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Friday, February 27, 2015

Coming Out . . . of Hibernation

It's been another long, cold winter. I'm so ready to come out of hibernation. Today, though it won't, again, get above freezing, I went looking for signs of Spring.

What I found outside my door perfectly showed, to me, the essence of this season. Snow in retreat. Warming earth pushing back the white blanket. Abstract yin and yang. And in the center, emerging leaves of new life, damaged, burned by the cold, promise of blooms that will rise from the wreckage.

When all the snow has gone and Spring has come, with the leafing out of trees and shrubs, I will, no doubt, discover what more damage the bitter cold has wreaked. Last year, I lost limbs from two prized plantings: an azalea and a Japanese maple. Yet the plants survived, and the damage resulted in a reshaping, of new form. In the maple, more open spaces, the killed branches  pruned away, left a more spare and possibly more beautiful tree.

Somehow the damage done enhances the value, the beauty of what remains, of what survives. The golden daffodil that rises above burnt leaves.


If only we could remember, more often than we do: such is our lives.