The First Pre-Spring Day - March 7, 2009

I stood at the front edge of my deck, looked into my neighbors' backyard and was shocked to see a swimming pool, as if they had just installed it instead of what was really true: it's been there since we moved in 4 years ago. Somehow the sight of it seemed brand-new to me. I looked down at my sandaled feet, beyond which lay three steps, the last barrier between me and the grass beyond. My husband was already in the backyard walking around and he called for me to come. I hesitated, though. I hadn't been down those steps for months, and it just didn't feel right. But that seemed silly to me, so I gathered a little bravery and in short order was standing on the lawn, too. I sighed in relief and pleasure and closed my eyes for a second: Spring.

The kids and their friends were playing on the swingset. Birds were chirping and flying about. The warmth of the sun was on my face.

I realized in a moment that I had missed being outside. I looked around my backyard at the tiny garden, almost ready to come back to life; the grass where I've spent so much time weeding for fun; the bush that I'd almost forgotten about, but that would soon be ablaze in yellow. I hadn't been in my backyard for months. I don't mind Winter: I like to look at it while sitting inside my warm house, drinking hot chocolate. But I don't like going out in it. And now, as Spring was almost upon us, Winter almost completely gone, I was rediscovering the beauty and calm of natural beauty.

I walked into the front yard with my husband. We were on a task that directed us to the garage, and strangely, the garage felt new, too. I go into the garage all the time, and the fact that it felt new to me on this First Pre-Spring Day was odd indeed. Nothing had changed. It was the same garage as always. I shook my head at the thought and went to work, but I couldn't stay on task. Soon, almost impulsively, I was playing in my garden, pulling out the dead leaves, discovering a little green growth underneath. I wish I could describe the feeling of tearing out the old dead stuff and finding new loveliness under it all. There's nothing else quite like it--it's the magic of a garden.

My 2-year-old son helped me gather the dead leaves and put them in a large trash can. He found a light-brown dried leaf and said, "It's my flower. Can I keep it?" I told him that of COURSE he could keep it. He said, "Hurray!" and cuddled the leaf next to his cheek. I couldn't help but smile.

Pulling out the winter leaves didn't take too long, and certainly not as long as I would have preferred. "I could spend all day in my garden," I thought, and suddenly it dawned on me that I often DO spend all day in my garden during the growing months. Funny how I'd forgotten that. Nothing was left but to survey the garden space and search for signs of growth. There were a few stubby weeds, but they weren't weeds right now--they were green happiness. A few bulbs had started shooting to the sun, and the rose bushes were just barely showing purple here and there. I called my husband over to see the signs of Spring that I'd found, and luckily he loves gardens as much as I do, so he was thrilled to see the growth, and hunted for more.

After that he said, "Have you looked at the lilac bushes yet?" Lilac bushes? We have lilac bushes? We put in the lilac bushes last Spring and truly they didn't do too well under our care. We put them in on the far side of our house that gets the most sun and heat, and the least amount of attention: not a good combination. I remembered back to the start of Winter: I'd wondered then if the lilacs would make it through the Winter and into another Spring. Would they be healthy enough to bloom? But the start of Winter seemed so long ago, and I had forgotten about those ancient concerns. They came flooding back to me in an instant and I realized that the garden and our plants were a favorite conversation point for my husband and me. We spent most of the growing season talking about it, planning for it, dreaming about it, and as we checked out the lilac bushes and their hint of new buds, I smiled in anticipated pleasure of conversations about to be reborn.

The shadows lengthened against the tools hanging on the garage walls as the children rode their bicycles in the driveway. I thought about this First Pre-Spring Day and the joy we were about to find again. Joys I'd forgotten that I owned. I thought about the on-set of a new season, and the pleasure it is to watch things in newness. But it's not quite Spring yet. I thought back to the start of the day, and the weatherman on TV saying that the temperatures were 20 degrees above the norm. With no assurances that tomorrow it won't hit a cold snap and dump down 6 inches of snow. That's not True Spring. It's Pre-Spring.

But I'll take Pre-Spring.