Spring Flowers

Last weekend, we took a hike in the woods and the strength of the sun restored my faith in spring. It's been pretty cold through April and I am eager for T-shirt weather. 

The walk did my heart good. The leaf buds are just starting to appear, and the bare branches give you a great view of the birds.

The spring wildflowers steal the show. They're delicate and easy to miss, but once you take notice you'll see that they are profuse and truly lovely. Here are some bloodroot and a trillium. Small, shy flowers with startlingly white petals. Their show stages through may, then they leave their leaves to carpet the ground for the rest of the summer. Take your bow, gentle ladies.

Spring Sprung

Spring arrives in fits and starts. Last weekend's Easter Sunday hit 65 sunny degrees. This Sunday's forecast is for 28 degrees with colder windchills. Still, the crocuses tell me that spring is undoubtedly here.

Fresh Start

It's been almost a year since I last posted. Last June we had a house fire that displaced us for the entire summer and into the fall. Our gardens were among the many things that suffered during those months we spent away at an apartment.

I missed the gardens, and my gardening tremendously. At first we tried to keep up, visiting on weekends or in the evenings to weed and replant, and thin and water. After a while it became too much - we had so much extra work and worry going on that the gardens had to take a back seat.

But it was a heartache to watch the weeds grow and to pick fruit, flowers and vegetables from the wild overgrowth.

Now that we're back home, I'm anticipating spring even more fervently than usual. I can't wait to be out in the beds, weeding and watching them grow day-by-day. We lost much of our gardening supplies in the fire because the greatest damage happened in our back porch storage where we kept the tools, extra seeds and even our grow light. We salvaged some, and have replaced some, but in many ways we are starting over.

So, as I watch our seedlings come up this year, they seem to refill a hole in my heart. There is always spring, always new growth, even out of ashes.