No Holding Back

“No matter how long the Winter, Spring is sure to follow.”

Three weeks ago we had a foot of snow.  But Spring will no longer be held back!  On Monday, two turkeys foraged along the road pecking at emerging leaves of green grass and tender new buds.

It was so wonderful to see the grass finally turning green and the chives pushing their way up!

Two visitors passed through on their way North—a White-crowned Sparrow and a Yellow-rumped Warbler.

April’s end-of-month full moon illuminated buds on a tree, and a colorful sunset shone through the silhouette of trees where soon leaves will occlude the splendor.

The Bluebirds returned this week!  Their swift, swooping dives and chattering songs fill the front yard as they check out the nesting boxes.

On Thursday, I finally got to my annual Earth Day ditch clean-up.  Once again, with most of the trash being plastic, I urge everyone to ‘ditch’ plastic shopping bags and use paper or reusable bags.  It will make a difference!  I also found this unfortunate creature who didn’t make it through the winter—one of our resident opossums who waddle back and forth from the quarry to the woods.

By Friday, the Forsythia and Bergenia were blooming!  The lemony yellow Forsythia flowers shone in the morning sun along with one orange fall leaf that had held on through the winter.

The Bergenias send up a study flower stalk between green leaves that have weathered the winter and those that dried and died.  No holding back.

Ferns with their rolled fiddleheads emerged by warm rocks, casting shadows just as intriguing as the fiddleheads themselves.

The most amazing bud to me is the terminal bud of a Buckeye tree.  I’m always incredulous that such a huge amount of leaves can be coiled into one bud—and they are beautiful as they unfurl!

One sign of Spring that I always look for is the ‘green blush’ of new leaves on the Aspen trees down by the river.  Thursday, no green blush, but Friday morning, it was there!

The floppy, fragrant petals of the Star Magnolia opened on Saturday.  So beautiful!

For the first time, I saw a Baltimore Oriole come to our feeder!  No holding back the Goodness of Spring! 

 

I think most of us up North would agree it’s been a long winter, but Spring sure has been sweet this week.  It’s as if all the power and potential can no longer be held back, even as the last piles of blackened snow melt and the frost recedes from the ground—Spring has come bursting forth!  There are many times in life when we feel the holding back and comfort of what is known along with the pull of a new adventure.  A baby is happy to sit or crawl until the urge to walk implants itself in mind and body—there is no holding back.  Children are eager to learn and ‘do it themselves’ after years of parents doing it for them and teaching them motor and mind skills.  Adolescents oscillate between being a dependent child and pushing their way to adult independence.  At some point, there is no holding back the desire to live one’s own life.  A similar thing happens in mid-life after decades of striving, achieving, raising children, putting plans on hold, paying bills and doing the necessary matters.  We wonder if we have lost ourselves, if there is something more to life, if we have fulfilled our potential—we forage for new ways or remember something from the past that we have carried with us like a lone, orange leaf.  Some parts of our lives die—by our own hand or by the hand of a higher power.  We explore intriguing shadows that lead us back to our own intriguing selves.  No matter our age or circumstance, we are beautiful as we unfurl.