Sometimes I think another word for Spring could be Hope. After months of bare branches and dormant plants, new life awakes. Life, just biding its time until the sun’s warmth stirs it up.
Spring stirs in our blood too, a distant remembering of youth and adventure. A sense of potential in the warming days impels us to unfold ourselves, like the seedlings in the soil, and to go exploring the outdoors again. Day stretches itself out languidly in both directions, and invites us to bask in its extended light.
When we were children, spring and summer on the farm invited new daring as our play moved outside. We spent hours on a steel bar stretched across two trees, hanging there like monkeys, effortlessly pulling ourselves up on it, risking a fall by walking across it, sharing sisterly confidences. I can still feel the rough surface of the steel bar on my hands.
The pond, fringed by bulrushes, had its own murky fascination, and later the wild berries along the fence lines could be plucked with stained fingers and savoured. The hayloft in the barn, whether empty or piled high with hay or straw, invited all kinds of forts and feats. We were warned often to watch out for the holes in the barn floor, but never actually forbidden from roaming around in it.
These days spring means that I lift my face to the lake breeze while tracking across the sand on the shore, take a walk in the woods before the mosquitoes stake their summer claims. Trilliums bloom between last year’s fallen leaves. Even before that, against protected southern walls, green spikes of garden daffodils tentatively reach out. Like our toe in the bathwater, they cautiously test their environment. Mother Nature can be deceptive, and days of warm weather entice blossoms sometimes, only to cut them short with frost. Tonight, the snow is flying in large flakes after several days of spring teasing.
In the greenhouse seedlings hold promise, waiting to be presented like debutantes at a spring ball. I am grateful to be the recipient of my gardener’s green thumb talent, and look forward to appreciating the beauty of a bouquet that is presented all season long.
i thank You God for most this amazing
i thank You God for most this amazing
day for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
. . .
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
ee cummings
