The Tangible Spring of 2020: Something You Can Touch -- No Virus on Spring Blooms

 
In a world where we're afraid to take off our gloves and touch something, here's something you don't have to be afraid of touching: Spring. Plants. 
         New blooms; no virus.
         So I happen to love Aprils. They have their ups and downs, often in the same day. Writing this on Tuesday, the day after Earth Day, we are currently waitng for the sun to shine, as yesterday's forecast said it was going to do, at least for a while, before taking our walk.
           I'm watching the wind suddenly gust and blow off the last white petals from a beautifully blossoming weeping cherry tree. They disappear, these precious petals, as I look on. It's like watching time disappear. 
           But comings and goings are what April is all about.
           It's free, and it's safe. It's safe to put your hands in the soil, to work it, and prepare it for seed. You can also put your hands on on leaves, on stems, flowers. Cut them even. You can pick up last year's dried brown leaves, which is mostly what we do here in the first weeks of April, after leaving them as a natural winter blanket over all the garden, both front and back yards, to cover and hold the earth.
             Now they are ready for us to pack them up by the bagful. Twenty 'yard waste' bags, probably more. We have a very large oak tree, and a few other trees. 
             And when you rake away the leaves, you expose the new growth. That's the season's biggest treat: seeing new growth pop up.
             Earth is pregnant, and new deliveries come by the day.
             I took these photos at the end of March and the first weeks of April. I love the rough imperfection of this season of new growth.

              The first daffodils break the ground and then bloom with signs of the winter still around. Leaves on the ground, dried stalks from perennial shrubs, as seen in the top photo. I enjoy looking at plants in situ, especially if that 'situ' -- situation; surroundings -- is a little wild. 
               There's nothing very wild about living in Quincy, Mass. But if you give nature even a little space, things happen, as in the second photo, Japanese primrose. The plant blooms very early, because they're very small. This photo exaggerates their size... But early in the season they have space to get the light they need to bloom, because the perennials that grow up higher and crowd this space haven't begun growing yet; man of them haven't even sprouted. The primrose have their close-ups surrounded by bare ground and the dross of last winter. 

               Crocus, the famously early starters among the common bulbs, are shown in a photo blooming against a curbstone. Others bloom among the dried oak leaves we haven't managed to clear yet. 
                 Another classic early bloomer is the  Lenten Rose (hellebores), the fourth photo down. 
                  The Japanese weeping cherry tree I spoke of earlier was just beginning its bloom when I took this photo (the last on the page). That's the way things are this time of year. Things happen fast in April.