For a moment in early spring, I missed the powerful red streaks of winter sunrises that dragged my vision from the eastern horizon west to mountains capped with snow, glowing pink with a reflected dawn.
But I’ve come to appreciate the days around now, when morning breaks with barely a hint of color. It gives my still-sleepy eyes a break.
Instead of scanning the sky for clouds roiling with the hues of a dying fire, I am able to focus on the hints of the new season pushing from brittle, naked twigs.
Hit-and-run cold snaps this spring and last fall caused harm to some of the trees and bushes that are usually showstoppers. Branches of apple, peach and crab apple trees that are typically laden with lacy pink and coral blooms bear only little knots of flowers backed by the finest collar of leaves.
But this, too, has its benefits. The still-spare tree canopy forces my gaze lower, to more grounded explosions of blossoms that perhaps I ignored during past, more showy springs.
I’m drawn to the elegant arch of young redbud limbs, trimmed in a vivid shade of lavender, toward ink-blue lilacs leaning over a neighbor’s fence and then to a garden path flanked by dreamy bands of candy-colored tulips. Chokecherry bushes trained into tree form have burst into fragrant white clouds that shade mounds of variegated vinca, already punctuated with star-shaped purple flowers.
These things, I’m sure, were always there in seasons past. But the gentle force of nature has a way of guiding us to see them again.
Dana Coffield: dcoffield@denverpost.com, 303-954-1954 or
