It never grows old, this watching the world wake up. It teems with life. And though it is always there, in spring it is as if everyone shakes off winter's wait to stretch and feel life tingle.
Songs fill the air. Cardinals, bluebirds, buntings, goldfinches, phoebes, and busy robins sing warnings of territories and mating lures. Somewhere in the still stick-bare woods a jay calls, an echo that is the spirit of wildness. As each day grows longer, warmer and moist, the maples push redbuds into the air and popples start to look like children's sponge paintings with their yellow-green shadows of new leaves.
Bulbs push through to the air, some trapped by dried maple leaves that bind them until they cannot hold them in their dry embrace. Then the bulb leaves snap the tight hold of last year's leaves. Flower heads of hyacinths, jonquils, daffodils, fill the air with scents of spring.
I arranged a group of them in a pretty blue-grey pottery vase I bought at a local gift shop. The vase is the first piece in my remake of my front room changing from the warmth of ruby, burnt orange, and browns to ocean blues, sunshine yellows, sandy tans and sage green to freshen this farmhouse for the new year.
The vase sits on my desk holding four fresh daffodils and one blue-violet hyacinth. Next to it is a charming egg jar decorated with drawings by Beatrix Potter. The lid is the top of the egg and has the little rabbit with his blue coat as the handle--Peter Rabbit. It was a birthday gift from my mom and was filled with the most exquisite floral arrangement of carnations, mums, freesia, a blue spiked flower I don't know the name of, and flat waxy leaves. It was breath-taking with flowers, and is beautiful as a jardiniere.
Twilight closes in. Earlier I opened all the doors and the kitchen window so a gentle breeze filled the house. The kitchen window is still open and sounds of peepers are loud as they pick up where the birds left off.
Spring.
Posts
