{"id":7919,"date":"2016-06-10T21:38:21","date_gmt":"2016-06-11T01:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=7919"},"modified":"2017-04-20T11:41:38","modified_gmt":"2017-04-20T15:41:38","slug":"the-most-lush-spring-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=7919","title":{"rendered":"The most lush spring ever"},"content":{"rendered":"

Self-centered creature that I am, I’ve been feeling as though this spring was designed and built JUST FOR ME.<\/p>\n

With\u00a0a long winter of struggling through recovery from brain surgery, I felt shrunken and afraid.<\/p>\n

Then the flowers bloomed.<\/p>\n

And bloomed.<\/p>\n

And kept blooming.<\/p>\n

\"big
FIRE PINK!!!!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u00a0has been a spring of tremendous abundance. I hoped to see one showy orchid<\/a> and saw dozens. I prayed\u00a0that my lady slipper patches<\/a> had just survived, but they had multiplied and expanded<\/a> into new turf.<\/p>\n

My dwarf crested iris<\/a> in the front yard finally bloomed after five years – along with hundreds of its kin, all along every road and trail.<\/p>\n

Skullcap<\/a>\u00a0poured purple down\u00a0the mountainside. Solomon’s Seal <\/a>popped up along barren roadsides. Bellwort<\/a> bubbled along the trail.\u00a0Fire pink<\/a> exploded in thousands of red bursts and climbed up<\/a> to new elevations.<\/p>\n

My passionflower<\/a> is already up\u00a0with tons of new sprouts. Cinnamon ferns<\/a> bushed out like a jungle. Wild rose bushes<\/a> came up out of nowhere. Mountain laurel<\/a> puffed across the yard at\u00a0the cabin like a white cloud.<\/p>\n

So many first sightings for me: wild coffee, wild comfrey, horse balm,<\/a>\u00a0beardtongue<\/a>, white crested iris<\/a>, sundrops<\/a>, large-flowered trillium<\/a>, and another half-dozen that I couldn’t identify. Even saw poison ivy and greenbrier<\/a> blossoming for the first time in my life.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_5750\"<\/p>\n

And the red buckeye<\/a>, after all its travails<\/a>, bloomed at the cabin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Not to mention the animal sightings – piglets<\/a>, a wildcat<\/a>, lightning bugs<\/a> …<\/p>\n

An Appalachian spring<\/a> is always wondrous, but this one seemed to have a lush abundance<\/a> that I’ve never seen before.<\/p>\n

All of the plants, their purples and reds and yellows and whites and greens,\u00a0shouted at me: “SEE?! We are doing great, and so are you! All is well!!”<\/p>\n

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?”<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

I can’t think of a more apt analogy for my recovery.<\/p>\n

Today’s penny is a 2015, the year of\u00a0heavy rains and healthy roots.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Self-centered creature that I am, I’ve been feeling as though this spring was designed and built JUST FOR ME. With\u00a0a long winter of struggling through recovery from brain surgery, I felt shrunken and afraid. Then the flowers bloomed. And bloomed. And kept blooming. It\u00a0has been a spring of tremendous abundance. I hoped to see one … read more The most lush spring ever<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[321],"tags":[67,795,82,157,370,174,141,504,729],"class_list":["post-7919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tress","tag-67","tag-animals","tag-beauty","tag-flowers","tag-growth","tag-plants","tag-rain","tag-recovery","tag-spring"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7919"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8509,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7919\/revisions\/8509"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}