Today was the year's first perfect early-Spring day. Part of the perfection was it's being a Saturday, a day for play-work instead of pay-work. I was up early and I could hear the birds singing and predicting the beauty of the day. I poured a cup of coffee and stepped outside. I was not disappointed..it was really here! Spring was in the air! I could feel it and smell it and hear it!

Angus fixed biscuits and gravy for the still morning-groggy boys while I made biscuits. He was anxious to get outside, too, and didn't even wait til breakfast was over. I saw him slip away and noticed him outside raking last autumn's leaves off of the back lawn. I cleaned up breakfact and wasn't far behind him. Cleaning out the shed was my goal but I soon found myself helping Angus with the leaves. I was annoyed with him for burning his pile of leaves instead of composting them and he suggested that I was welcome to come and take them wherever I wanted to. Beau helped me drag a tarp piled high with leaves up to the garden but I knew I wouldn't be able to make that trip many times. I took several more, smaller loads up the hill before I gave up and decided to just rake them into the creek. We finished the yard and were into the cleared part of the woods....the part that we mow once or twice a year to keep the underbrush from taking over. Angus wasn't even raking now just burning the leaves where they were. I was raking around all the trees as fast as I could before the tiny flames could singe them.

It was warm out but a gentle breeze was blowing enough to cool us a bit and keep the leaves burning. It felt good to work and be outside and to be with Angus and Beau. In my mind I could look at the blackened earth and see the grass that would grow from it with the rain that is expected tomorrow. I knew that as awful as it appeared right now in the weeks that followed the fire will have gotten rid of the dead leaves and brush and allowed for the rejuvenation of the grass that will be peaking through the ground in only a few days. I could imagine sitting on the back sipping my morning coffee and gazing into the cleared woods at the blankets of Sweet Williams, Wood Violets and the umbrellas of the May Apple leaves.

I thought how hard life seems sometimes and all looks so dark and dead and it looks as if there is no hope ahead. But, there is hope, even when it can't be seen... except in our imaginations or our dreams. And life begins to sprout some green again, soft and thin and weak at first but the love of our friends rains down on us and the love of our God shines down on us and soon we will grow stronger and thrive again and we know that there will be color in our lives again too.

I get philosophical when I work for fun and joy, using muscles that have grown winter soft and standing in soft smoke that twists up into the sky.... The first perfect Spring day of the year.