Look outside. Do you know which trees have leaves on them? Do you know which ones are just beginning to bud and which ones will soon blossom into flowers? Almost all of our grandparents and great-grandparents would have known the answer to this question. They knew when to expect certain blossoms and when the leaves would come. Instead of checking Instagram every day for spring pictures they looked at the trees.

In my Senior year of college I took a class on Folklore. Besides having us chop down bamboo shoots to carve out splits and weave a Creek Indian style basket, my professor also had us tie ribbon to a branch and come back each week to draw a sketch of the blossom. It probably meant more to me than a lot of other things that Spring in reconnecting me to the cycle of life that our Lord keeps watch over each year. A few months later, when my Grandmother died, I went and walked around campus one day and returned to the tree. I found my red and blue ribbons and took them off of the tree. I tied them to the adjusting knob on my rear view mirror and kept them on there for a while as a reminder of her. I am sure in her youth she knew when the blossoms where coming.