I am eager for foliage and flowers this year, and so I have paid perhaps too much attention to the slow break of spring, watching for subtle evidence that the thick blanket of February snow has retreated for good. Shrubs and trees all over the neighborhood have offered proof in small changes to their cold-weather armor.
The willows were the first to issue reassurance in faint threads of lime-y green streaking the inky morning sky. The shrub roses soon followed, their smooth ruddy canes blushing to the other side of the color wheel in advance of blooms and spiced scent.
A new Japanese lilac in a friend’s yard has been teasing with shiny charcoal-colored stems marked by tiny white beauty spots. Around the corner, a fine contorted filbert has begun to look a little softer, pale khaki catkins dangling in clusters.
And across the street, the gnarled trunk of an ancient toba hawthorn is advancing its big show with a shiny fringe of deeply lobed leaves running along its deepest curves. Soon buds will break and the toba will open a huge parasol of pink to shade the walk and yard and block the memory of the cold dark winter.
It won’t be long now, at all.
Dana Coffield: dcoffield@denverpost.com, 303-954-1954 or
