The quiet of winter is gone.
Spring is here and the world wakes up. Flowers blooming, bees buzzing — carpenters in particular, looking for fresh wood to burrow into. The lawnmowers awaken as well. And now every day the air is filled with the hum of them — close by or faintly in the distance. A near constant sound that had been sleeping in winter’s quiet.
Our own landscapers come every two weeks, with no apparent rhyme or reason. Sometimes they show up mid-morning when I’ve sat down to write. Sometimes in the evening when our family has come together to make dinner … set the table … eat and laugh and share thoughts of our days. Sometimes they come on weekends when we’re lazy with sleeping in or checking a string of household chores off our to-do list. Sometimes it’s during the week when computer screens and phone calls and client work hold our attention.
We hire out the landscaping because we value the work they do and the time it frees up for us to do our own work. But the sound of the mowers, the edgers, and leaf blowers so often feels intrusive, especially when it comes unexpectedly. And especially at the start of spring when they all start up seemingly at once after the long quiet of winter.
Spring feels new … awakened with the sounds of nature — and the sights of new growth, opening buds, grass turning from brown to green and the smell of sweet blooms and the neighbors barbecuing in just-warm evenings — all mixed with the drone and hum of mowers and blowers hard at work, attempting to keep nature’s wildness maintained.