Newness everywhere

O how I love this time of year! I love it so much I decided to use the poetic"O" rather than the more modern and far less exciting "Oh."

Even as I say it in my mind, it sounds different without the h. Much more suited to how I feel.

The blooming everywhere astounds me. This emergence, this salutation to life, this blossoming above and below me is intoxicating. It's exciting. It's rejuvenating. Okay, yes, it's also @#$% for allergy sufferers. I know that. But, O! What an exaltation of life. What an exultation of renewal and promise and hope.

Apple blossoms, cherry blossoms! There's daffodils and tulips and hyacinths and crocuses. Myrtle crawls along the ground. Dogwoods in white and pink stand out among their green-leafed maple neighbors, as do redbud trees. Even dandelions poke their spiky yellow faces up, along with buttercups. Azaleas, rhododendrons, forsythia, lilac. Bloodroot, anemones, irises, lily of the valley, grape hyacinth...so many of these grow wild along the sidewalks and at the edges of school yards.

It's a crazy Jackson Pollack of colors, sizes and places. From cultivated gardens to alleyways with a little patch of dirt and sunshine, you see flowers everywhere. Out from under a rock or high up in the trees, blossoms just urge their way toward spring. And the colors come in so many forms that there aren't enough names for them. We need the beloved Dr. Seuss to come back and make up some wonderful words just to capture the joy, the scent, the effort that all these beautiful plants make just to become themselves.

I think we should make April 1 New Year's Day (October 1 in the southern hemisphere). It feels so much more appropriate. Everything is new. It happens year after year after year. And I'm reminded, once again, that we can count on the cyclical nature of life to reassert itself. To me, this time of year always feels like the beginning of a new cycle.

O, how I love this time of year!