A Little Spring Indoors

Spring really HAS come to North Texas. As I drove around yesterday, I realized that the plum trees and peach trees and even the redbuds were in bloom. The pear trees all over town turn into big fluffy snowballs that are more wintry looking than the weather we actually GET in what passes for the cold season here. It made me want to go out for a walk in the woods (or at least a big park) to look for other signs of spring.

There are some old-fashioned flowering shrubs that I really like. The yellow sprays of forsythia. The little stunted bush that is flowering quince. Those bursts of color in the middle of a wooded patch are vibrant harbingers of all the green soon to come. But they're really not good in a home landscape. After their color fades, they tend to look nondescript, messy and overgrown. They're the kind of plants that look great by an old farmhouse, in the woods by a lakeshore, or in a historic cemetery, but they are just out of place in the primped and trimmed yards we create for ourselves these days. Someday I hope to have a plot of land big enough that I can scatter some about...they always make me smile.

In the meantime though, I'm still getting my fix. I bought several branches of budding forsythia tonight at the local Central Market. (Check florists or big gourmet stores in your neighborhood.) They're in a big barrel-shaped vase here by my desk. They'll make me think of the outdoors and remind me of all the exciting and beautiful things going on in the great outdoors.

But, of course, there's no substitute for the real thing. So that walk on the park is on the to-do list.