ASAP: As Soft As Possible

T.S. Eliot said it: April is the cruellest month. Last year on this day, we were at Maison Blum for the solar eclipse and it was warm enough for a nap in the grass and a picnic dinner. This morning in Toronto, we woke up to snow.

I’ll admit that Lu and I considered eschewing the morning walk to school, but in the end we swaddled ourselves in our warmest coats and woolly hats and went out to brave it. At the end of our street, we bumped into a friend, and so the walk was not only good for our bodies but also good for our social butterfly souls. And en route home I spent a long moment communing with the pussy willow by the main gates in Trinity Bellwoods. She is in her silvery glory, her catkins sleek and plump.

As northern gardeners, we often wish that we could hurry time along and make the mercury rise. We want to put winter firmly behind us and get down to the exciting enterprises we feel entitled to engage in as soon as the vernal equinox has come. And yet, we’ve all seen snow as late as early May - there’s still a ways to go!

What if, instead of pining away for what we can’t have as soon as we might like, we tried to soak up the last few weeks of relative calm and live by this alternative vision of ASAP that you may have seen floating around the web:

As Slow As Possible

As Soft As Possible

As Sustainable As Possible

As Sincere As Possible

As Steady As Possible

Allow Space And Pause

And though we yearn to put our winter things away and bare our shoulders to the long-awaited sun, we can still enjoy the beauty of this transitional season, especially if we stay wrapped up like Pussy Willow in this sweet ditty by Kate L. Brown:

Pussy Willow wakened
From her winter nap,
For the frolic spring breeze
On her door would tap.

It is chilly weather
Though the sun feels good,
I will wrap up warmly,
Wear my furry hood.