Sprung!

Having grown up in a place with "real" winter (Chicago), and having made a recent visit to New York, I've been reminded this year that March and April are a transition months. In the Chicago of my childhood, March especially, was quite unreliable, and featured dirty, salty snow banks. Walking to school was a messy, wet operation.

In early April, you would look almost desperately for signs of bright colors. I wrote last week about a "dark unclear space" and I am thinking this week that the bursts that renewed life makes onto winter's scene are just as mysterious and magical.

On one of my days in New York, I took the wrong subway to met Nathan at Columbia, meaning that I had a longish walk to campus. It was a good thing, because it meant I passed by a churchyard with this lone forsythia in bloom, blazing yellow against the dark stone walls.
 
This is the first year I've heard Nathan, a native Californian, ever express joy at seeing trees bud and bloom. He is seeing them with new eyes, having slogged through his first winter of chill and snow. He is going through his own blooming.
 

Practically as soon as I got back in town, my sister visited me here in Berkeley. She still lives outside Chicago, and to her, it is wildly green here right now. My yard is looking good right now, with the wisteria and California poppies in bloom. What I was most happy for her to see were the blooms on the Western Redbud tree I have in the backyard, shown here on the right. I planted this little native sweetheart after my mother died, and I put a locket of her hair in the earth underneath it. My mother was a big treehugger from way back, and I know that many trees have been planted in her honor, by her children and all her friends.

In my front yard right now, next to my garlic, I have brave new Dragon Carrot sprouts. I ordered the seeds from the Seed Savers catalog. They are supposed to be red when they are all grown up. We'll see!

All this growth is plain wonder and mystery! And to top it all off, across the street, a baby boy was just born! Little Philo. How about that?

Life just takes the cake. Or pie, depending on your point of view.