Where is sweet spring?

Winter has been long and spring late in coming, just enough nice days to draw one out into the sunshine to discover hopefull young shoots emerging from the still damp, chilly earth. What a temptation it is to uncover them all to expose them to the blessed warmth, but no, most of the days are still short and cold this year. I hesitate to admit that I have spent most of the winter, and part of these dark spring days, searching internet catalogs and those that have graced my mailbox looking for new varieties of perennials and hostas, for wildflowers I can add to the woods. On nice days, I've spent my time walking the property, transplanting moss tidbits to the already spreading patches along the paths and dry creek.

There are bright spots in this long chilly spring. The bluebirds are back, nesting somewhere along the edges of the thicket in the open field behind the woods, and crocuses have been bravely trying to bloom since February. The woods are becoming a glory of bright yellow daffolils, even if one has to put on thermal underwear and bundle up in a coat and gloves to go out and look at them. Buttercups have bloomed, bringing with them sunshine of their own.

A bromeliad is blooming in the greenhouse, and robins are hunting fat worms in the lawn. I know that there

  is hope, and that I will get my collection of early perennials in the ground, and I will soon be enjoying my cup of tea on the deck in the sunshine with the mockingbirds making great singing swoops thru the air and the magnolia soulangeana will be glorious again this year.

I just must be patient.