Karma’s Spring Challenge

Karma has offered a signs of spring challenge. Her challenges are always fun, so I’ve decided to join in.

For me, spring is a time of renewal, regeneration, new beginnings, and growth. It’s a needed lift after winter, when the gray skies and cold seem as if they will never give way to sunshine and warmth.

Leopard’s Bane – which begins blooming even before the daffodils – a very welcome spot of sunshine which brings with it the promise of more. Sadly, it withers away to nothing when the summer heat sets in.

Next to the Leopard’s Bane is a tiny little Spirea – planted fairly late last summer, I’m hoping it spreads its beauty out this summer.

In the parking strip, commonly called the “hellstrip” – that section between the street and the sidewalk – are a few little Jumping Jacks, tiny little violets, smiling up at me when I go out to check the mail, cuddled next to the Weigela which is still in winter mode.

And back to the border in front of the house, we have the usual harbingers of spring, the sunny daffodils, the plants that hold so much promise and offer so much joy early in the gardening season.

Further down in the border are the Grape Muscari and the new growth of the Allium, promising to share its beauty a little later in the season.

Spring – that time that nourishes the soul and provides a space of safety and confidence in this world which seems to offer so little of both. It’s what makes me know I can continue on, and urges me to get out there and clean up the patio – my planting space. And to add that new little Floribunda rose at the end of the front border – which will offer up its little coral blooms during summer. Hope and beauty.

Spring – a season that ensures me that I have enough. I hope you do too.