Apr 14 2015
First Flowers
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I looked out the window this morning. I ran out the door, straight the skeletal remains of last year’s flower garden, and there it was: a tiny patch of early spring irises in bloom. I reached down to touch them, doubting Thomas that I am. Sure enough, they are real.
It really is springtime. The first flowers of the season prove it and, wouldn’t you know it, they popped up right under my nose here at home. Robins, starlings and other migrating birds have been announcing the season for quite some time now, but it hasn’t really sunk in. It takes a flower to chase the last wintry thoughts from my head.
My dog Matika and I hiked around Indian Brook Reservoir yesterday as temps rose into the 70s for the first time this year. The trail was mostly cold mud with the occasional patch of dirty ice. A barred owl hooted in the middle of the afternoon, adding yet another surreal layer to the surprising experience of hiking soft earth in shirtsleeves. I came home and opened the windows, still expecting it to snow again. After all, it snowed just last week.
The green shoots of the day lilies in my front yard have been pushing up with such persistence that I felt inclined to mulch them this afternoon. Every year I undergo this rite of passage from the colder season to the warm one. This year I’ve gotten to it a little later than usual, still traumatized by winter. But lilies don’t care how cold or snowy it was. They live in the Now.
“So that’s it,” I said to myself while slowly picking up debris in my yard, gingerly stepping around the spongy wet patches still saturated with snowmelt. Then I put away my snow shovels. There’s no point in dwelling upon the past.
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