It is finally spring, and in search for inspiration, I roam around my new community, looking for something that catches my creative eye, and will spark my creative juices.  I find a garden just around the corner from my home on a busy street at a corner house.  

I have driven by this house in many occasions during the winter season, and found nothing interesting about it, you might even say it looked a bit sad, with its mulch front yard, and a small barren tree standing in its mist.  As I drove by, I paid it no mind, it was just another house among a row of houses. 

Spring slow arrives here in the Midwest, and with it brings a sense of newness and awakenings.  It is a beautiful time of the year as I watch nature come alive.  At this house, it began with the daffodils, in spite the chill in the air, thy announce their arrival with trumpet blooms of white and yellow some large and some small covering the yard in unexpected places. Grateful for their appearance, I realize this yard has more to offer. 

The gift of spring is that if you see the beauty of nature one particular day it may look totally different a few days later.  This is what I experience with the yard in this house, I drove by a couple of weeks later, and it was like an explosion of flowering plants that had emerge from the ground.  Tulips intermixed with daffodils, patches of grape Hyacinths mingling among them, Star Hyacinths sprinkled here and there, Purple Beauty’s covering the ground creating a colorful patchwork in the yard of every color found in a rainbow.  I was at awe that I was seeing some of my favorite spring flowers all in one garden.

A few weeks later as I once again past this house the barren tree in that yard had blossomed into a beautiful white dogwood.  The daffodils had died away, but the tulips multiplied and some had opened up to reveal their multi-color centers changing the face of the garden again.  As I looked at the other houses along that street, they too were blossoming, some with a few tulips here and there, and others with clumps of Irises the, first of the season, for they too were now beginning to flower.    

For me my cell phone camera has become a tool to document the changes I see in nature.  My photos are references that I can access to help me find inspiration when I am ready to sit and create.  I also, appreciate the privilege of writing a newsletter, because it helps me revisit what I have done the past few weeks, and allows me to communicate the beauty of my explorations through art, photography, and story.  These are just a few of my favorite things that the joy of being creative has provided.