To begin with, here near Concord, MA, we’re at April 5th and the snow is just leaving the ground.  The crocuses started to bloom a few days ago, buds are fattening, but it still freezes at night.

I saw one I’ve never seen be so bold as to come to the bird food on the deck.  I was able to walk pretty close to him before he or she decided to scamper.

Now one of the great experiments over the winter was the planting of a previously potted Eucalyptus Neglecta at the feet of a brass statue of Ganesh in a small garden built for said Ganesha.  The garden was under snow until a week ago and now the eucalyptus is revealed somewhat the worse for the wear but with still a few encouraging bits of green.  Frozen string beans are green too, so this does not necessarily indicate abiding life.  We’ll have to see what does or does not spring forth, but this is just part of the wabi sabi journalism we do here.

Speaking of, we do have a casualty to report.  In his life he was an ebullient fellow, known to his friends as ‘bear dog’.  Here he is pictured in brighter days.

He was born just after the turn of the century from the trunk of a wild cherry that had overgrown it’s location.  For many years he peacefully attended our comings and goings.  Never had he a cross word.  He lay in state for a few days (pictured below).  Plans for his final disposition remain private at the request of the family.

His friend Cat Pig, pictured below, said of him that he had never encountered one less inclined to complain of his suffering.  “He was a simple inspiration”, said Cat Pig.

Whispers of his passing swept through the local community of artificers.  Just today there appeared what was described as a model of a burial mound.  Not many details were yet available but his impact on that community was clear.

Cat Pig went on – “While Hobbes, in Leviathan, said ‘For what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many strings; and the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body, such as was intended by the artificer?’ I do not think that we need to work backwards as this logic does.  I would rather that we go looking for the bear dog equivalent of an homunculus and posit a sort of inverted formation path, of spirit arising from flesh.  I’d almost like to posit that while the artificer, whoever that might be, set forth bear dog in part from the imagination and in part from this manifold flux, that with such seeds new things arise, things uncontemplated previously, things that change the world.  Don’t be surprised if you read the newspapers and see reference to the doings of some seeming ursid/canid sprite – it’s just squarely in the realm of the imagination.

And so Spring begins.