"and it was Spring for a while, remember?"

Spring has finally, finally come to the north. It's late - I've sometimes planted the whole garden by May 15, but no one could have done that here this year. Last week was cold and rainy, but the past few days have warmed up steadily. I'll be heading over to the garden later today, with a box of roots and tubers it finally feels safe enough to plant.

Euphorbia and a favorite fossil rock from central New York state, in my garden.

Spring, for all its beauty and newness, always makes me a little bit melancholy. I've never understood why, except that it reminds of the truth of impermanence about everything we cherish. Spring reminds me of the need to open my eyes fully to the beauty around me, to love it completely and yet let it go, knowing it can't stay and that I can't hold onto it. "Do not cling to me!" Exactly.

Sometimes spring knocks you right off your feet, particularly so for those of us who have lived for six months in a monochromatic world. It's too much. I stumble home, dazed.

Better for me to get down on my knees and engage the small things. I moved two clumps of woodland violets into my little plot this year. Many gardeners don't like them because they tend to pop up in unwanted places. I don't mind.

Violets were my mother's favorite flower. She'll be gone five years on the 23rd, a fact I find astounding. I think of her, very young, wearing a corsage of deep purple violets with a pink rose at the center; and I think of her, very old, sitting in her favorite chair near the piano and asking me to play "I Bought You Violets for Your Furs:"

It was winter in manhattan, falling snow flakes filled the air
The streets were covered with a film of ice
But a little simple magic that I learned about somewhere
Changed the weather all around, just within a thrice.

I bought you violets for your furs and it was spring for a while, remember?
I bought you violets for your furs and there was april in that december.
The snow drifted down and the flowers, and that is where it lay.
The snow looked like dew and the blossoms as on a summer day.
I bought you violets for your furs and there was blue in the wintry sky,
You pinned my violets to your furs and gave a lift to the crowds passing by,
You smiled at me so sweetly, since then one thought occurs,
That we fell in love completely, the day I bought you violets for your furs.