late evening light

But when I got home, the sun had come out, and there must have been enough warmth to make the cold snow soften the ground through its melting. Last week a few tender plants had been brave enough to come out of the earth, but what cold has come over the last few days had not discouraged them.

I have daffodils with buds forming. All my late planted tulips are breaking through as well. No sign, I think, of the daffodils I planted in the fall. But since I've planted daffodils for the past three falls, I doubt my own memory and wonder if they have emerged and I am confused over what has already come up. No, I tell myself. Last fall's bulbs need more time.

Sedums that had broken off in fall, and that I had stuck back in the ground in new spots, have rooted. Their sage green vegetation remind me a little of brussel sprouts (of course, the plants of brussel sprouts usually remind me of French wedding cakes). Spreading associations, I heard a marketing researcher call it when I was at the conference, and I am guilty as I eye my garden.

I wonder among my plants in dress shoes, and I silently curse myself for doing this, the giddiness of seeing my dog (whom I've liberated from the house), the two of us wandering among the garden to check our inventory overtaking any common sense a man of my age should have about walking in soft dirt in his work clothes. Not the first time, I must admit.

Franklin and I took our walk around the Townlet. We are in pre-spring. There is no doubt. Winter can still strike again, but it will be temporary, and the warmed earth has convinced nature to start the show. Like an AA member who clings to the serenity prayer, I long ago stopped worrying about what would be lost in spring. I have no control over this. Nature has an amazing resilience. Sure, something will die or get nipped. But this is what happens at this time of year, and I am starting to see it less as a war between me, protecting my garden from the Goths and Visigoths of killing frosts bent on destructive raids, and more of the normal flow of life. I am a great believer in paying attention to the moral instructions found in the garden.

My forsythia are now heavy in buds, and I sense that they are getting that moment of sauciness that I attest to them right before they open their yellow blooms. Wiry, dramatic, a little loose, I think, they whet my visual appetite for blooms. A sin, perhaps, in this Lenten season, but perhaps also sign of coming attractions, something that Lent holds out before us.