Along the side of the road, beneath overhanging rust red shelled oak leaf buds, a hand made sign with only the words "trout pond". No arrow. No address. No driveway. Just the pristine vinyl lettering on a paper sign, and long grass speckled with dandelions and wild violets. A carpet of purple punctuated by yellow spots.
Gentle thunder calls up the morels in the night.
Pink, round apple blossom buds unfold in the April rains and call with color and loud scent to tiny, seeking insects.
Shiny red rhubarb shoots are pruned for pie, and a young boy alternates between grins and looks of reverence as his father lets him use his first jack knife to cut the leaves from the stalks.
The docks aren't out yet, but the blackberry runners are getting rambunctious, encroaching with small, new sprouts into the world of wild purple that has displaced the grass that has displaced the ferns and silver birch and beech trees, and they'll bear fruit worth the pain and scratched, stinging shins and the time will be well spent.
The morels are taken home for food. And the rhubarb is taken home for food. And a new bird song, probably heard before but unremembered since the last time, calls from the woods and the morning mist with an echo. In and out of land based clouds, as the spring fog shifts, hazy and soft, then clear, then ragged edges of mist, then soft again.
The air smells of water and fishing and moss.
A long-legged blue heron spreads its uncanny lightness and glides low through lakeside reeds, still tipped with seed tassels from last fall. They'll fall and replenish the marsh and new seeds will emerge for the heron to fly through.
There's a large swan nest in the cattails. The cygnets will follow the mother like love with tiny pulses and ripples from the water as they paddle their tiny legs in the still, misty lake.