I posted this previously. To those of you who read it before, I apologize. To those of you who are finding it for the first time, I hope you enjoy it.

Two finches are having their breakfast at the thistle feeder. A dove is dining on the ground beneath another feeder, while another dove is cooing softly not far away. Two robins are finding things to eat in the grass. A bird, whose species is unknown to me, sits happily upon the feeder, looking around, as though to proclaim to the world that he has found the hidden treasure—and it is his!

A squirrel roots about near the old, bedraggled barbed wire fence, all that remains from the days when this was a farmer's pasture. Down the way, two rabbits sniff out the offerings amidst the grasses, then duck beneath an old wooden fence and disappear from view.

My deep purple irises are about to break into bloom. They have a fascinating history, for they all began from a single, injured bulb, which had been left in the street to die. My husband rescued it and planted it—and it grew!

Four burgundy impatiens have been given homes in two large pots beside my front door. A new holly soon will take its place nearby, replacing another, which struggles mightily but continues to fail.

New growth is emerging from my husband's newly planted potato eyes. He waits—a bit impatiently, I expect—for the time when he can put out some tomatoes. No squash or beans this year, he tells me; I am surprised.

It is springtime, and all the world rejoices.

Written on a sleepy Saturday morning in April 2006
Copyright © 2006 by Virginia Tolles