Rampant spring

Rain gently patters on the roof overhead as the mist hovers magically through the valley like a fairyland. I wonder if mist and mystical are derived from the same root? This is cosy weather, sleep-in weather, snuggle weather. It is moist and sensual, alive, abundant. This is grow time! Around me everything flourishes. I am surrounded by a sea of colour changing daily. This morning I noticed the pine nuts are budding. I have never experienced such a rampant spring, a time of such flux of flora. In Australia, plants have a whole year – mostly – to live out their cycles above ground. Here it’s more like half a year, so everything moves at double speed. Buds and flowers come and go so fast, like a movie. New growth sprouts and blooms in the time it takes to notice it. Spring is so alive here!

A canopy of greens and reds now covers the landscape where but a few months previous all was bare limbs and bleak. And still there remains so much more to be seen. A tree to my right has just begun budding, its limbs exposed still – lean arms reaching out in lifelong devotion to the sun and rain. The light greens, the reds of new growth are still to be replaced by more mature hues. There is nothing here that remains a constant – even the red barn roof today appears brown-black. Change is the only constant in this world we would call ours.