Where I live, in the extreme northwest corner of Massachusetts, the trees really don’t return to green until mid-May.  It was just this week, therefore, that I noticed the gradual bloom of leaves.  Each day found the branches fuller, the hedges thicker.  It seemed like the trees were inflating, burgeoning out from within, as if filled by some unseen bellows.  The flowering trees have flowered, filling the air with a sweet scent.  It is not as warm as we might want, but the transformations are palpable (something allergy suffers notice, no doubt, in their noses). 

     Eternal return.  I don’t want to get overly philosophical here, but the spring lushness brings passage 40 of the Tao Te Ching to mind:

Return is the movement of Way,
and yielding the method of Way.

All beneath heaven, the ten thousand things: it’s all born of being,
and being is born of nonbeing.

     I guess I’ll have to mow my lawn this weekend (though it, too, will eternally return…)