When snow melts and frozen ground thaws, it's mud season. This is typical of April in New England where sturdy boots are necessary gear. On the bright side, sweet sap flows into blue hoses from sugar maples to end up as the syrup we drench on our pancakes.
Mud season isn't known here in the Pacific Northwest, where the winters are milder. We aren't frozen solid all winter. Our version of mud season is the incessant April rain showers
We also have tulips, great fields of tulips, an ocean of tulips, enough to swim through.
If you're lucky enough to visit the Skagit Valley in April, you can tour the prolific tulip fields. If you're early in the month, you may see yellow daffodil fields as well. Tulip season brings a variety of bright colors to punch through gray rainy days.
In other parts of the country, tulips blooming in gardens brighten neighborhood walks. When its tulip festival time in Pella, Iowa for instance, town gardens with blooming tulips decorate all the neighborhoods; not surprising in this home of Dutch bakeries and a working windmill.
No matter where you live, you can find tulips to bring home.
This is a time when I buy more flowers and less candles. Color makes me smile. Bunches of flowers announce the coming and arrival of spring. This is a time of renewal, rejuvenation, and hope. We can all use that.
So tulip up, I say! Whether you have to slog through mud or not, it's a little bit of happiness.