Hope springs eternal<br>

With each changing season, I always think the one we are entering is my favorite. I like the warmth and the freedom embodied in a summer evening. I like the chill and crackle of fall days, the smell of falling leaves and pine needles. And I like the purity of winter, the beauty of a new snowfall against a brilliant blue sky and the stark days of gray and cold.

I have come to need the contrast of the seasons. We have all heard that we would not know joy if we did not know sadness, and would not know laughter if we did not know tears. And so we would not really know spring without knowing winter.

It is pure magic, the way that the bulbs in the garden miraculously arise from a winter’s sleep, bringing reds and yellows and purples vividly to life, even against an otherwise barren ground. Seeds that have lain dormant in the wild suddenly spring to life with the aid of this winter’s good snowfall

It is pure magic the way the sound of a songbird can lift the spirits, the way the sun makes us abandon our more mundane pastimes for the sake of that incomparable spring air and perhaps a trip to the nursery.

I love the days of digging small trenches in the sun-warmed soil, shaking those tiny dried seeds out of paper packages, and feeling that grandest of feelings: hope.

My favorite part , though, is watching the earth crack apart from the force of those tiny plants pushing up mightily against the soil, stretching out towards the sun. That, too, is pure magic. I am happy to be so yearly amazed at the simple complexity of renewed life, and am pleased with my dependency on it. It is a creative process that comes but once a year. There is so much potential wrapped in those first weeks between seed and seedling, potential I too try to catch. I think that, to an extent, we all do. We call it Spring Fever.

But really, we, too, come out of a sort of hibernation in the spring. Just like everything else, we are rooted in the air and light and earth.

So right now, I would say Spring is my favorite season, but ask me again in July, and I know I’ll have a different answer. There’s nothing like a ripe tomato, right out of the garden.

— Janel States James

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