Spring, Awakening

At the start of the lane, nestled up against an impervious wall of stately, swooping, cedars, pops a Star Magnolia, brilliantly in bloom with blushing hot-pinkish abandon, shameless in her self promotion yet innocent as the fresh breath of dew that lingers on her petals. Shocking, tempting one to snip and pluck and try and capture her radiance indoors in a crystal vase but, in the end, you simply gaze in wonder and walk past, smiling at the small conceits of the season that lure us onward, knowing that the tulip temptations and iridescent iris cannot be far behind her.

The soft, soggy, sponge of Spring. Quietly alive with the heavy dense of fog, mist, and morning.

A terrarium of a landscape with giant, moss-coated logs, upright, quite alive, but seemingly decaying into themselves with the very effort of trying, once again, to come back to life and leaf. Trees; still, but with the fore-shadow of their future loamy selves, redolent with decay, food and shelter for creatures who, even now, lurk about their bases, seeking their very forefathers for home and hearth, waiting for the next member of the tribe to succumb to the gravity of the grave and lie, motionless but ever-so-slowly crumbling into the earth yet, at once, teeming with the new colonies of life they will feed and nurture.

Fronds upon unfurling fronds, acres of ferns. They awake like sleep-nourished children, poking their fuzzy heads out of their leafy beds, every shade of veridescence from the palest chartreuse to the vermillion; verdant, each throbbing with life about to burst. The larger the fern to come, the richer the shade of awakening . A hierarchy of carbon-capturing awareness. With names like maidenhair, leather-leaf, sword, and cinnamon, they evoke food and swagger and tender imagery from the first sightings. With their constant companions, the mosses, they are the lushest of carpets upon which all wooded creatures feast and frolic. Nature as interior designer has no equal……nor any flaw.