Greetings Friends (March 08, 2011)
Well, Spring has definitely sprung in Columbia! Even though I have been outside almost everyday Spring still seemed to happen overnight. I never get tired of this Spring-flinging thing. Today I saw my first Redbud blooming, and noticed that the Oaks overhead were blooming as well. I saw honey bees all over a blooming Holly bush and had the joy of pruning a Tea Olive. Add to that Cherry and Forsythia and Japanese Magnolia and Viburnum – along with the Camellias still hanging in there – and it’s downright beautiful outside!
I just wanted to pass the news along to friends and acquaintances in the Columbia and Greensboro areas that I am now gardening and tutoring full time, and continuing to seek customers and jobs looking forward into the Spring and Summer. As to school, well, we’ll see…
I am doing more and more ongoing bed maintenance and planning/planting than last year, but my bread and butter is still garden restoration. It seems that gardens once tamed need ongoing care, so that is working out well.
I have had the privilege of meeting some amazing folks, and working in some really beautiful yards and gardens. It’s not a bad gig really.
I have formed an LLC, and in the process of getting all my licenses and such, and am now looking for a helper, maybe 20 hours a week to start. If you know of someone who works hard, doesn’t mind getting hot and dirty, takes initiative, and may want to learn a thing or two about gardening, let me know. The pay is pretty good and there is opportunity for growth in both hours and pay.
Here is a link to a PDF of a flyer I have distributed to good effect in several areas. If you know of anyone who you think may want or need my services please feel free to forward the link.
I give thanks that I have also begun to get more tutoring business. I have been tutoring in Algebra, Physical Science, Physics, and basic Computer use so far. I am available for other Science and Math subjects as well as English composition.
I am most grateful for all the the folks who have employed me so far. I hope I have been even a fraction of the blessing to them that they have been to me.
In honor of such a perfect Columbia Spring day today, I give you a treasure, a celebration of Spring by one of the world’s greatest celebrants of such things, Gerard Manley Hopkins. It is one of his simplest and most accessible, and most beautiful poems, entitled, simply, “Spring.”
Spring
Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs have too far fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden – have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.
