Ashes and the Anomalous Spring

I've attended the Ash Wednesday service at my local church the last three years and I love it, despite, or perhaps because, the very idea of a cross of ashes feels so foreign and mystical (and really, Catholic) compared to the very stripped-down pragmatic Protestant nature of my family and the churches we have attended (just about the same thing I said two years ago).

Daring iris that bloomed Feb. 24 in 2013
became covered in ice

This year the the service was not the same solemn connection to the dark ground that it was the previous two, perhaps because there were more people and the lights were on, perhaps because the boys had helped make the ashes on Sunday (last year's palm Sunday palms) and I have become good enough friends with several pastors to know that they all have stories of nearly burning down a church and make bad ash puns, but really it was because the season is wrong.

Lent should start in the winter.  All is reduced to ashes we are dead in the ground.

And we wait and anticipate and suffer through the lean times and then Spring!  Easter!  Holy rebirth!

But here now it is already spring.  Like most of the southern half of the country, the Early Leaf Index Anomaly Map has signs of spring showing up here nearly 20 days early (See the map here).   I took my students to a local wildlife refuge to see waterfowl-- ducks and geese on Feb. 10.  It was over 80 degrees with a hot south wind and the birds had never made it that far south.

Last Wednesday, Feb. 22, the first ornamental Prunus was blooming on my way to school.
By Thursday, Feb. 23, when I arrived in Tulsa for a conference, the Bradford pears were in full bloom.
When I returned home on Friday, Feb. 24, the Bradford pear nearest me was half open.  The east facing daffodils along my house were in full bloom and the south facing daffodils were past (they apparently had opened on Feb. 12). The roses on the west side of my house had leaves and even the lilac on the north side had buds bursting on Friday, Feb. 24,

My little bulb iris are blooming their little purple heads off in deep leaf litter that I have not taken the time to remove, nor do I want to unless spring is really here.

Today, March 1,  I heard the first mockingbird singing (I saw some around yesterday),

Sometimes its hard to remember that we are dust in the earth when the joyful songs are already being sung.