February in Indiana was long and cold and very white. After a relatively balmy January, a parade of winter storms marched across the country, and the Arctic wind blew long and hard over the waters of Lake Michigan. The temperature plummeted as the snow piled higher and higher. I shivered and shoveled my way through the month with the consolation that at least I didn't live in Boston...
And then all of the sudden it was March. Within the span of one warm week the snow disappeared into the ground. Although the initial color change was welcome, the muted shades of mud brown and dried leaf eventually blurred together.
During this in-between season, I was enrolled in an online photography course called "Everyday Magic", which forced me to stretch my mind beyond the damp, dull surface of my surroundings. I was pleasantly surprised to see beauty in places I never expected to find it...
Sometime during the month of April, in what seemed like the blink of an eye, the grass in the yard turned from khaki to emerald...
...and succulent pastel colored shoots began to emerge from the jet black dirt.
New leaves unfurled along bare brown branches...
...as droplets of rain coalesced in their folds like tiny precious jewels.
Fair weather clouds drifted across the bright blue sky...
...while a burst of stunning colors and shapes decorated the ground below.
The cold, blank canvas of February seems like a distant memory to me now, replaced by this technicolor landscape I dreamed about and longed for only two months ago. But just yesterday I noticed the daffodil petals in the front yard are already wilted and fading, a reminder that everything changes. At the end of the long winter during that time of in-between, if I weary of snow white, mud brown and faded leaf, may these colorful memories give me faith in that eventual first glimpse of a new spring.
