Ahhh. . . spring. Isn’t it lovely? Lately, I’ve spent my mornings cradling a cup of tea and staring at all the beauty unfolding in the backyard. It feels simple and luxurious at the same time. The adventure-filled weeks since my last blog post mean this blog post and video are longer than usual.

This season began by watching cedar waxwings eat berries from our neighbor’s yaupon tree and circling back as a group to rest in our live oak tree. Spring was just beginning in Austin, but we took a step back into winter again when we embarked on our journey around central Oregon for spring break. We began our trip in Portland and spent the morning walking around the farmers’ market downtown as we visited with friendly farmers and bought produce and fresh seafood for the week ahead. In true Portland form, we sipped coffee and listened to local musicians play as it drizzled on a cool and overcast morning.

Our road trip from Portland to Bend was filled with moss-lined trees and ferns blanketing their roots. We slowly made our way to Bend and stopped in Salem, Oregon, at yet another farmers’ market, where we met a few friendly locals and added two small pints of A2 milk and blackberry milk to our grocery haul for the week. Snow caught up with us when we crossed over the pass just before Bend, so we stopped at Sisters Coffee along the way, and I picked up a delicious chai tea and checked out the selection of books at Paulina Springs Books.

Bend is home to more coffee shops than we could count and a couple of charming bookstores. Dudley’s Bookshop was my favorite (I loved the reading room upstairs!), but Big Story Bookstore came in at a close second for their book art and used book selection. My guys were very patient (and played a game of chess while they waited) as I browsed ALL the books.

We’re not known to spend too much time relaxing on our mountain trips as there is so much to explore. We embarked on two snowshoe hikes, a hike up Misery Ridge trail at Smith Rock State Park (we were quite proud of our accomplishment of hiking up the equivalent of 100 sets of stairs until we noticed the effort of the rock climbers we watched scaling the cliffs in the light snow!), and spent a day of snowboarding on Mount Bachelor to top off our trip.

One of the many unique aspects about Oregon is that they have gas pump attendants. We were surprised by them every time we filled up! On our last day, we drove several hours to get a glimpse of the ocean and were treated to gorgeous views of the verdant coastline where we noticed purple starfish nestled among rocks and made time for some fresh sushi and oysters along the way.

We returned home to find spring in full bloom. Bluebonnets covered the roadways, the wrens had completed their nest in our backyard (and now have three tiny eggs), chocolate cosmos started to bloom (they really do smell and look like chocolate), antelope horns milkweed is making a comeback in time for visiting monarchs, butterfly gaura are filling their stems with blossoms, and hummingbirds and finches are returning for the season.

I hope you enjoy this week’s video. I’d love to hear what spring looks and feels like for you. Please share in the comments below this post.

The music featured in the video is Morning Bliss by Sleeping Vines, Home Eventually by Sleeping Vines, Morning Mist by Staffan Carlen, and A Sweet Dream by Victor Lundberg on Epidemic Sound.

WEEKEND READING

“Enchantment is small wonders magnified through meaning, fascination caught in the web of fable and memory. . .the ability to sense magic in the every day, to channel it through our minds and bodies, to be sustained by it.”

-Katherine May, author of Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age

Themes of friendship, community, family, gardens, and magical realism showed up in all of the books I read this month. Escaping into magical gardens seems to be my mood both indoors and out right now. My reading life includes a mix of fiction, non-fiction, middle-grade, young adult, and everything in between as I find it rounds out my perspective on the world. Hopefully, you’ll find one or two books that inspire you to support a local bookstore or visit your local library and find a relaxing place to read this weekend.

The Ogress and The Orphans by Kelly Barnhill (one of my Middle-Grade March book picks) is a charming story about community and friendship. The characters are central to this story, and they encourage us to ask, “What is the essence of neighborliness?”

The family in This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron captured my heart. The humorous dialogue between Bri and her moms had me smiling throughout the story. This book is a YA (Young Adult) fiction with a magical realism twist, as the protagonist, Bri, has a special ability with plants, particularly poisonous ones. I look forward to reading the next in the series called This Wicked Fate.

"My bones are fragile, but I am not."

-Olive from Hummingbird by Natalie Lloyd

Hummingbird by Natalie Lloyd (a Middle-Grade March pick) will fill you with wonder as a small mountain town is overcome with the race to discover the legendary wish-granting hummingbird. The protagonist will capture your heart as she is determined to make a best friend and learn how to navigate public school in her sparkly wheelchair and signature heart sunglasses, even though she feels different because of her medical condition. The author writes from her own experience with osteogenesis imperfecta in adolescence and her relationship with her body during that time. Sometimes the writing in this book got a little saccharine even though it could just be the Southern voice in her writing. A few details seemed too far-fetched or inaccurate, but was a sweet story it’s good to see representation for people living with life-long genetic diseases in middle-grade books.

“Sometimes chama is a good thing. It is about strength and resilience. To endure. But if I always endure everything on my own, how can anyone know what I’m going through. “

- Junie Kim from Finding Junie Kim

Finding Junie Kim by Ellen Oh (CEO and founding member of We Need Diverse Books) is a multigenerational journey beginning in the present day with stories that transport the reader back to the Korean War. I appreciated the honest way this book explored generational trauma from war, racism, and microaggressions through the characters' stories in a format for a middle-grade audience. The book explores depression, grief, and the complications and importance of navigating friendships and family in adolescence.

Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen is a book that caught my eye while browsing at Fabled (such a great bookstore!). After reading This Poison Heart, I wanted to remain in the world of magical gardens. Unfortunately, this wasn't one of my favorite reads this month. Although the characters were great (I’ve heard them compared to the characters in Practical Magic), the writing went from jolting (domestic violence including sexual violence), to a predictable light romance story, to Harlequin romance, and back again. Not for me, but could be right for another reader. I might recommend Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe instead.

“We seem to be trapped in a grind of constant change without ever getting to integrate it.”

-Katherine May, author of Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age

Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age by Katherine May (you might remember her other book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times) was a book I picked up at a little bookshop in Sisters, Oregon called Paulina Springs Books. There were a few little jewels in this one that made it worth picking up. I couldn’t decide if I was going to enjoy the book at first, but I kept reading and by the middle of the book I found myself relating to the stories and writing down the author’s wisdom in my reading journal. The book is divided into sections based on the 4 elements of nature: earth, fire, water, air, and ether.

“We have a duty to witness the broad spectrum of humanity, rather than to defend our own corner of it. Certainties harden us, and eventually we come to defend them as if the world can’t contain a multiplicity of views.”

-Katherine May, author of Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age

Sensitive people have a genetic advantage that tells us to PAY ATTENTION. This trait (a shorter serotonin transporter gene called SERT or “social sensitivity gene”) may or may not be nurtured in the environment or society where we grew up. In nature, sensitivity is an evolutionary skill that helps protect against danger, but in today’s society, our sensitive hearts and minds are overwhelmed by the flood of sensory information. Our sensitive nature allows greater situational awareness but also requires space and time to decompress after overstimulation.

“Their demanding outer world had devoured their inner world and, with it, their ability to connect.”

-authors Jenn Granneman and Andre Sólo from Sensitive: The Hidden Power of the Highly Sensitive Person in a Loud, Fast, Too-Much World

“Innovation had not just given us more efficiency, it gave us a world that taxed the human brain and its ability to keep up”

-Georg Simmel

I related to many of the descriptions of being a highly sensitive person (HSP) in this book. Deep processing of information in the news, after a conversation, or just reading a book on a difficult subject can sit with a sensitive person long after an event occurs and can feel like a constant struggle, but it also means that we find subtle connections between ideas that others might miss. Being sensitive (and, in my case, an introvert as well) often means I need more quiet time and alone time than most to process.

“Sometimes I feel like my mind is growing branches. And every time you talk to me, you cut one of them off.”

-Bert, son of Katherine May, author of Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age

This book shares tools for emotional regulation, a validation of the challenges and strengths of living life as a sensitive person, and guidance for navigating a society that doesn’t always nurture or value sensitivity.

What are you in the mood for reading during this spring or season of life? Comment below this post. I’d love to hear from you!

You can also follow along on my reading adventures and pick up a few book recommendations on my Instagram account @52SeasonsBlog

In the coming weeks, I’m going to make a change to the way I title each blog post. After reading about the names of moons that represent changes in the seasons, I’d like to play with naming each blog post after a subtle transition in the natural world around me, such as blackberry picking season, bluebonnet season, blossom season, migration season, etc. If you’re interested in learning more about the names of the moons as they change in various seasons, you can pick up the Lunar edition of Taproot Magazine.

What’s my simple joy this week? Watching our garden grow after months of preparation means every day is a new surprise.

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Writing blog posts for 52 Seasons is a creative journey into the expressions that come from my heart: writing, photography, tending a garden, immersing myself in nature, reading stories from voices that need to be heard and sharing them with others, keeping a home, being an advocate and supporter of education and basic human rights, and sharing resources with others.

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