Spring in the air

Thick rich air heavy with crisp scents, many things blooming, the rhododendrons for example, and daffodils are out now, too, blooming ornamental fruit trees lining city streets, pink heads, and something that looked like a MediterraneanJudas tree (that is, not an Eastern Redbud), but shouldn’t it be in Italy or California and not here? Must have been something else, no Judas trees here, can’t be. But a woodpecker, red-headed like a Judas tree bloom, valiantly rat-a-tatted a Garry Oak. And I thought I saw a California lilac just starting to bloom purple on ever green today. Near Dallas Road and Douglas Street at Mile O, right on the cliffs, there is one (still leafless) tree-like shrub on which you can find a single hummingbird, day in and day out, summer, winter, fall, spring. He is always there, and if you step too close he attacks you, before changing his mind to nose-dive down the cliff. Snowdrops look lovely even though there’s never any snow, pansies and primroses got a hand when year-round gardeners put them into early beds — isn’t it funny that flowers don’t sleep in beds, it’s where they’re shown off, so why do we call them flower beds? And the Japanese plum in my backyard is starting to bloom. Thick rich air heavy with crisp scents blew clouds away, ushered in blue skies, and what’s that phrase Joni Mitchell used to describe clouds? Muscular and strong, something having to do with Hejiras and Michelangelos and the refuge of the road: some of those, too, over the Sooke Hills, over the Olympic Mountain Range in Washington State across the Juan de Fuca Strait, and haze in the East toward Vancouver across the Georgia Strait. Luscious, rich, green, colourful, and saturated Island. Many colours in sunlight, many smells in moisture.

“Spring in the air!”
“Why should I?”

What the heck, though. Maybe I will.