Spring Has Sprung

On Facebook, people are posting pictures of dogwoods and azaleas in full bloom.  I am feeling that surge of envy and longing that I feel when people post pictures of autumn leaves.

I miss dogwoods--and hydrangeas. People travel to see autumn leaves, but I would travel to catch the blooming of the dogwoods and the blaze of azaleas. My hydrangea tour would be later in the summer, I guess.

It's a shame I'm not more entrepreneurial. I could see flower tours as a business plan!  Some people plan tours of Paris, and I dream of gardens.

Once I would have sneered at people who visit gardens--oh, the hubris of youth!  And now, living in the land of concrete covering everything, I'm happy to go to any space that holds growing things.  It can be a planned space, a formal garden, a patch of weeds.

We have been growing tomatoes in pots, and we're getting our first tomatoes.  Down here in South Florida, tomatoes are a spring harvest.  Since we're growing them in pots, the tomatoes are small.  My spouse eats half in one large bite and hands me the rest.  Then we both weep a bit at the luscious taste we thought we might never have again.  We think of our gardening grandmothers who would not understand how hard it can be to grow a tomato.

It's strange to live down here where our seasonal indicators are a bit off much of the year.  Yesterday we had summer temperatures and steamy humidity.  This morning it's windy and cooler, a bit of autumn.  The yellow tab trees are amazing this year, but now with this wind, I imagine much of the blooms will be swept down the street.

I've been making lemon curd, and my hands smell of lemons.  It seems less a seasonal marker than an occasional treat.  Once I made lemon curd and scones on a regular basis.  Those days seem very far away.

I leave you with a rhyme from even further away.  In childhood, when we saw the first blooms of spring, my mother would recite an old Burma Shave sign:

Spring has sprung
The grass has riz
Where last year's
Careless drivers is.