In spring, life awakens

The most revered and the shortest season of the entire year is known to this neighborhood as the beautiful, abbreviated season of “Before the Bugs Begin to Bite.”

At best, it’s typically a short spell ordained by the annual arrival of a warming sun summoning her sleeping children to awaken and fill the worldly pastures. As a chilled and sodden earth begins to stir from within the dark and mysterious waters of cypress bottoms, a multitude of renewed life has awakened.

It’s as if nature’s alarm clock awakened to shake the dreams from the sleepy heads of bird and beast, seed and bud. Turtles rise to doze on mossy green logs, seeking pleasure in the growing warmth of another season to fulfill their dreams.

The song of tree frogs is heard as swirling herring splash upstream fresh from the sea. High above the sodden winter bottoms of cypress swamps, the tasseled tips of life appear as white, table tennis ball-size, fluffs burst filling the tangles of the new air with the green gold of pollen. The golden dust spreads anew the flowering of life beneath the warm caress of a gathering of April’s sun, of sleeping lawns and pastures transformed from the tawny ochres of winter, fast donning their kilts of shamrock green.

This story was originally published April 9, 2016 at 2:00 PM with the headline "In spring, life awakens."