We're back to what looks like spring with a decided nip in the air. The kinds that makes you think you better put off buying bedding plants till after April 1. But it is oh, so hard to walk into Wal-Mart right now and not be sucked in by the Garden Center. (And I don't even like their "average" selection!) The color is nice to see.

And the birds are here in full force now. I started noticing flocks of robins in late February, and thought of my brother Scott, who was telling me when he was here last year that there was some concern about the robin population in general. Well, I certainly don't see cause for alarm in this neck of the woods--or should I say, lack of woods--this particular spring. They are everywhere. As are the cardinals and jays, doves, and a woodpecker who just vibrates the entire neighborhood. I know it is winter time when there is silence, and I know it's over when I wake to the songs of the birds and later on I'll know it's the heat of summer when the cicada whirl is deafening.

And of course with that word, my thoughts turn to my dear friends who don't experience this part of the spring and summer ritual, and while I look forward to the day when they do hear and will enjoy it all, I sometimes wonder how much more they see. As in "notice." Or feel. Or smell. I've heard it said that the other senses become heightened when one is lost, so it makes me wonder how differently we experience the spring, and the rest of the seasons as they change.

Then there are those who are so hurt, so damaged by the wrong and bitter about past injustices that they live there and continue to feed their hurt and their anger and they miss the rest of what is good and wonderful about the simple change of the seasons and the general goodness of life. The older I get the more I learn about how attitude shapes our existance, and I find myself pitying the short-tempered and the intolerant, and the militant minds that can only look at what needs to be changed--now and with force!--instead of how far things have come and that there is better progress where there is an atmosphere of peace. It is so easy to find the bad in situations and particularly in people. It takes a maturity to overlook what is obvious and search out what is good and true and lovable behind that shell of imperfection.

Of course there are those who would lump me in with the intolerant, simply because I can't lay aside what is right to fit today's moral opinion, but the fact of the matter is that I do my imperfect best to treat everyone with simple human kindess and dignity. Even if a person has chosen an immoral course, I have not been appointed to hand down sentences, especially among those who don't know or don't understand. I have been given a privilege to convey information, to give people the opportunity to learn, and in the end their lack of interest or obedience will be between them and someone who can judge hearts, not just appearances. There is right and wrong and that wrong will not forever be tolerated on this earth. But when it is done away with, I have absolute faith that no one will be able to truthfully say they never had the opportunity to learn what was bad and what was good and then make a choice to accept those standards or not. The opportunity is available now.

And so I ramble in spring, where thoughts grow and bloom in directions that surprise. It is good to think, and grow.