April 2021

It's a cloudy and chilly day in the midst of a cloudy and chilly spring.  The sun has been bashful, the flowers have been reluctant to make the grand entrance we would wish of them, and my little thoughtful spot has remained wrapped in a protective quilt of clouds and downy gray.  It's been a peaceful spring, filled with the promise, if not always the actuality, of the season's change.  It's this predictable changeableness of the seasons, each time as surprising as the appearance of the first crocus in January and as reassuring as the sunrise, the rhythm of this glorious creation that never ceases to amaze me.  What an enchanting, marvelous mingling of the familiar and the new. 

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Spring is a lovely reminder of how beautiful change can be.

 - Anonymous

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

 - Albert Camus

Within the clouds and raindrops of this late spring, early summer is showing it's face.  It's in the brilliant color of a tiny wild strawberry (Fragaria vesca) that is hiding beneath a clump of violets.   It's in the first red clover blooms (Trifolium pratens), which always seem to appear earlier and disappear later than I expect, their lengthy blooming season providing plenty of opportunity to harvest and dry them for a tea to support the lymphatic system. 

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Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

- Lao Tzu

The new season is in the may-apples (podophyllum peltatum), with their tiny yellow fruits forming under the swaying villages of their umbrella leaves. And it's in the massive and delicate fiddlehead fern that almost blocks my view of the waterfall as I sit here, its lacy fragility dances in the slightest wind, yet it is secured so resolutely to the corner of rock on this little ledge.

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Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection...
in every leaf of springtime.

- Martin Luther

It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.

 - Rainer Maria Rilke

And then there is the garden, the clearest sign of summer's closeness. It is filled with lettuces and radishes that would make Peter rather hungry and Mr. McGregor proud, and a spring bounty of asparagus in beautiful green and purple spears.  Isn't it amazing to see how differently plants grow?  There's the asparagus, tall and sentry-like straight out of the ground, then the radishes, hiding beneath the soil, yet colored a pinker pink than any crayon box could offer.

Here comes the sun, little darling...

It's been a pleasant spring, in it's dreary quietude.  Sometimes it's the hush, the grayness, and the extended season of waiting that makes that expected, surprising change even more beautiful.  And there's a whisper, a promise here in my Thoughtful Spot this afternoon, louder than the rippling bubbles of the waterfall, than the birdsongs and the squabbling of squirrels overhead, than the distant rumble of a lawnmower, Courage, Dearheart, life has seasons too.