Spring Thoughts and a Spring Story

Photo by Ashley Frillman, Some Rights Reserved

I've been thinking a bit about Spring, both because I'm spending more time looking out the window and walking the dogs (since I'm working from home now) and because of sharing with you the idea of spending time observing Spring outside with your children.

I noticed the inter-connection of two word meanings today that I thought you might also find interesting.

The first is that the word Lent means Spring. The first time I heard that I was a little surprised, but it's certainly worth wondering about and meditating upon. What kind of new growth does God want to produce in us during this time?

The second I heard for the first time today, and I was quite amazed by it. The word Quarantine means 40 days. Wow! I find it rather amazing that this time of Quarantine is coinciding with both Spring and Lent, and that we are all in it together! And maybe that's an extra reason to let ourselves and our families really soak up some of the beauty and wonder of God's creation this Spring in any way that we can.

I have a little family story to share with you, that I hope you will enjoy.

Our first house was a small 1890s farmhouse on a quarter acre, just behind the main street in downtown Hartland. The backyard was tiny - quite a bit of it was taken up with an old smelly detached garage and a very large (though occasionally leaky) shed - probably once used as a chicken coop.

Most of our yard was on the side of the house, running from the shed to the street in front. A nice wide, long area, wider than the house and unbroken except for two little apples trees we planted ourselves to give a little "definition" to the backyard.

We've always tended to be a little late with our first lawn mowing of the spring. One year, about twenty years ago now (!), my husband was engaged in this task. He always likes to mow in large rectangles, getting smaller and smaller toward the middle.

This time, he was nearly finished with the chore - he had perhaps a 6 foot by 10 foot section left to mow when he ran out of gas. The grass was already long, but this patch was close to the shed and it didn't seem worth the trouble to get more gas just then. So we let it be.

The next week, he had just started to tackle that small patch when we saw him stop and swoop something up in the grass. It was a baby bunny. The mower went off and all the children (well, I think we only had three at the time) had to come over to see. There was a little rabbit warren, in a hole just at the surface of the lawn. There was just a little grass and some rabbit fur fluff covering six babies. The long grass stayed and even Terri who was just toddling around could walk right up next to the hole, look down, and watch them peacefully sleeping without disturbing them. The mother rabbit showed up when things were a lot quieter to care for her little ones. Ria christened them after some of her favorite characters in the Hilda Van Stockum books - everyone's favorite was Francie who ran the farthest and the fastest - the mother bunny was, of course, "Hilda").

One time when I was walking out to the shed, Hilda was nursing the babies. It was the funniest thing to see - they were lying down underneath her kicking their legs around - guess human moms aren't the only ones with babies who wrestle them while they nurse!

Maybe you can save a little patch of your yard for some nature to move in to, though I wouldn't recommend letting your kids hold wild bunnies as they can have ticks!