Inspiration Mondays: Miraculous Green

I love spring. I looooooooooooove spring. It's the most wonderful time of the year (as opposed to Christmas and back-to-school at Staples). After a long winter of cold weather, frosty days, dark days, a bit of spring is all I need to pick me up.

I lived in Northern Ireland for a number of years. That is one green place. You want green, seriously, Ireland has got it. It has to do with all the rain they get. After being there for years, coming back to Canada was a bit of a shock, especially in the spring. Everything was grey-brown and dead-looking.

I remember one spring after a particularly dry winter, I went out into the yard with Rascal looking for a tennis ball to play with, and found a piece of plastic table cloth I'd laid on the ground by one of the flowerbeds. I'd put it there in the autumn, in the hopes that it would block that patch of ground so that I could get the grass to die out there. Well, it didn't work, but when I pulled that tablecloth off the ground to check, the grass was green beneath it.

It was a shock, like someone had injected dye into my eyes. Wow! Green! Ooooo...

Since then, the first few glimpses of green in the spring really excite me.

Those are some irises just peeking out of the ground in my front flowerbed. They're pushing through the compost and leaves I laid on them in the autumn.

I pulled out some yarn in my stash that puts me in mind of the freshness of spring, and of new growth.

Clockwise from bottom right: Elsebeth Lavold's Hempathy in Golden Yellow, Koigu Kersti Merino Crepe, and Mirasol Hacho in Sienna Olive.

Quite a lot of my stash recently are batches of yarn in small amounts, mostly because they are hand-dyed or unique, and therefore, on the pricey side. It seems fitting, though, to have a handful of these yarns this time of year... like gathering small handfuls of the growth that is slowly pushing its way through to the surface outside. Any more would be overkill right now.

This yarn makes me think back to a day in Northern Ireland when my hubby and I went down to the shore and sat for a while on the grass. It was late spring, just tipping into summer, and the grass was dotted with tiny little daisies. I turned to my hubby and said, "How do you weave daisies into a chain?" Well, he gathered up a few and wove them into a circlet, which I then placed in my hair... It was the first time I'd ever felt remotely like a fairy.

Anyway, green is a miracle, and I'm glad to see it again. I'm all for new growth, both outdoors, and within my own being. I need a bit of refreshing these days. I fear I have become stagnant with old thoughts and shabby worries. Green always brings me to lovely memories.

Of course, there a probably some terrible memories that are associated with green... things related to slime and stuff... but we won't go there...