Seasons: Growth | April 2026

by Kat | Apr 16, 2026 | General, Words

Keep growing quietly and seriously throughout your whole development; you cannot disturb it more rudely than by looking outward and expecting from outside replies to questions that only your inmost feeling in your most hushed hour can perhaps answer. — Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

This month I decided to pair my focus to that of what was going on around me… growth. And this quote by my beloved Rilke was my guiding light.

Quiet growth.

Nature does quiet growth brilliantly… the dandelions do not shout as they one day appear strewn across the lawn. The trees do not sing a chorus as they begin the process of leafing out.

Quiet growth.

And so I turn inward to focus on quiet growth and I realized that sometime in mid-March I crossed the invisible barrier of insomnia. I have not had a sleepless night in some weeks… I am amazed at how simple little things can make dramatic differences! What are those things? No screen time for starters! If I read at all, it is from an actual book. It is far too tempting with the iPad to just check in on emails. Or Threads. Or Instagram. And suddenly an hour has passed and I am wide awake… so the scrolling continues. No iPad means better sleep because I am allowing my brain to do what it wants to… settle down for the day. That single thing has made the largest impact on the rest of the things… because if I am not tired all the other things seem to fall into place easier.

Now, that does not mean I am oblivious to the chaos that overwhelms daily life… nor that I am not concerned about that chaos… but it means I am attempting to control how it impacts me versus allowing it to take over. Am I perfect in not falling down the rabbit hole of “news alert” scrolling? No, but I am more aware of it now and that is a big step forward!

And I continue to amble along with Adrian Bell… I love reading his thoughts on spring. His struggles with compost success, his delight in small things, his thoughts on farming… are just brilliant (and yes, at times hilarious!) And his writing encourages me to slow down and pay attention to the small changes happening every day.

I have discovered that reading “seasonal” books read slowly over the course of the season really helps me stay in the season… and that might be the best self-growth of all. I continue making my way through Poetry is not a Luxury: Poems for All Seasons and have just finished Angela Harding’s Spring Unfurled: A printmaker’s view. It was delightful and the artwork so beautiful. And I have added James Crews latest book, Breathing Room: Poems of Rest & Retreat… I am just a few poems in and already I am loving them so much. His poem, Dandelion is one of my current favorites. I have returned to it several times this month… each time I read it I notice something new. It is nice to sit in quiet contemplation of the poem as I look out over the “lucky pennies” scattered across my back yard!

Quiet growth… is never loud, but it is impactful. I also continue to make my way through Emergence Magazine’s Seasons volume. It has so many good things in it. It introduced me to Ron C. Moss, a Tasmanian poet… he is a master of the haiku. I have been trying to “grow” my skills at writing and have started with the not so simple haiku. (I’m not sure this will be the last frost of the season, but I sure am hoping it was! ha!)

Last Frost: 3.28.26

Was this weekend it?
Last gasp of winter dying
Spring keeps on swelling.

And then Bonny introduced me to the challenging Zip Ode… quiet brain growth is a very good thing. I begin by writing my zip code down the side of a scrap of paper and then begin to play with words. It is an evolving process from the start to what I feel like might be the finish. And it occurs to me that preserving the process might be an interesting thing to look back on, so I pulled out an empty journal to house my attempts. It is a good thing to see growth… I don’t always notice it. Yesterday mornings attempt… and a reminder my zip code is 15243:

Wind
blows the rain on windows
I wake
and listen until the
patter becomes lullaby.

The final quiet growth this season… I have begun a correspondence with a friend… yes, letter writing back and forth. It is more fun than I ever imagined! I love getting her letters and I love sending  a missive back to her. Quiet conversation… slow, unhurried, simple.

And with that my friends, I am going to continue my quiet growth journey this month… I will be back. I am not sure when, but I expect it will be sometime in early May!

Enter Spring | 3.30.26

by Kat | Mar 30, 2026 | General, Words

Spring! And Earth is like a child who has learned many poems by heart. For the trouble of that long learning she wins the prize. — Rainer Maria Rilke, excerpt from Sonnets to Orpheus I, 21

When I turned the calendar to March I greeted the meteorological arrival of spring. And then on March 20th, I celebrated the Vernal Equinox. I mean, spring is absolutely a season that one should celebrate more than once! Right?!

And though it feels like the month has just raced past… I focused on each day entirely and in doing so I witnessed so many moments of wonder!

A tug of war… sometimes gentle, other times all out war… between winter giving way to spring. It certainly was a month that held all the weather!! Rain, winds, snow, freezing temperatures, warming temperatures… in the winter to spring confusion summer even burst on the scene for one brief day. I think the weather actually helped me stay focused on observing closely the day! There was not a lot of lots of days all the same (sort of like summer!) but instead the weather kept me on my toes!

All this weather chaos has contributed to a very chaotic closet as the month draws to a close and so, of course, I have tidy the closet on my list this week. There is detritus of all the seasons of clothing haphazardly lying about. I’d like to start April without the added chaos of a messy closet!

Each day, I have been reading a bit from Adrian Bell’s A Countryman’s Spring Notebook, which has been absolutely perfect. His journals likewise begin with the meteorological spring and his early March musings are timeless as they seemed very true as I read them this month. In his entry from March 12, 1977 “The Winds of March” he writes of old leaves galloping over new grass… oh yes, there were lots of galloping leaves here this month too! There is something calming in reading how similar things are decades apart… a thread running through, as it were.

I watched a literal explosion of daffodils emerge and bloom this month, as well as tender snow drops being tossed about by the wild winds. Their white flowers reminding me of petticoats as they shook in the winds! I also had the very predictable deer come through and eat to the ground any tulip leaves that dared to emerge… those same deer mowed down most of my grape hyacinths as well. It seems that daffodils are the only thing currently safe from their foraging. I am ending the month with the promise of a bounty with the April blooming daff’s all showing a plethora of buds!

The other most notable thing of all this month is the birdsong! It begins in the early morning with the Robin’s cheerily calling… in a bit of a Round Robin… as one calls, then others answer in turn. They are the first true Singers of Spring though… or maybe they are just the loudest! But the best day… after winter seemed to put an exclamation point on its leaving by depositing more than a dusting of snow… it seemed all of nature was in shock. That morning Frankie and I walked in total silence… as if the birds could not find one good thing to sing about thanks to all that snow! Thankfully, the snow was short-lived and the birds have returned to their raucous singing! I much appreciate their singing to the silence!

All that the teacher has taught her—the many thoughts pressed now into roots and long tough stems” she sings! She sings! — Rainer Maria Rilke, excerpt from Sonnets to Orpheus I, 21

And there you have how my entry to spring went! How about you? How did spring show up for you this month?

Header photo by Sarah Craenhals 

Deep Winter | 2.23.26

by Kat | Feb 23, 2026 | General, Words

It has been a curious month, my friends and here in the south hills of Pittsburgh, it has been a snowy one. In fact, we had more consecutive days with snow on the ground since I moved here almost 14 years ago now. And while most of my neighbors have found this phenomenon upsetting, I have loved it deeply.

I have often heard talk of the nostalgia of snow, the way that we always imagine our childhoods to have been snowier than they actually were. — Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

This statement rang profoundly true for myself as I navigated February… and the snowy month helped tremendously! I wandered down the halls of the memories of my Winter’s Past in Holland, Michigan… a place that is much snowier than Pittsburgh will ever be… and I delighted in the brief encounter with winter I could enjoy this year and we even got some snow overnight! I will take a check on the snowiest February in recent Pittsburgh history chart!

But in this deep winter month, I also began to see (and feel) changes… more noticeable daylight, the return of birdsong, I watched the snow from earlier in the month melt, and welcomed new coverings of snow more than once, I saw bulbs begin to sprout, and then over the weekend… I saw snowdrop blossoms opening in the crisp February air… all good things and this latest blanket of snow won’t hurt them at all.  I felt very much these outward signs mirrored my inward feelings. Some days I felt lighter and some days did not but all around me the world was helping me move forward.

I also spent some time learning this month… stretching my brain, trying new things that feel awkward and uncomfortable in my hands. I attended a talk by Mark S. Burrows, Ph.D on “The Outward Gaze: Rilke, Rodin and the Conversation Between Poetry and Sculpture.” (this was so incredibly good…I will be jumping at the opportunity to do this again!) I took the Alabama Chanin Beading workshop that MDK offered  and was dazzled (or is that bedazzled… HA!) by what I learned. (One brief side note… can I just say that if MDK announced that Natalie Chanin was going to lead a class of her reading the phone book, I’d sign up… honestly, her voice is the most soothing, calming thing ever.)

And yes… I knit almost an entire yoke of a sweater only to have to rip back to start again. But I learned that sometimes row gauge is crucial… and I have “mathed” out the solution and have slowly begun yoke knitting again.

The thing that keeps circling back to me about this month is this… I am not certain I would have done any of these things in any other time. I needed to be immersed in Deep Winter to have the space to contemplate these things… to go deeper with Rilke, to slow down and pick up the thinnest needle, thread it, and begin to… stitch by stitch… add some brilliance to a piece of fabric in a way that is entirely unfamiliar to me. And to have no other distractions to sit down and math out the solution to my “row gauge” issue.

Things that could only be accomplished with no other distractions calling made me see a new value for winter and I am tucking away ideas of things that might be interesting to contemplate next winter!

Finally, I will close with a poem by Nikki Giovanni… it is a poem of hers that was part of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) Art in Transit program:

Winter Poem

by Nikki Giovanni

once a snowflake fell
on my brow and i loved
it so much and i kiss
it and it was happy and called its cousins
and brothers and a web
of snow engulfed me
i reached to love them all
and i squeezed them and they became
a spring rain and i stood perfectly
still and was a flower

And that, my friends, is the most perfect way to wrap up winter. Next month begins spring and while there might be some back and forth days as winter gives way and spring takes over… spring will eventually win! I’d also encourage you to check out how Cathy and Carolyn did this month!

I’ll see you all back here on Wednesday!

Wintering | 1.27.26

by Kat | Jan 27, 2026 | General, Words

“I recognized winter. I saw it coming (a mile off, since you ask), and I looked it in the eye. I greeted it and let it in. I had some tricks up my sleeve, you see. I’ve learned them the hard way. When I started feeling the drag of winter, I began to treat myself like a favored child: with kindness and love. I assumed my needs were reasonable and that my feelings were signals of something important. I kept myself well fed and made sure I was getting enough sleep. I took myself for walks in the fresh air and spent time doing things that soothed me. I asked myself: What is this winter all about? I asked myself: What change is coming?” — Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

Winter arrived early for me last year… and though I did not see it coming I recognized it clearly when it arrived. And though I did not greet it warmly, I did let it in… and, as I wrote in my journal, I had some instructions for myself:

Sink into wintering grief and stillness.
Sit and listen and observe.
The path forward is there…let the fog clear.

I spent most of this month rereading Katherine May’s book, Wintering. It is a short book that I believe one could read in an afternoon or two, which I have done previously. But with this reading I decided to Yutori it… I read it slowly not with the goal to rush through but rather to sink into the wisdom Katherine shares in the pages… and there is so much there. Despite finishing it last week, I have gone back to passages and read them again and I am leaving the book on my desk to pick up as needed. I am thinking the February pages will be revisited frequently next month.

Every January I spend some time defining my new word, and I did that again this month. Surprisingly, the definitions were varied and so interesting. Things I knew and things I had not considered like this beautiful permission:

season : noun : an indefinite period of time

This idea really got me thinking about seasons not being simply set by dates on a calendar but rather freeing them from those constraints. This is not something that ever occurred to me… and yes, I am sure I read that definition before and likely many times before! I think this was one of my best “aha” moment of the month… permission to not constrain season and to just let it be indefinite.

All this sinking in to winter feels exactly right… in this time and space. I have gained an appreciation of the pace of the days. There is a delicious slowness to them… no urgency to rush to this thing or hurry to that thing. Just savoring the season… in all its glorious stillness. I have stepped back from the digital distractions as well… Steve now asks me if I saw that “thing” he sent to me, and the answer is usually that I did not. (He is not amused but I might be!) But it feels good to have a bit of a January digital detox!

What there has been is a reinvigoration of my daily stitching and a delight in the beginning of my third 100 Day Stitch Book. Rather than feeling like I am crunched for time, I have instead leaned in to sitting quietly, listening to that quiet voice in my head and, observing… and without really having a “plan” for my squares or a concrete plan for the stitch book outside of utilizing a well worn sock… ideas began to form over the course of the days. It makes me so happy to feel my creativity having a bit of a spring renewal… here in the depths of winter… maybe I am  finding that path forward!

So yes, January was a very good start on my year leaning into season. 

I know there is no link up this year, but Cathy and Carolyn are my word companions this year… I’d love it if you stopped by and see how their journeys are beginning!

Header photo by Alexander Kovalev