... to wish you a happy Easter

I want to wish you a Happy Easter... a time for renewal and new beginnings... I love when the leaves start to show and the flowers begin to bloom again. The cheepers have been singing for a few weeks now, and the birds as well, but just yesterday, the buds on the trees began to burst.... mostly Maple trees where I live. Daffodils and Tulips have sprung up here and there all over the place, and the Forsythia bushes are glowing with bright yellow flowers. It's like a delicate pastel drawing out there now... Willow Trees are really a weed, and messy as heck in the spring.... because they shed a LOT of branches in the fall and winter ( we had two in our yard for years ) but I sure do enjoy looking at the ones across the street, beside the stream, and right now they are just a beautiful, graceful veil of whispy green tendrils, flowing in the breezes.... I remember how, when I was a child, it got cold in November and we had a light snow before Thanksgiving that stayed on the ground and was added to bit by bit, followed by a blizzard or two after the new year, and how it all stayed until the Spring thaw began in March. I loved to be outdoors a lot of the time during the winter, but it was, also, a cozy time to be indoors... But when Spring thaw began, and the streams ran high, the birds began to sing, and the winds blew warm again, it was a magical pagent! The air was so fresh and filled with the scent of green things growing, the sweet mineral scent of mud, and the smell of the fresh water followed by the soul-stirring fragrance of Lilacs and Lily of the Valley. While winter was sparkling white and peacefully quiet and calm, except when a blizzard howled, and the air smelled icy fresh and clean and the frost on the windows held its own kind of magic, Spring was a brilliant, lively, harmonious celebration that all nature joined in. To see the birds returning from the south, being awakened to them in the morning once more, hearing the cheepers singing, and all the critters and creatures that had been hibernating reemerging, the buds bursting and filling the world outside with bright colour and soft hues, and such a sweet array of fragrances, filed me with a joy that goes beyond words. It unfolded over a period of days and weeks. Each day something new was awakening, or being born. When one flower reached its fullness and seemed to vanish overnight, another kind took its place..Butterflies and dragonflies suddenly appeared. Day by day, I watched as baby birds grew and learned to fly, delicate little fawns with spotted backs wandered through the yard with their mothers, polliwogs grew into frogs.... everywhere, by day and by night, it was a celebration of LIFE! Then, almost without notice, June arrived bringing the fragrance of roses that gently permeated the air all day and into the evening.... days became a quiet hum of insects, trickling streams, and the soft rustling of leaves in gentle breezes, accented by a resounding thunderstorm from time to time... Bullfrogs, cheepers and crickets sang all night long, joined from time to time by sound of a train's gentle drumming, somewhere in the distance, entering my room through the open windows, carried by a soothing breeze that came from the woodlands that surrounded our house.... Spring had melded into early summer, and what began so exuberantly with the lengthening of the days, walked steadily, peacefully, onward, into Autumn's harvest time.... before the northern world, once again, went to sleep for a season ...