Spring Surprises

I'm usually in Russia this time of the year, and although it's officially spring in both places, the greening in Arkansas has a considerable head start on its Russian counterparts, still hiding under coverings of snow.  Since buying our house in Greenbrier three years ago, I've never seen our five acres change from a landscape of spikey gray branches and crunchy brown leaves to a palette of brightness, as if Van Gogh were adding new colors with strokes of his brush each day.
 My usual end-of-May arrival finds a yard well on its way to summer, and I've never realized what I've missed!  As I watch the daffodils, tulips and irises turn their yellow, red, purple and white heads to face one another in the flower beds, I wonder if they are catching up after a winter's worth of solitude, waiting for their familiar friends to pop up and greet them.  And the trees. . . who knew that we have a redbud with the deepest purple blooms, making amethysts look pale in comparison, four dogwoods just leafing out, keeping their colors hidden for a few days more - white or pink, and a mystery (fruit tree?) with delicate, lime green leaves and fuschia pink blossoms, reminding me of one of my grandmother's Easter hats?  I gasped yesterday to, joyfully, find new life in plants that I thought I had killed last year.  How did the hostas around the bird bath survive the lawnmower or the hydrangea find the strength to grow new leaves after having been cut back to mere matchstick stubs, not to mention the azaleas showing tiny buds after being whacked within an inch of their lives last July, by a gardener wanna-be?
I check on these wonders of nature each morning, sipping a cup of tea as I walk among them.  I even find myself talking to them with an occasional compliment ("Wow, what an amazing pink blossom!") or encouraging word ("Look at how much you've grown in just one day!").  The nice thing about being on 5 acres is that I'm too far away from my nearest neighbor, who might wonder why I'm walking around the yard talking to myself.   But then. . who cares?
I pulled out my copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Nature" essays the other day. The quote on the front, written in fern green letters, reads, "In the woods is perpetual youth."  The youth in my yard this spring fills me with delight and deep gratitude.