Spring and Resurrection

After the coldest, snowiest winter I've ever seen in Georgia, we have experienced two weeks of warm sunny weather in the mid-sixties. First came crocuses, followed by daffodils.What a gift at the end of February!

Bird feeders outside my window swarmed with finches, chickadees, woodpeckers, and squirrels, and on March 1, the day my latest book came out, a brilliant bluebird spent part of the day and has come by several times since. I don't usually get bluebirds at the feeders, so that one feels like a gift from heaven.

For the past two days we've had rain--lots of gentle, steady rain. This morning I sat in the chair beside my bay window and looked out at budding butterfly bushes, black-eyed Susans, daisies, rose bushes, and--wonder of all wonders--a soft green sheen on my lawn.

We don't do grass. I can do flowers, but no matter what we do to it, the lawn has always reverted to a blend of crabgrass, chickweed, clover, violets, dandelions, and a big patch of ajuga. But this year I limed, seeded, and fertilized on a warm day, and who knows? Maybe this will be the year we actually get some grass.

I love this season, the resurrection of the world after a dormant season. I can feel my own sap beginning to rise, my spirit come alive again. Maybe it's because I grew up in the South near the Atlantic where we never got much cold weather, but when I went to a college up north, I used to basically hibernate during the cold months and then, when all my roommates were catching spring fever, I would get a burst of energy and complete all those papers I'd been putting off.

Spring isn't fully here yet, but as I sit at my desk watching Earth wake up and slip into fresh, lovely garments, I think of something Jesus once said about a child believed to be dead: "She is not dead, she is merely sleeping."    

Until she gets here, find a copy of a good book--maybe, even, Friday's Daughter--and hunker down. Resurrection is just around the corner.

Patricia Sprinkle is the author of twenty mysteries and four novels. Visit her at Facebook or at www.patriciasprinkle.com.