The bloom has finally settled on the prairie. After months of snow, ice, mud, and howling cruel winter winds – a world grown heavy-laden and sorrowful with brown, white, and solemn silent leaden-gray – the crabapple trees have blossomed forth in a riot of pink and living white and the chorus of songbirds calls me to attention at 5:00 a.m. Everything is green-clad and alive. It is a world renewed as if by flame.
