finding the first yellowbell (of the most delightful genus Fritillaria) poking up between the sagebrush and bitterroot flower leaves (we are estimating that in a month or so when the leaves wither and they send up their flowers separate it'll be an incredible year- all my fingers and toes are crossed). In these cursed interesting times, such regular mundanity is a balm I reach for often.

I have been struggling for months with the way in which I interact with the world as it is. Social media in particular is a sore spot. I can only manage having Instagram on my phone for a week or 10 days at a time before I'm left paralysed- the state of the world, personal petty drama, the FOMO and comparison's all too much and I freeze like a opossum caught in the bird feeder.

It makes it hard to progress as an artist-poet. And I so desperately want to progress as an artist-poet (though I should just say poet, they are the same thing to me in truth). Another area to go back to the drawing board.

The drawing board looks a lot like this at the moment:

- Substack newletter as an actual newsletter with important updates

- Substack notes as comment/connection and personal accountability (what did I do today?)

- Personal website for actual essays (hello, hello)

- Patreon for Beargrass Zine and more process-oriented writing

- Gods this sounds like too much already.

Spring makes me- though I surely can't be the only one- wildly ambitious. There are also hikes and camping trips planned (and already enacted- and failed due to wind in the plains, it was a little funny, that I'll write about more in a separate piece because the tiniest snail fossils made me have Feelings), around juggling work where we're short staffed, again. I am starting from scratch with my painting skills under the tutelage of a man dead since 1922 (Arthur Dow, author of Composition), and quite frankly, not quite sure where I'm headed with this little dispatch anymore. Spring is springing and I am focused on moving through it smoothly without getting overwhelmed. May we all have solid hulls and adept helms folk in these times.

** this is the only Wildflower Dispatch I will be sharing in this space. Substack will contain the rest, to be delivered roughly weekly.