All posts tagged: spring

a week of spring: primrose

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Sunday I just spent the last five days in Stoddard and Lebanon, New Hampshire, where the weather can turn from calm to angry in a matter of minutes.  If you can drive there this time of year, you can drive anywhere. In the past few weeks, I’ve experienced getting stuck on a hill after a heavy snow (and driving white-knuckled down steep Pitcher Mountain), driving 40 miles an hour on 89 because of blinding fog, facing both hail and sleet head-on, and inching my way home through a rain storm that my wipers could barely keep up with.  There is still snow on the ground there and little vegetation to speak of.  I pulled into my driveway last night and couldn’t believe what I saw.  Even at night, I could see my forsythia bush blazing and the grass looked lush and green.  Spring, my friends, literally began while I was away. Today, I wandered around my yard to see what plants were coming back to life.  Joyfully, I see nearly everything peeking up with the …

cheating spring

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Forsythia doesn’t meekly flower in spring.  It turns from a camouflaged brown bunch of twigs to a shouting ball of yellow.  “Look at me!” it commands.  Against a neutral world of hibernating life, it truly stands out and proudly announces that Spring has finally arrived.  I decided to cheat a little because I’m simply getting impatient.  I cut some Forsythia twigs that had been damaged by the heavy snow and put them in water on my kitchen windowsill.  A week and a half later, I have the happiest yellow bouquet. I also have a red leaf plum tree in front of my porch that has the loveliest red leaves in summer. I clipped a few limbs from this tree, which is nothing but grey and empty right now, and also put them in water.  Just this morning I discovered little pink blooms that normally wouldn’t be popping out until late April/early May.  Patience is a virtue, but why wait?  I get to see these blooms twice this year.