Happy Shrubbery

The blooming of plants each spring is a bit like magic to me. Everything looks dead. Twigs stick out from the ground, bare-barked and dark in color, with dried crusty leaves crowded around their bases. When my mom was a child (I like to think of her as "Claudia, the Island Girl" because she was from Key Biscayne, FL), she wondered why folks left all those dead trees standing, why they didn't just cut them all down! Apparently when you grow up in tropical climes you have no understanding of the miracle of spring. The miracle is clear: dead branches start sprouting green buds. Though they once appeared lifeless on the outside, my beloved variegated dogwood and viburnum contain, deep within their core, life.

How seasonally fitting that we celebrate Easter, the resurrection from death to life of our Savior, in the spring.