





More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
~Ada Limón “Instructions on Not Giving Up”




It wasn’t until I paused under the huge silver maple tree in front of our house that I began to notice not the blossoms, but the way the leaves were unfurling. How suddenly a tree transformed back into a tree, with all its good green leaves. It felt like a lesson in resilience. The tree wasn’t giving up. The tree was just going to keep doing its tree thing. Noticing those leaves felt like the first moment of breath I’d had all winter. Under that tree, the line “it’s the greening of the trees that really gets to me” came to me.
~Ada Limón writing about how “Instructions on Not Giving Up” came to her


I watch daily as our farm’s trees reawaken in the spring. Some, like the maples and chestnuts turn green in April. The walnuts stay naked well into May, quite bohemian compared to their glossy green neighbors.
New growth is always an encouragement to me, especially after a brutally cold winter when branches have broken off in the snows or a tree has toppled over in exhaustion from resisting the winter wind.
As leaves swell and begin to unwrap in the spring sun, trees are feeling what I feel: the need for fresh air and renewal, absorbing the warmth of the sun while new nutrients surge in my sap.
Most trees find it is easy being green, as that is who they are and that is who I am. Some are colorful show-offs, putting me to shame for my plainness. They bloom their hearts out with the joy of living yet another spring, exuberant and wild, and oh so messy.
The trees’ resilience captures my heart. Dogwood and crabapple petals follow us inside the house stuck to our shoes, left scattered here and there on the floor. Perhaps they think they can remain bright and beautiful inside a different wooden home. I sweep them up to put them back outside on the ground where they, like I will someday, become part of the soil once again.
Exuberant in my messy plainness.









There is a tree beyond this world
In it’s ancient roots this song is curled
I am the fool whose life’s been spent
Between what’s said and what is meant
~Carrie Newcomer
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