Hope Springs.

What a moment in time this is. An uncertain time. A scary time. A lonely time. A frustrating and maddening time. For each of us, it’s all these things and many more.

But as gardeners, we have an escape. Someplace where – especially in the spring – we can always find an abundance of hope and a dose of beauty. Someplace where – even on the bad days – we might forget ourselves for a minute, and smile.

That place is, of course, our gardens, where peeping up from the mulch and the bare earth, we’ve been watching with eager eyes, looking for the first shoots and then, gloriously, the first blooms.

For those who grow hellebores, those first blooms are subtle, spring written in lower case, in quiet cream, peaceful green, and a modest flush of gentle pink.

Others of us have gardens that herald the arrival of SPRING in all caps, as our crocus and scilla blaze their way into the landscape, all vivid green and gold and purple and blue – hues that are most decidedly not of winter. By the time they start to waiver, the hyacinths and daffodils are in full gallop, and the tulips are not far behind. By then, it’s mid-May, and we’ve started to eyeball our June bloomers. Our hope is validated.

So, while we don’t know when we’ll return to normal (or any semblance of it) we’re lucky to have a renewable source of hope right in our own backyards!

So keep on digging. We’ll get through this!