"The eyes of a hundred flowers"

Lawrence-Alma Tadema
Spring, detail 

Wow, you are cold again back East!  And so far we've had a very un-Seattle like winter.  The mornings have been foggy and dry all month.  Rain is finally back in the picture this week, and hopefully some snow for the mountains.

Sometimes the gloom burns off by afternoon, but no weatherman can predict it.  If the sun does come out late in the day, there's noticeably more light at the dinner hour, which is 5 pm in this early rising house.

I've stepped outside a few times and cast my eye around the wreck of a garden. This is truly the time of year when things look the worst. It's hard to put a happy face on it, because the remedy is work.  I look at the sprouting weeds, moldering pots, mossy bricks-- and then I go back inside and have a glass of wine. This season too, shall pass.

"You think I am dead,"
The apple tree said,
"Because I have never a leaf to show-
Because I stoop,
And my branches droop,
And the dull gray mosses over me grow!
But I'm still alive in trunk and shoot;
The buds of next May
I fold away-
But I pity the withered grass at my root."

"You think I am dead,"
The quick grass said,
"Because I have parted with stem and blade!
But under the ground,
I am safe and sound
With the snow's thick blanket over me laid.
I'm all alive, and ready to shoot,
Should the spring of the year
Come dancing here-
But I pity the flower without branch or root."

"You think I am dead,"
A soft voice said,
"Because not a branch or root I own.
I never have died, but close I hide
In a plumy seed that the wind has sown.

Patient I wait through the long winter hours;
You will see me again-
I shall laugh at you then,
Out of the eyes of a hundred flowers."

Edith M. Thomas