After we’d almost given up on the idea, spring has arrived!
Last week, spring suddenly appeared instantly like somebody flipping a switch. I shouldn’t have been so surprised. It has happened every year like that since, well, forever. Still, given the fact that it had been relentlessly cold for so long, I think it was reasonable to assume that spring was cancelled and we would never be warm again.
But it was like Nature was playing a practical joke on us—the same old joke it plays every year and we always fall for it. The whole time, we were suffering with the cold, Nature was busy getting ready for its spring debut. We faithless humans were feeling sorry for ourselves while the seasonal actors, the bees and bugs and spring birds were putting on their costumes, getting ready behind the curtain. Finishing touches on trees and flowers and other features of the set were being completed. Unseen stage hands were painting spring colors, electricians were turning up the heat and the lighting director was getting ready with the summer spot light.
Then…pow! One day, there were no leaves—and then there were leaves everywhere. One day, there were no bugs. Then the air was filled with insects. Where had they been hiding up until now? I have never understood why you never see baby bumble bees. Bumble bees are always big. They apparently only come in one size. Bumble bee households must have special gates like amusement park rides with a sign that says, “You must be this tall to fly outside.”
I had been gazing at our dreary, spotty lawn thinking dandelions had gone extinct or something. But surprise, surprise. In a single day, the yard exploded in a carpet of yellow. It takes your breath away. Wild violets and those tiny blue Creeping Charlie flowers sprang up like magic. So did ant hills, those dry pyramids made of dirt crumbs, laboriously hauled up from deep underground to the surface by tireless worker ants that never sleep or go on strike. I would prefer that they not set up shop in our garden but I imagine their network of tunnels extends for miles and their workers number in the millions. I should be grateful the ants allow me to have a garden on their land.
England’s Stonehenge is a Bronze Age astronomical observatory that calculated movements of the stars and served as a kind of 4,000-year-old version of the Farmers’ Almanac, indicating, among other things, when it was the best time to plant crops. Even in the off-season, Stonehenge must have served an important function. It reminded people to be patient, to have faith. It only seems like winter will never end—but it will end. And like everything else in Nature—like the bumble bees, you have to be ready when the time comes.