Tag Archives: simplicity

Finding Spring

rosalindspringviolets2

Spring is here

Spring is here

Time for joy

Time for cheer

Little children love to sing

The happy song of spring

For most, there is something inspiring and rejuvenating about spring. The temperatures increase and the light lingers. Yes, some will be complaining about the heat before too many weeks have past, but for that brief glorious time, Mother Nature seems to give us a tiny glimpse of hope that at the end of every difficult time, there can be a reward.

My mother always had a saying about this time of year. She would always say, “Spring is just around the corner!” It was her little way of greeting the new season with a childlike aspiration of starting fresh. In my own childhood, she attempted to instill the same wonder and joy of nature in my heart and mind. To that end, we had our own special ritual. Each year, she would drag me out to go look for spring. It wasn’t nearly as much of a chore or punishment as I made that sound, but as the years passed, it became more difficult to pretend the same innocent wonder that she was able to incite when I was 3 or 4 years old.

Magic often loses its power to awe when you see behind the curtain of how the trick works. As a child I was so excited to find the joy of those signs that spring had made an arrival and summer was on the way. My mother always miraculously knew just were to find it… Yes, I figured out that she had planted the crocus bulbs in that particular corner where they would “wake up” first. However, it never failed to impress me that we had managed to sneak up on the Printemps and catch her just waking from her long winter’s sleep.

Now, passing through some remarkably dreary winter times of my own this year, I wish that I could recapture that sense of discovery and glee at something so simple as a planted perennial. Perhaps it is also that I find myself approaching my own autumn that my mind turns so frequently to my younger days, or perhaps it is that the darkness of my own responsibilities has pushed me to flee to the time when I had none and could truly enjoy the world around me. Whatever the reason, I started noticing some of the little gifts of nature that signal renewal.

Living in the south has its benefits and its challenges, but there is nothing that quite compares to springtime in the south. The glory of redbuds with their almost lavender pink blossoms that coat the branches in beautiful pastel foam; the dogwood in white or pink that line subdivisions and the edge of wooded groves; the glorious riot of tulips and crocus in beds everywhere, and the fields of daffodils that line even interstates. It is as if the whole landscape is putting on taffeta and crepe accented by the faintest green that is only seen in spring. Lastly, the carpet of white and purple violets that most consider weeds reminds me of running and laughing in the days when I did such foolish things as running and laughing…

When did it become foolish? When did I lose the time and joy of just being and noticing?

So, today… I went looking for spring around the corner, and I thought I would share it with you…