Spring Fever

Suddenly I feel everything has to happen in the spring. No time! No time! Even as we celebrated Earth Day at the end of April, I still had a sluggish winter sensibility. But in 2 short weeks of sun and warm afternoons, I must have picked up some of the frenzie of the plants in my neighborhood. Now I understand that with such a long winter and such a short growing period, all these plants have all their growing, flowering and seed-making to do, and suddenly they are all doing it right NOW. Even on Earth Day, when we celebrated in a sacred circle in DeWitt Park and were blessed with a day of glowing sun and surrounded by the flowering trees of early spring, the pastel petals only served as contrast to the dormant trees all around them. The sky was open and life was spare. Now the canopy is growing in around us, and I remember my one New York summer, the unstoppable verdure, and I see how much work these plants do in the spring.

And me, with my untouched garden; a few bushes and landscape rock put in by a seller trying to flip the house quickly, and the weeds growing like their lives depended on it. Remembering my garden in California which I used to plant all year round except in the rainiest times, I looked forward to gradually filling in my garden over the next few months. But Yesterday my neighbor told me, as she rototilled the whole front plot in front of her house, that by July 4 many local nurseries start to close up. That the whole vision for the year must be laid and planted in the spring. I couldn't sleep well last night. Suddenly each beautiful spring day is precious and fleeting. No time! No time!