The Arrival of Spring
The world is bursting with spring. Grass shoots up in clumps of brilliantly green knives. Bushes pop with buds of hidden color. Trees seem to shiver in anticipation, waiting for their chance to sprout new life from naked limbs.
Early Blooms and Changing Colors
Early blooms of crocuses and daffodils have come and gone; tulips take over. They dot the yard with cups of brilliant color more dazzling than any artist’s palette. The forsythia bushes have traded the delicate yellow of their early showing for a darker, yolky yellow that signals their impending turn to conforming green for the rest of the season.
The Redbud Trees
Now the redbud trees capture our eyes. They fill the hillsides with a hue more distinctive than any other vision of spring. Lavender as soft as a whisper; as delicate as a robin’s egg. It is as if God gave this tiny, spindly tree a special color to remind us to look for beauty in unexpected, otherwise unremarkable places.
Signs of Life
Our world is waking up again, and we watch with eager eyes. Every inch of dirt holds a surprise; a thumb of peony pokes through dead leaves. Knives of irises dissect the ground in untidy rows, all trying to reach the sun with their pointy tips.
Honeysuckle vines awaken from their winter brownness … the green of their leaves spikes along the fence, resuming their mission to cover the world in sweet-smelling knots. Dandelions take center stage. They punctuate the sparse grass with sunny circles as big as a child’s fist. It won’t be long before mowers roar to life; the dandelions know their days are numbered.
But in early spring, there is a delight in seeing a yard dotted with these defiant yellow weeds/flowers, all stretching to heaven in earnest. They offer a lesson in growing with passion and determination regardless of the brevity of our days.
Birdsong and Nature’s Symphony
The branches of the trees that tower above all this new life are filled with music. Birds screech to one another from neighboring branches to announce their arrival to the warmth of spring. They send messages of romance in woodpecker taps and mourning dove sighs.
Chickadees whistle in a two-note refrain that follows a metronome-steady cadence, adding mood music to the love calls around them.
The Sky and Its Movements
The sky is a movie of movement. One minute, bursting with clouds as thick and textured as wool, the next, clear and blue as the Easter egg dye. Winds wrestle in the trees and make shadows whose shapes appear and vanish in frenetic syncopation.
It is as if nothing can be still. As if life is thrumming through the air and reverberating with a composition that makes the whole world dance.
A Celebration of New Beginnings
Each new day brings a wonder of color. A treat of sights and sounds and smells that fill us with energy and joy. Our faces turn this way and that, gazing at the world in awe.
How reassuring it is to know that spring always follows winter. That newness blooms from even the dullest branches and barren fields. That the sun can warm our souls.
God smiles. And the world sings His praises in the beauty of spring.
