Rejoice: It’s azalea time

This is the exact time of year I long for during Winter, even though our winters are mild. The woods are bare and lifeless, and gardens are shriveled stalks and husks.

But earlier this week, on the first day of March on a perfect early Spring day, I decided to visit Magnolia Gardens to see the progress of the annual azalea bloom. Sure enough, I discovered path after path with raging red, gorgeous pink and enchanting white azaleas blooms everywhere I walked. The brilliant clusters of eye-popping color greeted me at every turn. What a magical and beautiful fairyland, there to bedazzle and amaze under sunny-blue and warm skies. A day where Mother Nature reaches out with utter perfection in mind to bestow her gifts.

While the mountains of North Carolina and the entirety of New England blaze with oranges and reds in Autumn, we here in coastsl South Carolina have our Azalea Time each Spring. It’s just as incomparably beautiful as Fall colors elsewhere in that season so distant now from Spring. I think if I ever leave this place, I will miss the azaleas more than anything else.

On another day when a barbaric and inhumane war is being waged half way across the world, and yet so very close to us and everone else on Earth, I am thankful I can pause for an hour and rejoice in the beauty that is all around us. Without Spring here to be a comforting salve to the spirit, I would be feeling rather despondent. But Spring is a time of hope and rebirth. Within one fateful week, everything in the old order seems changed. But flowers and Spring, are eternal, and we need to be reminded emphatically of that fact especially when such dark clouds loom on the horizon.

Magnolia Gardens Spring 2022

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