While I Was Coughing

At the end of March I caught the flu. Ten days or so later, I staggered outside on wobbly legs to find that while I'd been indoors coughing and sleeping, leaves had appeared on the lilac bushes. Around the corner, in someone's shady yard, rivers of scilla flowed in impossible blue, and daffodils were beginning to open. Forsythia bushes which had lain low all winter had suddenly burst into yellow flame. It was like the bit in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy falls asleep in a whirling grey-and-white world and wakes up to glorious Technicolor.

Lovage was sprouting in the kitchen bed, and a small forest of tarragon had appeared in the doorstep planter. The chives were marching out reinforcements, ready to contest the tarragon for garden domination.

And I found a tiny clump of scilla in the bit of wasteland behind the house, in a space normally home to only daylilies, nettles, and burdock. I don't know how the scilla came there, but finding it was like stumbling on hidden treasure.

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The week before Easter, some spring storms rolled through, dropping a goodly amount of rain and turning the grass overnight from hesitant green to a vivid, flaming emerald. (Can emeralds flame? I don't know how else to describe such an intensity of greenness.) The first dandelion bloomed a few days later - and when the dandelions come, can violets be far behind? :)

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Easter Sunday was so beautifully sunny and warm that I had to take a ride, wobbly legs notwithstanding. (Wait. Is that a pun?)

I saw trees waving delicately-clad branches against the sky:

Fascinating new leaves and catkins (and a rather mysterious conelike object):

Verges glowing green:

A fencepost decorated with a barbed-wire wreath:

And red-twig dogwood caught in the act of slipping into its new spring outfit:

I was hoping for wildflowers, but didn't find any on this ride. Perhaps on the next one....

A belated Happy Easter to you all!

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