Is It Spring Yet?

  Every year, when we take the Christmas decorations down and put them away – some years that is later than others – I immediately want to put the spring decorations out.  Yes, I have spring decorations.  They give me hope that it is coming.  That warmer weather and new life are on their way.  And then I remember that just because Christmas is over doesn’t mean that spring is close.  And inevitably, that makes me a little sad.

I am not one of those people who enjoys winter.  I just don’t.  Someone once told me “You were born here, you have to like winter.”  No.  I really don’t.  I tolerate it and do the best I can with it, but I don’t like it.  Someone else once told me I was born in the wrong place.  Maybe.  But here I am.

And so, with the beauty of Christmas behind us, we are now fully into winter.  I say that knowing that the weather we have had since Christmas has actually been really lovely – for us – and that I should enjoy it while it’s here because it could change quickly.  But I still want it to be spring.  I want to see the grass turning green, the trees budding, the tulips starting to emerge from their wintry hibernation.

But I also know that spring wouldn’t seem as sweet if we didn’t have winter to get through first.  And I know that that is the case with well, really everything.  Saving up for something, waiting for Santa to come at Christmas, waiting for the cookies to come out of the oven… When we have to wait it always seems better.  We don’t think so in the moment, but when we have to stop waiting, well, THAT is a wonderful moment.

We are planning a spring vacation.  A vacation full of spring flowers.  I can’t wait.  The more I plan and read about what we will see, the more excited I get.  And I know that when we get back from seeing all of those beautiful flowers spring should have really sprung here.  We did that one other time, not realizing we would be back just in time for the weather to have warmed up and for things to start to grow.  It was such a wonderful surprise.  This time, I know it will happen but I imagine I won’t be thinking about it on our way home and hopefully it will be a surprise again, though I may have to remind myself when we are regretfully getting ready to come home.

I planted some new plants last year.  A whole flowerbed full of them.  The poor flowerbed was so sad.  A plant here, a plant there.  Then one day I saw it from the street and realized how sad it really did look.  So I took some time to plan it out and then got to work planting.  One of the plants – a yellow rose – is in memory of two people who are special to me, so I really hope it does well.  I am so curious to see if it makes it through the winter and if it does, what kind of shape it will be in.  Of course it looks sad now, its dead leaves shivering in the cold, but hopefully in the spring it will be green and growing again and then hopefully blooming in the summer.

I think that is one of the wonderful things about gardening.  Hope.  No matter how bad the year is, gardeners start again the following year, hoping that this year will be better than the last.  Sometimes we have plants that don’t make it through the winter, sometimes birds or animals eat them – those pesky squirrels!! – but we carry on.  We buy other plants – hopefully plants that will do better – and we do our best to take care of them.

And isn’t that like life?  We have to have hope.  Sometimes we have to make it for ourselves because the world just isn’t doing it for us, but we have to have hope.  We have to look at what isn’t making it through the winter to the spring, carry on, and do what we need to do to make things grow again.

I think we all have had times where we just didn’t have hope.  Maybe we lost our job, maybe someone close to us has passed away.  Both of those things have happened to me and it was hard.  Really hard.  I let myself feel bad for a while, but eventually I had to carry on.  It wasn’t easy, but I had to get through the winter to get to the spring.  Sometimes the winter is long, and the spring feels so far away.  But as hard as it can be, we have to have hope that spring will come.  That the days will get longer and brighter, and we have to do what we can to get there.  It’s not always easy.  Sometimes it means just putting one foot in front of the other and having faith that even though we can’t see it, it will eventually get better.  I say that from experience.  But the spring does come – sometimes it takes longer than we want or expect, but it does come.  I say that from experience too.

So I hope that today, if you are feeling more winter than spring, that you can have the hope that spring will come.  Do something nice for yourself to help you get through the winter.  For now, I’m going to sit with a cup of tea and take a little break.  And then I will carry on.

Have a wonderfully springy week!