…and the colors of my world are changing again. The greys and browns and bleached golds are are being embroidered over with misty greens and an abundance of purple and sky blue are awash over the unplanted fields and barely-awakened lawns.
The ladybugs that have spent the winter with us-sometimes huddled in high corners, more often walking along cup rims and being rescued from baths, are finding their way back outside through the gaps in our old doors which gave them entrance in the autumn…or the windows we open at every chance.
My father-in-law’s Lenten Roses are gracing the windowsill, while the daffodils and forsythia bloom on and on in the pasture and hedgerow. I haven’t felt the inclination yet to bring their lemon-gold inside…perhaps because my home is so dusty and in need of a good scrub at the moment? Yellow is such a fresh color, and my walls and floors and tabletops are in need of some freshening themselves before they can welcome a brown and white pitcher spilling over with forsythia. Soon, soon…
At Wisteria & Sunshine we are beginning with our Soulful Spring Cleaning…which has more to do with becoming less encumbered than with cleaning. And as I prepare to bring home the last of my mother’s things this month…and continue to find my way through the brambles of my search for health…it feels like the right sort of Spring Cleaning for me at the moment.
But if the blue skies and butterflies, waxing moon and tender breezes continue their good work…I hope to soon be at mine with the same warmth and energy.
This is the second year that I’ve been aware of the Mourning Cloak butterfly. Last Spring, the first without my mother on the earth, I was drawn to its name and had an encounter with one that stayed quite close to me for a long while. Since then, they only flit quickly by. But I find it a beautiful contradiction that they are the first of the butterflies to appear in this newborn time of year…
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