Time is a Moving Thing

Time has been a very relative thing for me these days. Spring is always a rush. Flowers bud, bloom and petals fall in just hours as the sun chases night across the sky.  Within a month we have days of spring, summer and fall crammed together like a mixed race family, each with their own pleasures and pitfalls.

I watch a bluebird househunt in the morning, build a nest in the afternoon and lay her eggs while I am sleeping that evening.

The purple iris blossoms race each other down the strong stems while spewing out grape scent across the yard and finally giving way in the strong rains bowing down to the lawn.  My roses cover the arbor and then in what seems just a day or two drop all of their lovely pink petals like best wishes at the wedding march.

My days have been full of tasks and errands and trips and schedules and spring continues on her way not waiting for me or anyone.  My obligations are only on my time.  Her time is hidden somewhere in a space continuum over which I have no control and little awareness.  Did you know that a long time ago towns had their own schedules and set their clocks without coordination of any nearby village?  Their time/space continuum did not depend on anything other than their view of how fast the sun was moving.

Time is relative.  Someone, somewhere, has a spring that lasts at least a month.  They sip tea and watch the morning sun kiss the buds of roses and then watch as Dianthus burst forth with their cinnamon scents and pink lace-edged blossoms.  They watch the bird building the softest of homes with bits of grass and tufts of seed pods along several days.

Mother Earth has her own time clock.  It goes so much slower than ours that we miss the melting of icebergs, the increased flooding of coastal planes which climbs each year, the death of tiny microscopic beings that hold hands with larger microscopic beings until entire coral reefs centuries old are gone...and so on, and so on.

The data gatherers notice these things because their clock moves much slower than mine.  They can gaze over decades past as they thumb through their well-worn penciled notebooks of graphs and numbers and they count the changes in meaningful ways.  Soon this earth time will catch up with us all.