M. pried an old tread off a deck step this morning and found a...

M. pried an old tread off a deck step this morning and found a seed sprouting in the soft split wet wood below. “Check it out,” she said. I climbed the stairs and peered over her shoulder. There it was. A split black seed nestled into a crack in the frame of the steps and from the split in the seed, a curled white sprout probing toward the light. An unexpected place for life to start taking place, but we all try to make do.

At lunch, we watched two birds have sex in branches nearby. “Get a room,” I said to the birds, of course. “Doesn’t he look pleased with himself,” M. said. “Gets up on her, hops off, bounces around some other branches, puffs himself up, bounces back on her.”

I bit into my apple, who knows what kind, it was crisp and slightly gingered. I bit deep and broke through to the pocket where the seeds live. “Look!” Inside, the apple seeds had started sprouting, I’d never seen it happen before, the same white curl of sprout as the one in the crack in the wood of the deck, a white ribbon of growth, the quiet violence of life breaking out. “Spring has sprung,” M. said, and we laughed for a while at that. When the breeze blew, it brought to us the smell of honeysuckle.