Sweet Spring - we are waiting for you
March 8th, 2008I had to look closely, pushing aside some rotting leaves and other fall leftovers.
Meekly making their way through the rich, dark soil, came the shoots of day lilies – a bright green announcement of the coming spring.
Despite the dreary cold and rainy weather, I can feel the sun shining in my heart and mind. Spring is coming! Spring is coming! Spring is coming!
I can’t imagine living someplace where the seasons aren’t showoffs. In the Shenandoah Valley, each season tries his or her best to upstage its cousins.
Every season deserves love and attention, but I don’t think any are anticipated the way Spring is.
(Despite what some would have you believe, it is not proper capitalize the seasons, but for the purpose of this blog I am thinking of Spring as an entity or at least as a noun deserving of capitalization.)
Many birds have started coming back to the Valley after wintering someplace warm. As soon as the sun rises, they start chattering to each other, singing about the months they have been away and catching up on all the bird gossip.
My mother-in-law lives in West Virginia in a very rural area. She has already seen a field full of robins.
I have yet to spy the first red-breasted bird here, but I am sure they will show up soon.
The other evening, when it was a little warmer than usual, I took a stroll around the yard and looked over the flower beds and shrubs. In a week or so, I will slap a little WD40 on my pruners and get to work.
Yard work is work, no doubt. But in the spring, it doesn’t feel like a job. I long to spend time in the yard, picking and planting. In a month, our yard will be transformed by yellow and orange lilies, deep violet rhododendron, cheery coral bells and, best of them all, the pale and deep purples of our fragrant lilacs.
I have to protect my lilacs from my husband who starts whacking on them when the dreaded sumac explodes within the lilac bushes. He cut everything so drastically one year that it took two years before the lilacs would bloom again.
Fall is majestic – especially when the mountains are ablaze with color. Summer is languid – long evenings with time to sit outside and watch the fireflies signal each other with flashing lights. Winter is regal – royal jewels of ice sparkle on birdbaths and lamp posts above a bed of pristine snow.
But Spring. Ah, Spring. Spring is magical.
Her miraculous fingers caress the trees and bring forth peach and apple blossoms. Redbuds and dogwoods smile from every nook and cranny and tulips and daffodils parade alongside homes and highways.
The fields become a luscious green and calves, lambs and colts run and play and sleep in the arms of Spring’s gentle breeze.
Spring seems to be the shortest of seasons. All too soon the temperatures will rise and the gnats and flies will return. But there’s no time to think of that now. Now is the time to watch for green shoots and leaf buds and Spring’s favorite red-breasted messenger.