To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought, to have done...
--Matthew Arnold
These beauties are over on Hawthorne in Southeast Portland, outside Cha Cha Cha, a neat little Mexican restaurant where Casey and I ate dinner Monday night. Later on we went to a book event at the Powells on Hawthorne.
Every morning I leave our apartment right before 7 a.m., headed for the #17 bus. Lately I've had the privilege of walking beside a camellia tree, growing house-tall in a diminuitive front yard, bursting with blooms. There's another tree whose top is barely visible from the third floor window in one of our stairwells; sprinkled among it's shiny green leaves are the same sort of beautiful pink blossoms. Mama sees yet another one, as tall as a two-story house, when she walks Duncan on 22nd Place. Mama reports it's the same pink, a sort of fuschia hue of pink.
Beside a nearby apartment building, I spied what I believe is a rhodendron border. Though not nearly as numerous, for just a second these buds reminded me of those terra cotta soldiers all lined up, standing guard at that ancient burial site of a Chinese emperor.
Will iris blooms follow these green shoots from the earth? Stay-tuned.
On both sides of our front walk, several large rhododendron bushes shared their green leaves with us throughout the cold and rain. Robust buds sit proudly atop the large green leaves, promising, promising.
"Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart." Victor Hugo
Our heartfelt wish for each and every one of you--those with winter on your heads like Mama and me, as well as those for whom that is far, far away--is a spring where your soul blossoms like no other spring in your life.
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