The Smallest of Things

"Sometimes," said Pooh, "the smallest things 

take up the most room in your heart."

AA Milne

It has been a very long, very dark, very cold winter here. I don't like long, cold, dark. I am always trying to think of some way to get thru that slide down the last months of the year and past the early ones of the next. This year, I was given the gift of  a good reason to stay engaged.

 

Oscar came to us as a completely feral kitten, foraging for bits of food we left on the tops of the barn shelves, or bits fallen from the suet bird feeders off our deck. We found that he had figured out how to climb up and over into the insulated rafters of the office as his beloved predecessor Zoey had done. He seemed a lost but very industrious little tyke, and we determined to make him ours.

Oscar

From the painful first days he spent in the bathroom of the office to the wild, playful, and very snuggly mornings we routinely spend now, it has been all about the little things. For the first month I never saw the guy.....didn't even know if it WAS a guy! But I faithfully changed litter, left all sorts of food and treats, warm kitty bed, lights, soft covers to hide in. I spent some portion of everyday sitting on the closed top of the toilet talking to a cat who did not want me there. I read about steps he and I would make towards bonding and stuck to the program no matter how hard it was to go slow. As I focused on our little fellow, I looked hard for the slightest behavior that would indicate I was making a dent. And with each tiny step toward tame, he has also tamed my hard winter heart.

Keteleeria davidiana pollen cones

All of a sudden, I see that spring is about to bust out!! But before it does, I am still enjoying the tiniest of things that will lead, step by step, to the dogwood and azalea blowout most acknowledge to be the advent of spring. Every hour, every day that goes by gives me many small things to savor.

Pollen cones are colorful and interesting structures on conifers; early blooming flowering trees have paved the way; emerging seedling and foliage reveal the magic process behind spring.

Pseudolarix amabilis pollen cones

Magnolia flower

Platycladus orientalis 'Morgan'

Seedling Keteleerias emerging

Picea abies seedling

Abies firma seedling

Lindera reflexa flowers

Asarum maximum 'Ling Ling'

Buxus sempervirens 'Pyramidalis' flowers

I spent two hours in warm sun day before yesterday looking and photographing the miracle unfolding. I recommend a dose of this for any one who's been plagued by long or cold or dark. This treatment will fill those empty corners with a new, light perspective, and open up room in your heart for what is really important.

“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes