Welcome
There are creatures on the roadside dressed in lavender.
Once rough collections of billboards and phone lines, once common thickets of pine. Now finely dressed in new gowns of wisteria, they line the lanes and the highways like the sweethearts of giants, waving hankies of violet in the afternoon air.
I drive along their parade route in awe of their beauty, their perfume rides the breeze through my wide open window.
I saw the first rosebud just yesterday.
Though still tightly fastened in a locket of pink, it was clear what she planned to become.
It is now only mere weeks till she and her sisters will spill up and over my window, an extravagant display that will gleam in the moonlight as a thousand blushing fairies en route to a dance.
They will scatter petals of pink on the floor of the garden, like the forgotten kisses of youth.
Disrobed for so long, the tall trees in the garden are now clad in vestments of chartreuse and lime.
They stand round the cottage like an army in Oz, guardians of all that is good.
And though I am the one in love with the cold - the fireside, the woolens, the winds and the mist - I have opened my door to this glorious season and welcomed her into my rooms.
She has filled all my vases with bouquets of yellow, she has taught the purple finches a cantata of joy.
She has sent the rains and now the streams remember laughter.
She is the season of hope and renewal.
The season of colour and light.
She Is Spring.
How lucky am I to welcome her, in each and every year of my life.
Painting above by NC Wyeth
