Signs of Life

Our Lent Tree was bursting in bloom by Easter. I was glad for the cheery sight, knowing each paper leaf represented a good deed done, and also because it was the only thing growing around our house — aside from the icicles outside.

The plan had been to don our Easter finery and take a walk through the neighborhood on Easter Sunday. Church may be closed, but we would look for signs of life all around us: tulips poking through the dirt, the green fuzz of future buds among the treetops, and dogwood blossoms blooming.

And then on Easter Sunday ... it snowed!

Time for Plan B.

We had an indoor Easter Egg hunt, which turned out to be very fun.

Our fancy Easter clothes will have to await another occasion for their sartorial debut.

My kids also made homespun Easter decorations, including a wonderful Easter Bunny created from sanitation wipes! It is so cute!

If life hands you lemons you make lemonade, and I guess if life hands you sanitation wipes you make varmints.

Meanwhile, our family has a spring tradition of picking trees to track the change of seasons. We each pick out our own tree and keep an eye on it to note the phases of spring as the tree goes from bare branches through new buds to final verdant foliage.

With the cold and late snow, I figure Mother Nature was just giving us a little extra time to select exactly the right tree. Now that a careful designation has been made, we can all begin maintaining constant vigilance over own trees to spot the buds of future summer leaves when they first appear.

Which shouldn’t be long. The kids have been playing outside in shorts and t-shirts and more than once have doused each other in stupendous squirt-gun skirmishes, where it seems everyone wins so long as no one is dry when it’s all over.

You can see the telltales of improving weather all over the yard. I stepped out to put some bikes away at the end of the day and had to avoid a diminutive army of plastic knights assaulting the bank, then hopscotch my way through a chalk maze drawn on the sidewalk before pausing to admire fairy houses built of twigs and moss. Not to mention the constellations of rubber balls of every size and description scattered liberally about the soccer pitch, which seems to have been converted into some sort of campground with the fold-out soccer goals draped in blankets to create forts.

I guess the signs of life are everywhere if we have the eyes to appreciate them!

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