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As Spring shows its glory, the absence feels deeper.  All the good things in life come in spring...the beautiful new flowers, the freshness of cool rain and the warmth of sunshine following the cold of winter together create a newness to life that comes with no other season. This spring seems more beautiful than many I've seen in a long time, yet at the same time it evokes little joy for me.

As a young mother, my father would guide me and Wyatt around his yard and show us each new flower bud, every little bloom. It brought him such delight. "Look at this" he would say as he held up the little bud on a grape vine.  "Now, come over here" and we would dutiflly follow as he would show the beginnings of an orange.  Around to the back we would walk and gaze at the blooms on the pear tree and talk about how many pears it would produce that year and how we would pick them and stew them with cinnamon and sugar.  Spring was my father's favorite season, he embraced it's newness every year and never tired of its gifts. This walk was an almost daily ritual during spring and summer, every year, even the spring that he died.

After my father died, I took a clipping from an English Dogwood tree that grew in his yard.  I always loved that tree for when it bloomed it was so lovely. I planted that clipping almost 10 years ago now.  While it's still small and it has bloomed before, never so profusely as this year. 

A few years ago, Wyatt helped me move a Camellia from the front to the back.  It never grew, never bloomed, never did anything.  This year, there are buds, not many, but there are buds on that tree.

I feel oddly comforted by the blooming gifts of spring, yet deeply saddened that I am walking alone in my garden.




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