AT L A R G E B y B r u c e Va n W y n g a r d e n
The Big Chill Spring gets sprung … and sprung again.
T MASTERWORKS SERIES
BEETHOVEN’S 9TH: “ODE TO JOY” Saturday, March 26 7:30pm . Cannon Center Sunday, March 27 2:30pm . Cannon Center Robert Moody, conductor Memphis Symphony Chorus, Dr. Lawrence Edwards, conductor University of Mississippi, University Chorus, Dr. Donald Trott, director
*NO kids, health, death, cartoons/illustrations MARKOWSKI Joyride BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 9
March 17-23, 2022
Tickets Now On Sale - Order Yours Today! 901.537.2500 . MemphisSymphony.org
TWO MEMPHIS LOCATIONS
410 North Cleveland ♦ 816 South Cooper 10
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wo weekends ago, I walked and snow and frigid temperatures. They out into the Saturday morning were calling the storm a “cyclone bomb” sun. It was 65 glorious degrees and saying it would hit Memphis Friday and headed into the mid-70s night. We’d be lucky to survive, it appeared. by afternoon. March was just a day away The ensuing weekend would be a frozen, and March means spring in Memphis. And snowy, icy mess. In a city that is still littered spring in Memphis means it’s time for Yard with piles of limbs from a February ice Man to get after it. storm that left 150,000 people without So I rolled the electric mower out of power, this was not good news. the garage and ran it over the front yard to Alas, the storm did arrive Friday night, mulch last October’s standing leaf harvest. right on schedule, and it was a doozy, with Very satisfying. Very mulchy. I could hear sleet, lightning, strong winds, freezing rain, the grass giving thanks. four inches of snow, and temperatures in Then I crawled around the flower beds the mid-20s. I built a fire in the fireplace that make up most of our backyard and but there was no joy in it. Feeling fatalistic, clipped and snipped the I decided to just let dead stems, marveling my new flowers tough at the annual miracle it out. Snow would of perennial shoots protect them from emerging from the soil, freezing, I’d heard. ready for another season Whatever, spring. You of life. I made a large pile bastard. of brown vegetation. Also The next morning, quite satisfying. just one week after Next, I was drawn I’d welcomed spring like a salmon returning to my yard, the city to its home waters, to awoke to a coat of thick the Midtown Home PHOTO: BRUCE VANWYNGARDEN wet snow. The socialDepot, where (as one Signs of spring are media photos were does) I picked up a blossoming. lovely, folks. Thanks. mega-package of paper But there was also sun towels, some birdseed for the feeder, six on this new morning, and lots of it, and light bulbs, some floor cleaner, two bags before long, rivulets of meltwater were of potting soil, and a partridge in a pear everywhere. Heavy clumps of snow were tree. And lots of plastic pots of blooming falling from the trees and rooftops. There annuals to brighten up the deck — were no broken limbs, no power outages. petunias, anemone, lobelia. Huzzah. There is a clear and simple joy in sitting At midday, I got out in it and walked in the sun and putting fresh plants into old around the neighborhood, taking in clay pots, digging out last year’s roots and the snowmelt, the wet streets, the bright putting the fresh square bundles of soil into sun reflecting it all, the warming air. It their new homes. The smell of loamy earth, put me in mind of a John Updike quote the dirty fingernails, the stained trouser that I return to on occasion: “I am now knees — all the rituals of spring, of rebirth. in my amazed, insistent appreciation of I liberated the faithful hose from its the physical world, of this planet with its winter abode and filled it with purpose. The scenery and weather … that every day new plants were watered and it was good. and season has its beauty and its uses, that Yard Man was content. And there was beer. even a walk to the mailbox is a precious All was well in the kingdom for a couple experience, that all species of tree and weed of days. I took inordinate pleasure from have their signature and style and the day the new flora each time I walked out the is a pageant of clouds.” back door — the blues, whites, purples, and When I returned home I was happy yellows. I noticed the buds emerging on the to see that the petunias, anemones, and fig tree, the white blossoms on the plums, lobelia were blooming bright in their and the big oaks turning green at their tips. snow-crusted pots, literally no worse for Spring was well and truly sprung. the weather. And I looked again at the And then we began to hear rumblings buds emerging on the fig tree, the white of trouble from the West. A cold front blossoms on the plums, the big oaks was coming, they said, a real one, with ice turning green at their tips.
