It’s another beautiful, unseasonably-warm day — not even noon, and the mercury has already hit the mid-fifties.
It’s hard to believe that they’re still predicting an 80% chance of snow for tomorrow.
Of course, that is the way of spring here, and it is spring, no matter what colonial calendars say; still winter, too, for that matter. Our peoples have always known that time and season and the elemental forces are far too powerful to be caged in sharply defined categories. But that has always been especially true in this place, and all the more so now as colonialism-driven climate change ravages our natural world.
Last year, it remained cold far too long to plant in our usual patterns, ground still frozen solid and night air bitter even in June. We took a chance near the end of that month and began work on the garden; the flowers were too fragile to go into the ground until July. And, of course, their collective yield was small: one tiny immature ear of corn, a few onions and heads of lettuce and some beautiful squash . . . and suddenly, from September into November, towering gladiolus stalks in brilliant shades of pink and purple and red and yellow.
The glads are flowers of May and June here; they’re usually done by July, surrendering to the heat and the arrival of the rainy season. To have their brilliant big bells open and adance outside the kitchen door throughout last autumn was an unexpected gift. It was Mother Earth setting us an example, teaching us adaptability, flexibility, resilience: There are many ways to cultivate beauty, many cycles of growth and flowering.
We have been accustomed to four somewhat-discrete seasons here, plenty of overlap, of course, but still readily identifiable by temperature and weather as much as by the length of the light. Spring has always been a time for first irrigation and cultivation, first planting coming at the very end of May into the early days of June — those weeks when the air grows increasingly warm, but the summer monsoon season has not yet whipped itself into its daily patterns. Toward the latter half of June, we begin to depend on those short daily rains to keep what has been planted growing strong.
Those patterns are gone.
Now, it’s up to us to forge new patterns in soil and season, weather and water alike. We have to be flexible enough to plant on staggered schedules in ways that produce the most and best of our traditional crops and medicines, and be willing to welcome the beauty of the flowers on what may become a wholly different timetable.
Today’s featured work embodies the petals of such rain-raised blooms, and their barer roots, too, alive in the chill early soil. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Red Flower Rain Cuff Bracelet
A monumental cabochon of red flower jasper serves as the focal point of this magnificent unisex cuff. The stone, a warm, earthy rose shade with a mulberry and charcoal matrix of dendritic wildflower blossoms, is set into an elevated scalloped bezel, trimmed with twisted silver, and accented with a tiny chatoyant tiger’s eye cabochon at one side. The cuff, wide and weighty, features a hand-stamped row of matched thunderhead symbols chased along the center of the band, flanked at either edge by a single row of thunderheads. The band itself tapers slightly at either end for a comfortable fit. In the inner band, morning stars and other celestial symbols are scattered like constellations tossed across the pre-dawn sky. Band is 1-11/16″ across, narrowing to 1-3/8″ at either end; the bezel is slightly wider, 1-7/8″ long by 1.25″ wide; the visible portion of the stone is 1.5″ long by 1-1/8″ wide (dimensions approximate). Other views shown below.
Sterling silver; red flower jasper
$1,550 + shipping, handling, and insurance
We had precious few red flowers last year, save the stalks of late glads; precious little rain, too. If the latter is different this year, the former may be, as well. But we shall have to be prepared to adapt, and that means planning now, in these early days when the ground is still more frozen than not and the snows still fly occasionally. What matters are the cycles of growth and flowering, and finding the best ways to sustain them.
And we are slated for snow tomorrow, in a season of far more moisture than we had in the whole of last year.
Perhaps planting can come earlier this year.
~ Aji
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