March

Quotations for Gardeners, Walkers, and Lovers of the Green Way
Poems, Quotes, Folklore, Myths, Customs, Holidays, Traditions
Celebrations, Sayings, Poetry, Quips, References, Links
Ideas, Gardening Chores

Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo
Valley Spirit Center, Red Bluff, California

Quotes     Links     References     Garden Chores     Photos     Months     Wintertime     Walking

Quotes

The Month of March
Poetry, Quotations, Sayings, Facts, Information, Quips, Aphorisms

"The air is like a butterfly
With frail blue wings.
The happy earth looks at the sky
And sings."
-   Joyce Kilmer, Spring

"The afternoon is bright,
with spring in the air,
a mild March afternoon,
with the breath of April stirring,
I am alone in the quiet patio
looking for some old untried illusion -
some shadow on the whiteness of the wall
some memory asleep
on the stone rim of the fountain,
perhaps in the air
the light swish of some trailing gown."
-   Antonio Machado, 1875-1939
    Selected Poems, # 3, Translated by Alan S. Trueblood

"Each leaf,
each blade of grass
vies for attention.

Even weeds
carry tiny blossoms
to astonish us."
-  Marianne Poloskey, Sunday in Spring 

"March is a month of considerable frustration - it is so near spring and yet across a great deal
of the country the weather is still so violent and changeable that outdoor activity in our
yards seems light years away."
-   Thalassa Cruso

"The sun is brilliant in the sky but its warmth does not reach my face.
The breeze stirs the trees but leaves my hair unmoved.
The cooling rain will feed the grass but will not slake my thirst.
It is all inches away but further from me than my dreams."
-   M. Romeo LaFlamme, The First of March

"I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze."
-  William Wordsworth, Daffodils

"Last day of Winter,
leafless walnut trees--
form is emptiness.

First day of Spring,
clear sky to Mt. Shasta--
emptiness is form." 
-  Michael P. Garofalo, Cuttings: March   

On the Vernal Equinox, around March 21st, in Sacramento, California, Northern Hemisphere, Earth,
we have around 12 Hours of Daylight and 12 Hours of Nighttime. 

"Equal dark, equal light
Flow in Circle, deep insight
Blessed Be, Blessed Be
The transformation of energy!
So it flows, out it goes
Three-fold back it shall be
Blessed Be, Blessed Be
The transformation of energy!"
-   Night An'Fey, Transformation of Energy

"March is the month of expectation,
The things we do not know,
The Persons of Prognostication
Are coming now.
We try to sham becoming firmness,
But pompous joy
Betrays us, as his first betrothal
Betrays a boy."
-   Emily Dickinson, XLVIII

"The first day of spring was once the time for taking the young virgins into the fields, there in dalliance
to set an example in fertility for nature to follow.  Now we just set the clocks an hour ahead and change 
the oil in the crankcase."  
-   E.B. White, "Hot Weather," One Man's Meat, 1944   

"Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush." 
-   Doug Larson

"The March wind roars
Like a lion in the sky,
And makes us shiver
As he passes by.

When winds are soft,
And the days are warm and clear,
Just like a gentle lamb,
Then spring is here."
-   Author Unknown

"Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough."
-   A. E. Houseman, Shropshire Lad

Spring is nature's way of saying, "Let's party!"
-   Robin Williams

"All Nature seems at work.  Slugs leave their lair
The bees are stirring, birds are on the wing,
And Winter slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of spring."
-   Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Ere frost-flower and snow-blossom faded and fell, 
       and the splendor of winter had passed out of sight,
The ways of the woodlands were fairer and stranger 
       than dreams that fulfill us in sleep with delight;
The breath of the mouths of the winds had hardened on tree-tops 
       and branches that glittered and swayed
Such wonders and glories of blossom like snow 
       or of frost that outlightens all flowers till it fade
That the sea was not lovelier than here was the land, 
       nor the night than the day, nor the day than the night,
Nor the winter sublimer with storm than the spring: 
       such mirth had the madness and might in thee made,
March, master of winds, bright minstrel and marshal of storms
        that enkindle the season they smite."
-   Algernon C. Swinburne, March: An Ode

Gardening and Trees

"Today is the day when bold kites fly,
When cumulus clouds roar across the sky.
When robins return, when children cheer,
When light rain beckons spring to appear.

Today is the day when daffodils bloom,
Which children pick to fill the room,
Today is the day when grasses green,
When leaves burst forth for spring to be seen."
-   Robert McCracken, Spring

"Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees."
-   Robert Frost, A Prayer in Spring

"This hill
crossed with broken pines and maples
lumpy with the burial mounds of
uprooted hemlocks (hurricane
of ’38) out of their
rotting hearts generations rise
trying once more to become
the forest

just beyond them 
tall enough to be called trees 
in their youth like aspen a bouquet 
of young beech is gathered

they still wear last summer’s leaves  
the lightest brown almost translucent 
how their stubbornness has decorated  
the winter woods"
-   Grace Paley, A Walk in March

"O the green things growing, the green things growing,
The faint sweet smell of the green things growing!
I should like to live, whether I smile or grieve,
Just to watch the happy life of my green things growing."
-   Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, Green Things Growing

"The last fling of winter is over ...  The earth, the soil itself, has a dreaming quality about it.  It is warm
now to the touch; it has come alive; it hides secrets that in a moment, in a little while, it will tell."
-   Donald Culross Peattie

"Springtime is the land awakening.  
The March winds are the morning yawn."  
-   Lewis Grizzard, Kathy Sue Loudermilk, I Love You

"Gone were but the Winter,
Come were but the Spring,
I would go to a covert
Where the birds sing;

Where in the whitethorn
Singeth a thrush,
And a robin sings
In the holly-bush.

Full of fresh scents
Are the budding boughs
Arching high over
A cool green house:

Full of sweet scents,
And whispering air
Which sayeth softly:
"We spread no snare;

"Here dwell in safety,
Here dwell alone,
With a clear stream
And a mossy stone.

"Here the sun shineth
Most shadily;
Here is heard an echo
Of the far sea,
Though far off it be."
-   Christina Rossetti, Spring Quiet 

"Through all the frozen winter
My nose has grown most lonely
For lovely, lovely, colored smells
That come in springtime only.

The purple smell of lilacs,
The yellow smell that blows
Across the air of meadows
Where bright forsythia grows.

The tall pink smell of peach trees,
The low white smell of clover,
And everywhere the great green smell
Of grass the whole world over."
-   Kathryn Worth, Smells

"A little madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King."
-   Emily Dickenson, # 103

"Autumn arrives in the early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day."
-   Elizabeth Bowen

"To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring." 
-   George Santayana

"Daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty."
-   William Shakespeare

"The name Ostara goes back to Jacob Grimm, who, in his Deutsche Mythologie, speculated about an ancient German goddess Ostara, after whom the Easter festival (German: Ostern) could have been named. Grimm's main source is De temporum ratione by the Venerable Bede.  Bede had put forward the thesis that the Anglo-Saxon name for the month of April, Eostur-monath, was named after a goddess Eostre.
    Ostara is one of the four lesser Wiccan holidays or sabbats of the Wheel of the Year. Ostara is celebrated on the spring equinox, in the Northern hemisphere around March 21 and in the Southern hemisphere around September 23, depending upon the specific timing of the equinox. Among the Wiccan sabbats, it is preceded by Imbolc and followed by Beltane. 
    In the book Eight Sabbats for Witches by Janet and Stewart Farrar, the festival Ostara is characterized by the rejoining of the Mother Goddess and her lover-consort-son, who spent the winter months in death. Other variations include the young God regaining strength in his youth after being born at Yule, and the Goddess returning to her Maiden aspect. 
    Ostara is the virgin Goddess of spring. This holiday concerns the deity's trip to the underworld, and their struggle to return from the Land of the Dead to Earth. When they accomplish this return, they have a life renewed. It was considered bad luck to wear anything new before Ostara, so the people would work through the winter in secret to make elegant clothes for the Sabbat celebration. The entire community would gather for games, feasting, and religious rituals while showing off their clothing. 
    The modern belief that eggs are delivered by a rabbit known as the Easter Bunny comes from the legend of the Goddess Eostre. So much did a lowly rabbit want to please the Goddess that he laid the sacred eggs in her honor, gaily decorated them, and humbly presented them to her. So pleased was she that she wished all humankind to share in her joy. In honor of her wishes, the rabbit went through the entire world and distributed these little decorated gifts of life"
-  Ostara in Wikipedia

"Winds of March, we welcome you,
There is work for you to do.
Work and play and blow all day,
Blow the Winter wind away."   

"March bustles in on windy feet
And sweeps my doorstep and my street.
She washes and cleans with pounding rains,
Scrubbing the earth of winter stains.
She shakes the grime from carpet green
Till naught but fresh new blades are seen.
Then, house in order, all neat as a pin,
She ushers gentle springtime in."
-   Susan Reiner, Spring Cleaning

"Buttercups and daisies,
Oh, the pretty flowers;
Coming ere the spring time,
To tell of sunny hours.
When the trees are leafless;
When the fields are bare;
Buttercups and daisies
Spring up here and there."
-   Mary Howitt

"The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March."
-   Robert Frost, Two Tramps in Mud Time

"It is in this unearthly first hour of spring twilight that earth's almost agonized livingness is most felt. 
This hour is so dreadful to some people that they hurry indoors and turn on the lights."
-   Elizabeth Bowen

"When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow Park we saw a few daffodils close to the waterside.  But as we went along there were more and yet more and at last under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a county turnpike toad.  I never saw daffodils so beautiful.  They grew about the mossy stones about and about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake."
-   Dorothy Wordsworth

"Where did Gabriel get a lily,
In the month of March,
When the green
Is hardly seen
On the early larch?"  
- Grace James

"I wonder if the sap is stirring yet,
If wintry birds are dreaming of a mate,
If frozen snowdrops feel as yet the sun
And crocus fires are kindling one by one:
Sing robin, sing:
I still am sore in doubt concerning Spring."
-   Christina Rossetti

"To what can our life on earth be likened?
To a flock of geese,
alighting on the snow.
Sometimes leaving a trace of their passage."
-  Su Shi

"March is a tomboy with tousled hair, a mischievous smile, mud on her shoes
and a laugh in her voice."
-  Hal Borland