Even though it is overcast and threatening rain this morning, the weekend gave us such a gift with the promise of spring.  Beautiful warm weather, and (finally!) a chance to sit on my back deck and soak up sunshine and bird songs.  While sitting on our deck we also started plotting some rather major changes to our home, and I'll look forward to sharing more of our ideas with you later this spring!

I have, I suppose, a rather unspectacular garden, but every plant and bush was planted with love and most of them were chosen for special memories from my childhood.  After weeks of seeing nothing but drab nothingness in the garden, it was so gratifying to see the lilac buds and leaves getting ready to make our month of May spectacular. The lilacs, with their tiny leaves and buds starting to burst forth, always remind me of my father and how he delighted in bringing my mother literally arms full of the lavender blooms each spring, cut from all the old fashioned lilac bushes growing everywhere in the country.  They were the very first thing I planted when we moved into our house, and now they bring not only delight with their beauty and their scent, they also remind me of the special love my parents had for each other.

The peonies and iris are coming up strong, and to my delight I was able to cut a small bouquet of fragrant hyacinths.  Bliss!

I always loved my mother's peonies, and have four bushes of my own.  Even though the bloom time is rather short, their old fashioned beauty charms me every spring.

My garden fairy is waiting for the day lilies and cone-flowers to bloom, but she will need to wait a little longer.  Patience may be a virtue, but I understand her readiness to embrace the garden's fullness again!

This cheeky little fellow stopped by to supervise my picture taking...

and from the back of the garden the forsythia has decided to embrace the "bloom where you are planted" philosophy.  It's been sulking ever since I moved it from one corner of the garden to the other, but evidently all is forgiven.

I think Emily Dickinson also reveled in this heady and intoxicating arrival of spring, as seen in her poem.  Bring on the experiment of green...we are all so ready for it!!

A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown--

Who ponders this tremendous scene--
This whole Experiment of Green--
As if it were his own!

And while we rejoice in the return of spring, let's all remember that...