Spring at Last

Not long ago my husband and I sat and watched a deer through our living room window. She was in the barren sumac patch on a downward slope toward the pond behind our house. Nosing around in the late-spring snow, she seemed to be foraging for food. Maybe she was looking for new shoots coming up out of the ground, a yummy, spring delicacy for deer. She came back up empty.

After some time of searching under snow, the deer began eating bare branches off the surrounding shrubbery. The deer, like the rest of us,was waiting for new life to burst forth. I wonder if she grew tired of her winter fare: boring, bland, barky.

I know how she feels. Just last week I sighed as I put together a pot of venison stew (please forgive the irony). I find myself longing for warmer weather vittles. Perhaps some grilled meat and a spring salad with a tall glass of lemon sun-tea. Some years around this time my chives are coming up in the rock garden. Young, tender, green and delicious.

Nothing quite compares to freshly grown greens and early spring edibles. But alas, we, like the deer, must be patient a bit longer. I know that life is already pushing upward, coming out from under the covers and beginning to stretch and let go a yawn so big it will swallow up the remnants of winter. Thankfully, this weekend has, at long last, brought warmer temperatures. 

We in northern Minnesota still have some melting to do, but brown grass is now part of the landscape and spring looks as if it just may catch up to the calendar. For now, a bare landscape is replacing snow, but I know what is ahead: life, bursting at the seams. Maybe by the end of the week I'll be able to dig around in my rock garden and find some springtime herbs. Maybe. At any rate, I'm glad for the release from a long and overextended winter. It was getting to the point, with snowstorm after snowstorm, that I didn't feel as if I could take much more. Then, it ended.

Life is like that sometimes. Problems come that grow bigger and more stressful, sometimes overbearing. When that happens and I feel as if I am at the end of my rope, I just can't take it anymore, a solution comes. The problem is resolved and the internal storms that were raging on come to an end. Like spring stepping up and leaving the snow behind, it feels as if winter never even happened and life holds new hope. 

ENCOURAGEMENT: Wait a little longer. If you have a problem that feels like a snowstorm in springtime, wait. Life will begin anew once more.