Ambition

In the midst of a stop-action series I've been developing this spring, I've become much more attentive to sudden and subtle growth in a variety of the campus flora, in addition to the crabapple tree and rhododendron bush I've been photographing each day. Although there have been some lovely days over the past week or two, a sense that winter is fully behind us has been slower to arrive. For example, as I went about my floral rounds today, my subjects and I were braving temperatures in the 30s with a chilly mist under gloomy overcast skies. Students, professors, and staff seemed halfway back to their wintry hibernation habits as they shuffled from building to building.

Ciampi Hall lawn
College of the Holy Cross, Worcester MA

Yet the plants seemed ambitious, even brazen, in the face of another chilly day. Pansies lived up to their hardy reputation, crabapple blooms didn't grow any further (as far as I could tell), but they didn't retreat. Some sprouts that I didn't notice the other day are rising assertively from our recently regraded garden... sprung from seeds that no one intentionally planted.

As the campus community gears up for the semester's final push– reading period begins in two weeks, and Commencement is a month from tomorrow– the grounds are already setting the tone. God willing, all will look wondrous by the end of May, and ambitious efforts seen and unseen, intentional and inexorable, will draw the admiration that they merit.