TheBanyanTree: Living in a Japanese painting

[Julie Anna Teague]

Don't exhale.  This beauty is fragile and fleeting.  The wind trembles 
ever so slightly and the ornamental pears quake in a snowy frenzy, 
white blossoms lying in drifts around them.  The forsythia sprouts 
first leaves through yellow petals, like awkward feathers through chick 
down.  The redbud trees cover the hills in a haze of barely visible red 
then soft purple.  The tender, rolling landscape is so beautiful I'm 
almost sure it can't be real, and in another week it will seem like a 
dream.  Purple fades to pale pink, and in the briefest of spaces is 
gone again.  Soft, pink, perfect magnolias blossoming on bare wood seem 
like a magician's trick.  Wah-lah, and a paper flower emerges from the 
end of a wand.

It is a delicate, silky season--a pale painting of perfectly arranged 
blossoms against a pastel blue Spring sky.  This is the only moment for 
appreciating it.  The moment is now.  Stay still.  The wind blows into 
a gale, pushing clouds in its arms, creating snowing blossom storms in 
its wake.  Indiana summer is persistent and pushes toward a thousand 
shades of green.

Julie