Spring, for me, is an immense and gorgeous flowering forth, and in this issue we have flowers. Fields and bouquets of flowers. Wild and tended, picked and arranged, undisturbed in roadside meadows. Budding and blooming. The excitement and beauty of this gorgeous season here in the Blue Ridge Mountains is gathered within our pages.
Gina Malone, editor
Mark your calendars for NC Arboretum’s Bloom with a View, with so much color you’ll forget the monochromatic winter days barely behind us. The Sierra Club of Western North Carolina hosts a virtual presentation on wildflowers, and the Botanical Gardens of Asheville has events planned to get you outside enjoying the flora and fauna.
Signs of Spring, Theresa Reuter’s painting gracing our cover, reminds us that hummingbirds are headed our way, if not already zipping around by the time you’re reading this. Paula Musto pays a call on some other traditional harbingers of spring: the robins.
Earth Day celebrations abound on April 22, reminding us that the Earth is precious and that we are of the earth and not just on it. We’re all invited to Sylva to see the green moving up the mountains. And a key organization for taking action on climate resiliency, Asheville GreenWorks, celebrates 50 years of TLC for Mother Earth. Two other area organizations rooted in love of Earth celebrate birthdays as well: Discover Life in America, benefiting the Great Smoky Mountains National Park for 25 years, and Organic Growers School, teaching all of us best farming practices for 30 years.
It’s also National Poetry Month and we shine the Spotlight on Yetzirah, a nonprofit serving as “a hearth for Jewish poetry” founded by Asheville poet Jessica Jacobs.
Poet Linda Pastan wrote: Just as we lose hope/she ambles in,/a late guest/dragging her hem/of wildflowers…
Welcome, Spring. We didn’t really lose hope. We knew you’d get here.
