mamamusings: March 31, 2006

spring has sprung with gilded greens

I don’t have many blogging rituals, but marking the first appearance of golden-green spring leaves is one of them. I did it in 2003, 2004, and 2005, and it’s time to do it again.

It’s remarkable how much earlier spring comes here in the pacific northwest. I noticed the telltale golden glow on the not-quite-bare branches the day we returned from Rochester, nearly a month before the same signs are likely to appear back east.

Here’s my annual tribute to this beautiful and fragile time of year.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

—Robert Frost