“Spring Flowers and Happy Bees” © Elizabeth (Schickel) Robinson
I am grateful to share my Natural Wonderings/Wanderings. I write them as time and spirit allow. The idea and title were conceived one 
day many years ago when exploring outside with my young family. It would be quite a few years more before I began writing them in 2008. There are many connecting points over the years in observations of nature, life, and seasons. One for me is a strong sense of home-place, specifically in our little corner of the world here, in Southwestern Ohio. This sense of place helps carry interrelatedness over time and retains a comforting, familiar thread over endless variations within the cycle of nature and life.
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In late February and early March, I am feeling a change.
Pondering what lies waiting under the dark, wet earth, my mind’s eye roams just below the surface. I feel a pulse, visualizing millions-billions-of innumerable seed varieties unfurling. Nascent palest sprouts of white/green creeping steadily and relentlessly toward the increasing light. The earth’s surface still belies the magnitude of activity I know is imminent. The Magnificent Mystery of Creation is again beginning to unfold in this just Spring-ing time of the year.
We are in the lion and lamb “fickles” of March. The stalwart yet delicately lovely Snowdrops and Winter Aconite, the first harbingers of spring, were a welcomed surprise, blooming through late February snow and ice. Now, in the gathering warmth of mid-March, they are making their final curtsies as ceremonial marshals of the Spring Parade, leavening our yearning for all we know will follow.
Daffodils, sure spreaders of sunshine, are beginning to bloom, swaying and bowing in spring breezes. Crocuses greet us, and the tiniest Bluets and Salt-and-Pepper diminutives are peeking into grasses at our feet. “Please, notice me! Look at us! We are here for your Joy!” The pulse is quickening…
Lordy, Lordy, my husband is talking about planting spring lettuce!
This is The MARCH of New Life
With all Creation, we shout for Joy, “Alleluia!”
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Elizabeth (Schickel) Robinson has always lived in Loveland, married and raised a family here. Family, faith, service, community and creativity are most important to her. She is an artist driven to notice and bring beauty to others including creating commissioned works of art for hospitals and churches. She cares about our culture and wants to build opportunities for community and connection to God, each other and creation. She recently retired as a Registered Nurse at Cincinnati Children’s where she was privileged to care for patients and their families. She strives to live with her eyes wide open, seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary in life and nature that surrounds her.
Loveland, Ohio – Elizabeth (Schickel) Robinson
Professionally, I am an artist and retired registered nurse. Although I have been an artist throughout my adult life, nursing came later. 
At breakfast recently I asked my husband, do you know when to use the word who and when to use the word whom? He looked at me with just the slightest twinkle and said “well, the Barred Owl says “who” and the Great Horned Owl says “whom?” He continued, “we should be hearing the Great Horned Owls talking to each other soon, and pairs will be on the nest in another month or so.” Though we never got around to the grammar of when to use who and whom, this conversation formed a delightful picture in my mind and stirred a faint longing for spring, not long into winter.
“The show really highlights artists living in and around Loveland,” says Deirdre Dyson, the show’s Honorary Chair and one of the city’s award-winning artists. “Loveland has so much to o
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