Here in Washington D.C. the cherry blossoms are expected to hit peak bloom this
week, about two weeks earlier than the average. This is to say spring has arrived here. We have had a stretch of unusually warm weather; the trees are greening up fast; and the bulbs have popped. All of this makes it hard for us to focus on our work including the blog. We confess that we spent yesterday afternoon in the garden rather than dreaming up a blog.
As a result, we have fallen back on the experts. Below is a selection of quotes by great writers on the subject of spring. While we are embarrassed that this is the best we can do by way of blogging this week, we are really blown away by some of the descriptions of spring. Who would have thought?
“It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want – oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!” ~Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, Detective
“Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.”
~Rainer Maria Rilke
“Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush.
~Doug Larson
“Poor, dear, silly Spring, preparing her annual surprise!”
~Wallace Stevens
“A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King.”
~Emily Dickinson
“You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you dies each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.”
~Ernest Hemingway
“Every year, back comes Spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants.
~Dorothy Parker
“Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment.”
~Ellis Peters
“Break open a cherry tree and there are no flowers, but the spring breeze brings forth myriad blossoms.”
~Ikkyu Sojun