Growing Spring

I can almost touch spring through the icy gauze of winter that still has a hold on our part of the world. Our crocuses survived the nasty bit of weather we experienced yesterday and I am so anxious for warmer breezes that will bring with it the greens that mean new beginnings. Like all new starts those first greens are so tentative and often terribly pale in those first small shoots. Almost like they won't survive another moment...but they do and they grow in strength with each new sunrise.

Like what seems like a death today in the loss of so many things for so many families, we are in need of some new growth where there is browns and grays.

I hope that a new spring comes to all of our lives, one that grows beautiful and strong in the one thing we really all need - hope.

The Long Wait

The quiet has descended and it is really good. There have been no more phone calls from the parties to get me out to vote, and for the first time in weeks the phone has been blessedly quiet. I always enjoy that lull after the presidential storm every four years. The only thing anyone is doing is either regrouping - or sleeping!

West Michigan is especially quiet and the news is mostly just rehashing the whole election day over and over again. I actually had a lovely day with my 3 year old grandson planting all kinds of tulip bulbs in pots and various spots around the yard. He calls the littlest tulip bulbs the "tiredest seeds!" By that he means that they sleep a very long time in God's earth before they flower. In some ways that frustrates him, but he sure enjoys pushing them down with his finger to plant those seeds!

And so the waiting begins for those first yellow blooms of the spring. It can sure make for a dream that will last the whole of a cold winter, that is for sure.