Spring

The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come...  That is from Song of Solomon 2:12

It is not yet officially Spring, yet the flowers are appearing, more every day, and the birds of singing and building their nests. 

I know this year Winter passed away very quickly.  Or, did it come at all?  We had no below zero overnights this year and rarely had high temperatures in the 20s or teens.  Here in Northern Kentucky we had no winter.  If I read the weather forecasts for Runnemede correctly, except for that freak October 31 snowstorm in 2011, the hometown winter was non-existent this year as well.

And now, even though it is still winter, we are having summer temperatures.  Alan has turned on the air conditioner, he says, to keep his computer cooled off because it was overheating.  I say, it's because he's warm.  Now, I am cold.  I would open the windows, but Alan's allergies would be worse than they are right now. 

So, I enjoy my sunporch and listen to the singing of the birds and watch as they fly from tree to tree, limb to limb. I even have a nest being built in my azalea bush out front.

Why do I bring up Spring?  I guess I don't really remember a winter in which we didn't have some snow (in Runnemede) when I was growing up.  Maybe we did, I just don't remember it.  What I do remember about Spring, though, was my mother's annual trip with her sister Anne to the Flower Show in Philadelphia.  She would bring home some seeds, one new rose bush, and probably some other plant, and then she would plant them.  That was her start of gardening for each year. 

I'm pretty sure she went to the Flower Show on March 21 or later in March each year.   Then the tending, mulching, weed pulling, watering, and watching the plants like a mother watches her new baby would begin.  Every morning that wasn't rainy, she'd be outside tending her new "babies" and her older "children" and you could see the pleasure on her face as she tended these gifts from God to her.

I always imagined at the end of her life that she met her Lord in her garden to be taken to be with Him in heaven.  Not exactly Scriptural, but it's how I envisioned her passing.

ttfn