April Showers Greening the Midwest

It seems as though it has been raining non-stop for weeks. I realize that can't possibly be the case; however, that is how it seems. The river is pretty high and there is talk about floods again this year.

The up side to all this rain is the fact that the leaves are coming into bud and the flowers are beginning to shoot upward. I love this time of year (sorry Steph). I find so much joy in the fact that everything starts all over again. I'm reminded of the Philip Larkin poem, "The Trees":

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.


Such good advice for all of us; nothing beats the opportunity to "begin afresh".