I am not a winter sort of girl—snowy paths and frozen fields are (in my opinion) best suited to Christmas cards and folks who like to ski.
Christmas is past, and I don’t like skiing or any other form of activity that involves snow, unless you consider sitting by a fire with my hands curled around a steaming mug of chocolate (or hot mulled wine) while watching the snow fall outside the window an activity.
Now is when I begin to long for sunshine and more hospitable temperatures. My attitude and outlook on life can begin to cloud over a bit. Sometimes quite a bit. I daydream of long stretches of time spent working in the garden, and of being anyplace warmer than where I am.
But, as much as I love summer (I would love spring too, except here in the Willamette Valley it’s more of a state-of-mind than an actual season) I hate the thought of wasting time by wishing my life away. Each of us is only allotted a certain number of days, and I am not in a rush to see mine come to an end. So I try to be patient, and learn to love the waiting.
I go on walks with the dog and look for things I wouldn’t see at other times of the year—rose hips encased in glittering ice; bird nests blown down in a storm; icy-edged streams with wild mallards splashing in them, jumping up when they see me and flying noisily away—and I wait.
I begin to poke about the garden and look for signs that this season is tiring and the next is gathering strength—the swelling of the buds on the japanese maples; the daffodil spears beginning to lengthen almost as imperceptibly as the lengthening of the daylight hours; and the clusters of daphne buds fattening and pinking up as their bloom time gets closer.
But mostly, I wait for the violets.
After Christmas, I begin to look for them each day, waiting for the tiny purple blossoms to peek out from under their protective canopy of green.
I wait for the violets because I know that when the violets appear, winter will begin to make room for spring—and that my wonderful friends, fills me with hope!
I wait for the violets, because when violets come, it will only be a short time before the daphne opens saturating the air with its citrus-y sweet fragrance. (If ‘hope’ had a fragrance, it would smell like daphne odora.) Then the daffodils will bloom, the quince, the camellias, and…I think you understand.
Today, the violets arrived.
Thanks for coming to see me! Happy Day to all of you…may it be filled with violets, or whatever brings you hope!
With love,
Lorrie