Yes

My walk takes me past a place where I know there was once a house because there are different bulbs which spring up and bloom and there are huge, untrimmed azalea bushes. I walked back off the road there a little ways today to see if I could find an old foundation or chimney bricks and I could not but I found a grouping of iron plant and a palm and when I was walking back to the road, I saw these two azalea blossoms, peeping out from beneath the untended bush.

I am sure they are not the first azaleas to open in Jefferson County or even Lloyd but they are the first two I have seen. I picked them and brought them home, gently cradled in my hand and they are a bit tattered, perhaps from their early birth, but there they are- the purple-pink proof that we are about to be shot through with spring.

I set them in a blue vase on my porch and from here where I sit I can see them shining in the sun and I can see red wing black birds, cardinals, finches, robins and squirrels. In fact, a tiny wren has come in through the dog door and is only a few feet away from me. I can also see my chickens, and the sheets and clothes blowing in the breeze on the line. I can hear the twitter and song of the birds in the trees, the snap of seeds as the birds eat them, the wind chimes as they give voice to the wind, and I see the dark green waxy magnolia leaves giving the sun back to the sky in reflection.

The air smells good. There is a sweetness to it which is quite certainly spring. It may still be chilly and it may get to below freezing tonight and tomorrow but temperature is only part of the whole lovely thing we call spring. The planet is aligning with the sun and changing the season and that is something I can believe in. That is something I can see and I can delight and glorify and celebrate for itself, even if I understand why it happens.

Especially because I can understand why it happens.

Because it is still a miracle to me, every year. And because the miracle does not end in its happening but is also apparent in the fact that I can take it all in- see it, smell it, hear it, and soon I will be tasting it as the greens grow big enough to pick and eat.

And feel it.
I feel it all around me as the sun warms the earth and my skin too.

A miracle. Yes. And I can pick proof of that, put it in a blue vase and wonder at it on this almost-spring day.