Today the air is heavy with suppressed humidity, the kind of weather makes the sky feel like it is hanging low and as though all the clouds are some heavy swooping blanket muffling over everything. I make it sound so grey and oppressive. Truth is that the air feels moist and swirly, there's a gentle breeze occasionally that keeps the maple branches outside all tipped with little bouquets of bright green blossoms, bowing and nodding surprisingly at odd moments.
There is a kind of dark intensity to the light on this kind of a day too. Colors seem richer and more saturated without the sunlight there to wash them out into pastel versions of themselves. The air is laden with water which (scientific fact!) makes all perfumed scent from the neighborhood flowers more deep and rich, a heavy trail of sweetness sometimes whirls inexplicably in through the open window when a gust of wind hits the poet's narcissus or the pansies just the right way.
Image by vinmar via Flickr
The magnolia at the end of our street is a gigantic cotton candy ball, all pink whirling petals and creamy undersides, a massive undulating mass of curve and shape and soft pastel joy. Last night when I was out running I avoided the tree until the very end of my run when I had finished pushing myself through the very last bits of reserve that I possessed. Only then did I let myself pant to a stop under the great pastel mass of a tree. I knew that if I let myself end up under those spreading baby pink branches before I was finished with my run that I would leave off, part way through, my face lifted not caring two sticks whether I finished the course or not. All else can dissolve in the presence of a tree in full bloom. What is running really when there are five thousand, thousand creamy petals littering the sidewalk and a host more poised in the air above you?
The magnolia is not the only focal point. Our apple tree opened it's first little wads of magenta, the verbena hedge between us and the neighbors is just beginning top open, our potted nectarine is an absurd stick with wads of bright tissue paper blossoms and all across our back lawn there is a rippling spill of violets, deep purple mixed with a purple veined white variety...so many more of them than I dared hope when I noticed their little rosettes of leaves in amongst the grass last fall.
Spring is my favorite. My very favorite. I feel hopeful that I can make it, that I can smell success on the wind. I know that it's supposed to be summer time "when the livin' is easy" because of the cotton being high and all but I have to say that it feels like a misdiagnosis to me, Spring is where it's at.
 Image by ~ Martin ~ via Flickr |
| Maple Blossoms. |
Image by vinmar via FlickrThe magnolia at the end of our street is a gigantic cotton candy ball, all pink whirling petals and creamy undersides, a massive undulating mass of curve and shape and soft pastel joy. Last night when I was out running I avoided the tree until the very end of my run when I had finished pushing myself through the very last bits of reserve that I possessed. Only then did I let myself pant to a stop under the great pastel mass of a tree. I knew that if I let myself end up under those spreading baby pink branches before I was finished with my run that I would leave off, part way through, my face lifted not caring two sticks whether I finished the course or not. All else can dissolve in the presence of a tree in full bloom. What is running really when there are five thousand, thousand creamy petals littering the sidewalk and a host more poised in the air above you?
The magnolia is not the only focal point. Our apple tree opened it's first little wads of magenta, the verbena hedge between us and the neighbors is just beginning top open, our potted nectarine is an absurd stick with wads of bright tissue paper blossoms and all across our back lawn there is a rippling spill of violets, deep purple mixed with a purple veined white variety...so many more of them than I dared hope when I noticed their little rosettes of leaves in amongst the grass last fall.
Spring is my favorite. My very favorite. I feel hopeful that I can make it, that I can smell success on the wind. I know that it's supposed to be summer time "when the livin' is easy" because of the cotton being high and all but I have to say that it feels like a misdiagnosis to me, Spring is where it's at.
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