Spring Awakening
The witchhazels pick things up where their autumn cousins left off. You can imagine them taking off a padlock and rolling back the warehouse door. Their straps seem the striped yellow overall straps of ornamental workmen; they smell of oil.
Snowdrops are very sculpted. Someone fed up with winter might well have had to invent them. They are a little overthought to tell the truth.
As the crocuses emerge they seem a catalog for forthcoming publications; because they are minute and varied. They do not seem to commit themselves much or to much need being committed to.
I always forget that when forsythia start they look like little bananas. They tend to start too early, and you can picture them in a sprint from the gates of the stadium and only looking behind themselves too late as the crowd starts laughing.
I do not like the hellebores. They live on an old lady’s sidetable.
But then hyacinths, the spiky ones, belong on a straw hat in the best way. Your drunk aunt and uncle come up to you at your wedding with boutonnieres of hyacinth. Grape hyacinths are silly because they look like grapes.
A scilla is a complete thought at every scale.
I only found out recently that a vinca is a periwinkle. Who has ever seen the bud for one of their flowers? You come out one day and there they are, pinned to the vine. People reason the existence of fairies back from things like this.
At this point you can look straight through a yellow daffodil. When they come white and small with orange trumpets I picture men at work again, just screwing the new trumpets in.