My truth about spring is that I wish it would never end. I’d like to see a full twelve months of spring and here’s the reason why.
It’s just more beautiful. Way more beautiful. I live in Southern California and the hills around us are brown nearly all the year. But sometime in, let’s say maybe February or so, we have some rain. The result depends on how much rain we get, but it usually means being surrounded by hills of green, a color I’ve sorely missed since we lived in New England for five years. Some years, the green lasts for a week—on a lucky year, maybe for a month. When my husband interviewed for a job here, our visit happened to coincide with this green period; I can’t remember our discussions about whether we should move here or not, but the green hills would certainly have taken their place on the side of moving. Obviously, we did, and now we’ve been here for more years than I care to think about.
Of course, irrigation means green lawns, but there are fewer every year as people avoid their rapidly increasing water bills by ripping out their lawns and replacing them with cacti and succulents. Or concrete, sometimes painted green, sometimes not. No one is talking about decreasing drip irrigation yet, but sprinklers are often limited to twice a week (predicted to drop to once a week this summer).
But the glory of the spring is the flowers. If seeds have just been planted, the sun (not yet scorching) and the balmy air (still gentle) mean that the seeds will germinate quickly and almost spring upward, exploding into tender shoots, spreading out into foliage, and growing taller every day. That’s what’s happening with the cosmos seeds I planted, and the morning glory seeds have also sprouted and are starting to cling to the lowest bar of the trellis. (I must admit that the other seeds I planted—foxglove, coneflower, and Shasta daisy—have either only put up a weak shoot or two or have not sprouted at all despite my faithfully watering them with a gentle spray for a few minutes every day. I’m putting this failure down to possibly old seeds.) Even a lonely, ivory daffodil is blooming, six weeks later than its fellows drooped and withered. I don’t know why it’s so tardy; maybe it didn’t want to miss out on being part of the spring show.
But the truly spectacular show is presented by plants that are already established. The sage is blooming, and the hummingbird is back. I use the singular because I do not know whether there is one or several—they’re all female Annas and I can’t tell them apart. The bees have not returned to the gaura, more floriferous than ever this year, and that worries me. I ‘ve read about the sharp decrease in pollinators and I wonder if something has happened to the individuals who sometimes contested my right to walk on the side of the house where the gaura are planted.
The roses, of course, are the high point of the spring explosion of bloom. It’s still too early for aphids and the thrips haven’t appeared yet. Only a solitary June bug has been around, awkwardly flying into walls on occasion, but still doing damage as he nibbles on rosebuds, and leafcutter bees have scissored some neat circles into a few rose leaves. We remembered to fertilizer earlier this year and the roses are pumping out blooms like there’s no tomorrow (as there may not be if the hungry thrips arrive)—their colors, ranging from delicate shades to the deeply dramatic, their shapes changing from tightly-furled buds to unfolding petals to full-blown flowers that sometimes reveal their golden hearts.
It’s a visual feast at any time of day. Sometimes this surfeit of beauty exudes peace and other times, the beauty is almost too much to absorb at once; furthermore, it is coupled with the knowledge that I must absorb it quickly because it is transitory and will not last. Summer is almost here.
For all these reasons, I celebrate spring and wish it would never end.
