By Cathy Hird

Tulip heads are still tightly closed and green, protecting the delicate petals inside. The warmth of mid-April convinced the leaves to sprout and and the stem to push up, but the cold and frost stopped the flower from opening. The warm sun of Monday and Tuesday afternoons was not enough to convince them to unfurl.

A few daffodils opened last week, revealing sun-bright trumpets to announce spring is on the way. Two nights of below zero temperatures made them droop, and I thought they would be finished. But morning and rain brought them back, and more will bloom soon.

Two brilliant dandelions have ventured to show their colour, but as I weed the garden, I find most of them are also tight green buds, protecting delicate petals, waiting for the real arrival of spring.

Unfolding colour is slow to come this year. Winter, which was not severe in January or February, hesitates to let go. Cold and frost cover the land under the clear night skies. Plants have to wait.

I worry for the birds. One swallow sat on our hydro line for an afternoon, but I imagine it headed back south. The air was empty of insects. Yes, our house windows have attracted scores of lady beetles, but outside worms and spiders and insects are hiding, curled up, waiting. Eggs have not hatched. Not that I am longing for black flies or mosquitoes, but the birds that feed on them will not return until warmth releases the small flying creatures.

This waiting spring with tightly closed flower buds waiting to unfurl makes me think about how often we have to wait for good to unfold. Sometimes the promise of health and wholeness is right there, but it is closed tight as a fist, and we wonder what it will take to coax it into flower.

After cold and harsh times, we want brightness and grace to come quickly. But friendship and love, peace and health take time. Warmth is needed. Nourishing rain is needed. Patience and attention are required for any goodness to unfurl.

Some good is as tough as the daffodils that spring back after a frost, but just as we cover the fragile plants in the garden when night will be cold, we protect peace. We gently blanket the tentative growth of the child who is vulnerable and fragile. The unfolding of grace can be slow, requiring attentive care, so that the colour and life will come.

Sometimes, some lives, some places are more like our swamp where tattered cattails stand pale and grey. From a distance, the new shoots are invisible. But as the heads of the plant shred, I know they are releasing seed pods that the wind will carry, and some of those will find ground to flourish in.

Always, we have to wait for the unfurling of colour. As much as we joke that a warm day in April is a taste of summertime, July cannot follow March. We need the slow gentle unfolding of buds and blossoms, leaves and flowers that comes as May banishes winter temperatures. Eventually, long awaited flowers will bloom.

Finally, on Tuesday, as I drove into town, the windshield of my truck pinged. The air was full of tiny flying creatures. And sure enough, in that spot, a swallow swooped and dived. Soon, these birds will sweep past my head as they fly from the nests in the ceiling of the barn toward the windows and the outside. Soon, long-awaited colour will unfold.

This month is an invitation to hope, to watch for colour to emerge, to cheer the endurance that stands up in the cold. May is an invitation to patience, a reminder that unfolding good takes time. And there is in this season a reminder to nourish good with gentleness as we wait.
Cathy Hird is a farmer, minister, and writer living near Walters Falls.