And once again, I am in awe...

I am writing this from the wicker love seat on my patio tonight! To my loved ones living in warmer climates this will not seem an astonishing accomplishment, but right here...tonight...in Nebraska, it is nothing short of miraculous. It is a bonafide wonder in fact! This is special and amazing because two or three weeks ago my patio was literally covered in about 3 ft. of snow. The snow first appeared out of the blue (uninvited I might add) in October and there it has stayed without relief until a couple of weeks ago. My son, Colt, was married on February 20th and we were buried in snow for his wedding. We shot another wedding the middle of March and were still buried in snow then, yet here I sit on my lovely decked out patio staring at the stream as it rushes into the pond. In the daylight, the grass is green and the daylillies seem to be shooting up at the rate of about an inch a minute. I am in awe! I have never been a garden person. Our yards have consisted of...well...not a whole lot. One of the nicest yards we've ever had was in England, but it was just always sort of there. It frosted where we were, but we rarely ever got snow so though it greened up a bit more in the spring, it didn't change drastically. Of course, we had a spectacular yard in the Philippines but as it was tended to by our gardner and it looked pretty much the same twelve months out of the year, I was never in awe. Since having our yard landscaped a couple of years ago though, I have reveled in the amazing resilliance of nature. What was a wintery wasteland a mere 10 days ago is now breathing in a whole new life. Derek, sensing my impatience for spring, indulged me wildly by putting the canopy and netting back up on the gazebo weeks before I know he would have preferred. He even dragged out the patio furniture. For the past few days I have watched in amazement as the withered, brown meadow behind our house has greened up noticably before my very eyes. Yesterday I decided to clear away all of the dead leaves and debri from the Lady's Mantle and found to my amazement a wealth of new green growth bursting with tiny, tightly furled leaves hiding beneath last years brown remnants. Excited by my discovery, I started the same process with the Speedwell and again discovered with delight, all new growth. You can sense the eagerness and growing excitement of the entire yard! So here I sit, two weeks after the last snowfall staring out into my own garden fairyland. Even thought it is dark, my gazebo is lit by tiny white lights wrapped along its cross bars and frame. Little solar lights highlight the fairy doors against a few choice rocks (that only fairies can open, of course). Spot lights catch the water tumbling over four waterfalls as it slips into the blue pond, lit from under the water. The Koi are dashing wildly across the pond reveling in renewed life, ravenous after a long winters sleep at the bottom of the pond, and our big wind chimes are singing softly from the ceiling of the gazebo. In another week or so, the wildflowers will have taken hold and soon after that will explode in a riot of colorful blossoms. This has been a hard winter, in so very many ways. It has been dark and cold and difficult and at times, it felt insurmountable. But now, here we are on the other side, emerging intact and excited and ready for spring and all of the possibilities that it brings and here's my little revelation. Spring and it's beauty would not be nearly so awe inspiring and spectacular and filled with promise if we had never endured the hard cold winter. So go outside, take a deep breath and then plunge headlong into a new season.