April showers bring April flowers
We've had a couple weeks of mostly chilly weather with plenty of rain, multiple days each week. The combination makes it miserable to be a human doing things outdoors unless it's a rare day like today, which was cool but not too windy and humid but not actively raining. Sadly, not a day I was free to plant things and do weeding. But I had a refreshing walk to work and back.
It's a great time to be a plant. All the green plants are growing up as high as they can, reaching out for more sunshine on the few days it's available. They are well-hydrated and don't have competition yet for light from the trees, whose leaves are just barely showing this week. Flowers like hyacinth, tulips, forsythia, and magnolia are at their showiest, and the flowering fruit trees are starting to break out into bloom.
My city landscape has turned my favorite outdoor color: vibrant, springy greens, like the pale greens of new tree leaves and the bright greens of reinvigorated grass and the leaves below spring flowers. Even the weeds are an attractive color at this time of year, and there is still some hope of pulling them out of the yard before they get too well-established, while the dirt is soft from frequent rains. The evergreens have a new and hopeful shade rather than the exhausted green of late winter that wonders whether it's still worth the effort.
And here's the best part about springtime greens: the way they are set off by the punctuation of the bright colors of the earliest flowers. There are wild ephemerals of blue and white, daffodils and tulips in showy yellows and pinks, violets in purple with yellow, fruit trees and magnolias framing it from above in brilliant whites and standout shades of rose. When the sun starts to warm our area, there will be no stopping the vigorous growth and the all-pervading scent of millions of living things spreading themselves as wide and as high as they can.
It's a great time to be a plant. All the green plants are growing up as high as they can, reaching out for more sunshine on the few days it's available. They are well-hydrated and don't have competition yet for light from the trees, whose leaves are just barely showing this week. Flowers like hyacinth, tulips, forsythia, and magnolia are at their showiest, and the flowering fruit trees are starting to break out into bloom.
My city landscape has turned my favorite outdoor color: vibrant, springy greens, like the pale greens of new tree leaves and the bright greens of reinvigorated grass and the leaves below spring flowers. Even the weeds are an attractive color at this time of year, and there is still some hope of pulling them out of the yard before they get too well-established, while the dirt is soft from frequent rains. The evergreens have a new and hopeful shade rather than the exhausted green of late winter that wonders whether it's still worth the effort.
And here's the best part about springtime greens: the way they are set off by the punctuation of the bright colors of the earliest flowers. There are wild ephemerals of blue and white, daffodils and tulips in showy yellows and pinks, violets in purple with yellow, fruit trees and magnolias framing it from above in brilliant whites and standout shades of rose. When the sun starts to warm our area, there will be no stopping the vigorous growth and the all-pervading scent of millions of living things spreading themselves as wide and as high as they can.