...
the magic of Spring, that is. This weekend was the essence of Spring...warm breezes from the south...clear sky with soft wispy clouds...brilliant emerald-green grass...
I was doing my usual
hamster-style of yard work. Running up and down our hilly backyard, hauling bags of mulch and gravel, pulling weeds like crazy, digging out the tendrils of lawn grass that had crept into my flower beds. Head down...muttering to myself about
"remember to dig out that dandelion...remember to get the clippers and cut back that branch, etc, etc, etc..."
I was checking the path in our little bit of woods behind our house to see how much mulching I needed to do, got down on my knees to pull a weed, and
saw Spring.
Bluebells! (
mertensia virginica-the North American bluebell)
The most magical Spring flower of my childhood.
My mother came from a family of
morel mushroom hunters. My maternal grandfather loved to hunt morels; he could spot a morel mushroom from a mile away. Every spring my family would pile into the car along with my maternal grandparents and followed by various aunts, uncles, and cousins who happened to be around. We'd drive to various woodlands in the area and spend hours poking through the underbrush looking for morels. I was always enchanted by the ephemeral beauty of all the little wildflowers that I discovered in the woods. Like little fairies...their radiance deep in the woods unseen...passing through so fleetingly in Spring. With charming names like "
shooting star", "
bloody noses", and "
jack-in-the-pulpit".
But my favorite Spring woodland flower was -
still is - the
bluebell. Dainty pink buds that open to a delicate flower the soft blue of the Spring sky. How could that not be magic?
And how could I have gotten so grown-up and busy that I almost missed the magic this Spring?
