March 2024
Spring Awakening!
03/25/2024
Living in a place where the winters are well-defined, dormant, cold, and requiring a completely different wardrobe to go outside, the coming of Spring is a magical time. Since moving to Iowa from Arizona 26 years ago, Springtime has brought a feeling of rebirth after the previously unimaginable cold of winter.
My childhood winters meant maybe putting on a jacket and wearing pants. Fifty degrees Fahrenheit was chilly, and we Desert Rats complained. Snow was a twice-in-a-lifetime fairy-like experience that was gone within a few hours.
Returning to Arizona, I have an enhanced appreciation for the spring wildflowers, including the California poppies that appear in special places, some years en mass. The Palo Verde trees that cover the landscape in splotches of tiny yellow flowers and the many cacti in bloom were always pretty, but now they hold a unique place in my childhood memories. I didn’t realize how unusual Saguaro cacti were and how grand their blooms and fruits were until moving away. Like the cornfields in Iowa, Saguaro were the sign that we were almost home at the end of a road trip.
Springtime can be subtle in places where the temperatures stay mostly above freezing. There are still spring flowers, baby animals, and migrating birds. The signs of Spring are there if you look for them!
What is sprouting where you live?
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