Cleaning Out the Old, Day 20 - Spring Ephemerals

​It’s Spring Ephemerals time out here in the woods of Georgia, US.  If you’re a native plant person, if you’re a hiker, if you love tiny flowers, you can’t help but get a little excited at this time of year. The Trout Lily watch started about 3 weeks ago. Phone calls and texts come in every few days from friends saying things like “Are they blooming yet?” Finally, the answer is “yes.” A group of women friends are headed out here on Monday to wander, ooh and ahh, photograph the same photos we take every year. It’s all good.
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After the trout lilies come the tiny, tiny bluets. Then the fabulous diamorpha. Then the trillium, rabbit ears and the native azaleas. 

​There’s a rhythm and a predictability here that makes us feel that all is right in the world. There’s perspective in the woods and the granite outcroppings about landscape, permanence, generational change, aging. Even when things are late, we know they will arrive. Each year my friends and I count ourselves lucky to still be able to do this – to stumble around on the rocks, lay down on the ground in contorted positions for exactly the right shot, to climb up the hills and not be too winded.
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What exactly are the things that are important? Foolish humans, thinking it’s our things in our basements. Out here is where it gets real, every day.

Take the Diamorpha Smallii, for instance. This little plant, no more than 3 inches tall, grows in the harshest conditions possible. It grows in only 3 places in Georgia, in granite sand in solution pits on our Monadnocks.

Somehow, its tiny roots cling to life in wind and slashing rain. In January the seeds hatch into what looks like expensive red caviar. Gaining strength, roots and a foothold in the changing sand, the plants slowly push up, the caviar becoming tiny succulent leaves. Bloom stems, no thicker than the finest needle, push up. In April the granite riots with red plants with tiny white blooms. After that, the fragile stems dry and hold the seeds up off the granite for the summer, when ground temperatures of 130 degrees F would simply roast them. In the fall they drop to the sand, and the process begins again.

Perseverance. Tenacity. Resilience. Blooming where you are planted. Pick your life lesson.

​The rhythm to life on the granite has seduced me over the last 18 years. The harshness of the landscape captivates me. For something as permanent as granite, it’s always in flux – always sloughing off a blackened layer to show the beautiful graining and white stone hiding inside. I think it’s the sloughing off I’m identifying most with these days. What hardened outer layers can I let go of? What old stuff is holding me back from showing off the beauty inside? 

​I was talking to my friend Jenny about the Great Cleaning Out back in January, when my wish for the year revealed itself to be “I wish to clean out the old.” (Hah!) Jenny’s advice was “Start with the things, then move on to yourself.” Truth is, cleaning out the things is pretty well finished.

Time to turn the lens on me. I feel more ephemeral every year. What’s the legacy of living I want to leave behind me? What seeds am I holding up on those rocks for the future?

​All photos copyright Robbin L Marcus, Stonecrest, GA.