Signs of Life

   I thought the garden was finished. We have several plants that come back year after year. (I can never remember if they are annuals or perennials.) We had cold temps in April and snow in May. There was no way that these plants could survive.
   I depend on some of the plants coming back. I enjoy working in the garden, but I don't have the time to replant all of it every year. This is the reason why we have herbs in the food half of the garden and some flowers that come back every year in the flower half.
  No way that was going to happen this year. The grape vine looked like a dry stick leaning against the trellis. The dried remains of the other plants lay in a tangled up mess. It was very depressing. I didn't know what I was going to replace the grapevine with. I did know that digging it up was going to be a mess.
   The only bright spot was that the mock orange and lilac bushes were still alive. I knew the mock orange would most likely be all right. Someone had told me once that there are mock orange in Norway. Norway's climate is at least as cold if not colder than ours. The lilac was a bonus.
   A few weeks ago we saw some red flowers near the house. We walked over and found out that some tulips had grown and flowered out. I didn't even know they were there. They had never bloomed before. I have no idea how they got there.
  Then the tulips in the garden started to come up. They were all over the place. There were more than I had ever seen before. There were red ones, yellow ones, dark pink and white with pink tips. One by one they had emerged from the ground to poke out defiantly.
  Maybe I had written off the plants too soon.
   Every morning when I came back from my run, I would walk past the garden. Last week I saw green on the grapevine. It was alive! We had not over pruned it last fall. It was going to come back. The climbing rose was alive and well. Some of the annuals were shaking off their long winter sleep and were emerging to see what life is like on the other side of the dirt.
  The weeds are also making an appearance. The nice thing about the wet weather we've had is that the ground is soft. It makes it a lot easier to pull up the weeds. I started to pull small handfuls while I inspected the garden for sign that it was coming back.
  This morning I saw some small shoots around one of the lily plants. It looked like everything was going to come back after all. The massive replanting I thought we would have to do would not be needed.
  C told me that spring is his favourite season. In South Carolina,it is the most beautiful season. Flowers are blooming, the trees are lush and the air has a certain fragrance that he's never smelled anywhere else. When he moved to Minnesota, spring seemed like a miracle to him. After the long cold winter the plants and tress would come back to life. It amazed him that anything could survive the cold.
  I think I'm trying to be taught a lesson here. I tend to think of myself as a fairly persistent person, but sometimes I give up a bit too easily. Comebacks are possible, especially when you don't expect it.