As a child growing up in Pensacola, Florida, I never saw snowflakes floating over the turquoise waters of the Gulf of Mexico, or the sandy white beaches advertised today in travel magazines. It never crossed my mind before moving to the Pacific NW that people could actually long for spring.
But now I understand. On sunny February days (and sometimes even on cloudy February days) I venture out into the back yard to check on the asparagus, hoping to find tender shoots poking through the soil, and to see if the transplanted iris made it through the winter. Just this week I found a hearty ivy ready to spring up a fence, and rasbperry stalks full of buds. With just a little more sunshine the cherry tree will burst into bloom
The first summer after moving to Spokane, I called home in Florida with a planned trip in April to see the azaleas in bloom. My mother told me, “Honey, the azaleas bloom in February. By April they’ll be all gone.” And they were. As I remember that spring, here in Spokane in February we still had brown grass, no flowers and surviving plants half-buried under late snowfalls.
Fate did bring me here to Spokane, Washington in 1978 with my own small family. But now there are many reasons that keep me here, and the magnificent summers count right up theer with the best of them. Lakes and rivers have taken the place of the Gulf of Mexico and sandy white beaches have been replaced by summer wheat fields that glow like gold in the sun.
I’d write more here this morning but it’s time for me to refill my coffee cup and venture out to the back yard, once again, to see if the bleeding hearts made it through the winter, check on the pink rose bush and the clematis, and the lilac bush we transplanted last summer. I must remind myself to also take a peek at the grape vines on the trellis outside my office window. If I didn’t know better this cold February day I’d think it was time to get out my gardening journal where I like to record when the peony first blooms, or when I find a robin’s nest n the plum tree.
Living here simply gives me so much to do that I have no time to miss the Gulf Coast, or even the azaleas that are surely in bloom now in Pensacola, Florida. I am feeling blessed to be here, at this time, in this place, and am grateful that fate brought me here in 1978, even though it wasn’t always the case.