It is full blown, undeniably springtime in my little speck of Texas! I know, most people have their own springtime, so what's the big deal? It's because I am just fresh out of the desert, and it's like I'm seeing spring for the first time all over again! Sure, the desert has springtime, and sure, long-timers there recognize and love it just the same, but I was never a bona fide desert girl. I was mid-western born and raised, and it's just a different kind of a springtime altogether. Lovely. Lovely!
Some of the indigenous hardwood trees, I think maybe a variety of elm, started leafing out some time back and are taking on deeper, more summery green tones already. Several other varieties have since begun to follow suit, but are still a fresh, bright yellow-green. There are some trees that are so completely covered in tiny new leaves that they almost look fuzzy from a distance! There are still a few bare trees. The pecan trees seem to be dragging up the rear for the spring parade, although as I look more closely, they are getting small little leaves now, too. In and among them all stand various dark green and bluish-green pines and spruce trees that held down the fort through the winter months. The contrasts are amazing. There are so many different colors of green! It's all amazing!
Every so often, tucked into the midst of the other trees, there stands a flowering tree or two. Red-buds stand out with pinkish-lavender flowers, others, maybe fruit trees, with white or pink flowers, and still others with brighter reds and oranges tucked in low underneath. There are bluebells all over the place and I've seen some fuchsia flowers of some kind in such dense mats that they almost look like a solid mass. All along the roadsides and in the open fields there are wildflowers that are maybe as high as your thigh, covered in bright yellow blooms. If you cast your eyes about it looks almost like someone with a paint brush took the time to tip each and every twig with it's own fresh batch and specially blended color. All of this with a backdrop one minute of happy, sunny blue and the next minute of an exciting and unpredictable gray.
(I'll try to stop and get some pics of the local flowers soon.)
The smells are impossible to describe. When I moved here last July, for the first month or so I honestly thought someone nearby had found a wonderful brand of dryer sheet and the wind was bringing it to my window. Seriously, I did. As time passed I realized it just smells good here! How can that be? If that wasn't enough, it seems that it's possible that it was merely the remnants of the springtime just passed. The smell here this spring is beautiful, fresh, pretty, "plantish'. HAHA! How do you describe that? Lovely. Lovely! (photo credit)
I wake up every morning to the sounds of birds: not a few, not a few dozen, either, but multitudes of birds! I thought something was wrong to begin with. I know, that's ridiculous, but I did! I hadn't heard anything like that in many, many years if I ever had. Hundreds of birds hollering "Hey" back and forth to each other, I guess, signalling where the left over pecans from last fall are lying. When I first heard them I thought they were a harbinger for a storm or an earthquake! It made me think of an old, scary Hitchcock film! It took me a while to realize it's a spring thing, and it's beautiful! One flew into the glass on my window just as the sun was coming up, poor thing. He got up and staggered away, or swaggered away, or whatever a stunned bird does when he flies off.
The crickets are cricking, the bees are being, the snakes are probably snaking by now as well. No matter the fickle weather and temperatures, it is definitely springtime. I'm wringing every possible drop of enjoyment out of it.
"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven." Eccl 3:1
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