Spring

Spring has arrived in the east. It's fullness manifest in the hardwood forest's response to warmth. Every tree is doing it and showing every stage and every shade of emerging leaf from the slight red tint of buds on bare branches to the full kelly green new leaf of the maple. The far hill I can see from the hill I live on is decorated in a solid panorama of tentative gold next to lime segueing into rust, changing to bright green lushness. I walked there when I first moved here only to discover it was not a forest but a residential area with some very big old trees accompanied by new trees both lining the streets and filling the backyards. Every plant is bursting with ecstatic lacy flowering. The streets are littered with gold maple blossoms. There are pink dogwoods and forsythia and tulips and hyacinth and azaleas in brilliant pink, making me feel like the world is really madly in love with itself after all. A mockingbird is trying to build a nest in the rhododendron outside the front door. Anya loves to climb up and sit in the top branches and discovered the nest half built and later that day, a robin sized grey bird with a twig came and sat on the electrical wires waiting for Anya to climb down and us to go inside and finally dropped the twig and went off to find a quieter nesting place. The mourning doves are calling to each other and the sparrows are building their nest in the rain gutters. Life is full of promise even in the midst of the Weltschermz of our era and will continue to bloom and blossom after our two legged reign is over or even, (is it too much to believe on a day like this?), if we learn to live with beauty.