Magnolias or Spring Always Comes

Magnolias, or Spring Always Comes

I took this picture on the way to work this week. The weather was astonishing. Warm, sunny, with bright blue skies. Flowers were popping up everywhere and the grass was growing velvety and rich.

Spring was here!

It always surprises me, spring. It's like I can't believe winter will let go of its hold. I can't believe the bare branches will grow leaves or the temperature will rise or things will get a little bit easier without mittens and hats and bulky coats.

But it doesn't matter how hard the winter has been, it is an unassailable truth that spring always comes.

After I took this picture (it has been an uncommonly mild winter and early spring, actually) we actually got a cold snap and all those pretty, creamy white and pink flowers turned brown and dropped off, but even so, spring will not be held back.

Spring is my favorite season. It's not just the warm breezes and flowers, but the reminder that life always comes back around. It's how I remember to trust that I can get back to being productive and creative. It's how I remember that even when life seems still and sleepy and inactive and even dead that when it is time everything will blossom and come to life again.

Spring also reminds me that it is hard work to blossom. It looks effortless from the outside, but it is hard work to get those energies stored up, to pull in the sunlight, to wake up again. Or at least I imagine it is. I imagine the cold little budlings and hibernating animals to be like little factories in their underground burrows and bulbs, chugga chugging into gear as we get nearer to the sun and the the seasons change.

Oh look at me getting all poetical and such.

Spring does that to me.

Time for me to go off and plan my blossoming now.