Don’t Blink…

It has been four weeks since I posted my snow day pictures. Only four. In those four weeks, spring has announced it’s presence with birds chirping bright and early, flowers bursting to life with color and pollen covering everything in its reach with a green powdery film. I love this time of year, where one day a tree or plant is bare, but by the next, it is bursting with life.

The tree in my front yard does this every year, you go to bed with a naked tree and wake up to a luscious green mass of leaves. We have a massive oak, and right about this time, it forms these big green balls that grow up to about an inch or two in diameter. If you let them reach their peak, they then turn brown and crunchy and we spend days running around our front yard slamming these nature-grown weapons on each others heads and backs.

Today while walking the dog, I noticed an unusually bare tree. After looking closely, it wasn’t bare at all, it was just budding in clusters from these little shells.

We’ve been watching the red buds bloom for weeks. They have the most vibrant magenta buds, I absolutely love seeing them dotted around the neighborhood.

 

Then this afternoon, we made a stop to the library and the little one asked if she could take pictures of the flowers in front of the library. (We do this often, snap shots of things we find worth remembering later.) While she clicked away, I noticed the daffodils were looking… a wee bit past their prime. Just two weeks ago, these same exact flowers were a striking yellow against the green. Now they are just wilty looking. 

 

In just four weeks we went from being bundled up to rubbing on sunscreen. (I am serious with the sunscreen – the pink forehead that I sported last week was not pretty.) In a blink of an eye, the land went from being in hibernation to full of life. Another blink and already certain life has already curled away with death. Everything is in constant change and it is breathtakingly beautiful. And breathtakingly sad. 

Now I am going to stop right there and explain something real quick. I wrote this post on Thursday but had to take a time out to do some mom stuff – cook dinner, make lunches for my little minions, and read bedtime stories. Then I sort of forgot about the post. THEN I read Charli’s flash fiction prompt and knew that the two had to be combined.

The April 1, 2015 prompt from over at Carrot Ranch Communications: In 99 words (no more, no less) write about the day the earth turned brown. How did it happen? What else might be going on? It can be dramatic or even humorous. It can be the greater globe or a localized occurrence. It can be an aftermath or a revival. Follow where the prompt leads you.

Thirsty

We stood on the bridge looking down into the sandy abyss littered with long forgotten lost belongings and decaying fish.

“This isn’t good.”

I shook my head. There was nothing else to be said, we both knew what was coming next. It had already begun. Dehydration crept up the embankments as though the Earth was looking for a drink, and sucking the life from anything in its path.

No one knew how long we had, but we all knew what was coming. Without water, there could be no life.

We watched as the last lake took its last breath.

 

Happy Tuesday!

~AJP