Self-centered creature that I am, I’ve been feeling as though this spring was designed and built JUST FOR ME.
With a long winter of struggling through recovery from brain surgery, I felt shrunken and afraid.
Then the flowers bloomed.
And bloomed.
And kept blooming.
It has been a spring of tremendous abundance. I hoped to see one showy orchid and saw dozens. I prayed that my lady slipper patches had just survived, but they had multiplied and expanded into new turf.
My dwarf crested iris in the front yard finally bloomed after five years – along with hundreds of its kin, all along every road and trail.
Skullcap poured purple down the mountainside. Solomon’s Seal popped up along barren roadsides. Bellwort bubbled along the trail. Fire pink exploded in thousands of red bursts and climbed up to new elevations.
My passionflower is already up with tons of new sprouts. Cinnamon ferns bushed out like a jungle. Wild rose bushes came up out of nowhere. Mountain laurel puffed across the yard at the cabin like a white cloud.
So many first sightings for me: wild coffee, wild comfrey, horse balm, beardtongue, white crested iris, sundrops, large-flowered trillium, and another half-dozen that I couldn’t identify. Even saw poison ivy and greenbrier blossoming for the first time in my life.
And the red buckeye, after all its travails, bloomed at the cabin.
Not to mention the animal sightings – piglets, a wildcat, lightning bugs …
An Appalachian spring is always wondrous, but this one seemed to have a lush abundance that I’ve never seen before.
All of the plants, their purples and reds and yellows and whites and greens, shouted at me: “SEE?! We are doing great, and so are you! All is well!!”
Today I saw a friend who is a professional landscaper and a native plants expert. I asked her, “Is it just my imagination, or is this spring unusually lush and fertile?”
She nodded. “Oh yes. It’s because of all the rain we had late last summer. All the roots of the plants really grew and extended.”
I can’t think of a more apt analogy for my recovery.
Today’s penny is a 2015, the year of heavy rains and healthy roots.