There are a handful of things that I always find myself looking forward to throughout the year. One is the budding of black oaks. I’ll go on walks and drives just to look at black oaks as their leaves bud and fan out, like little purple feathers at first, and before you know it a deep green canopy.
Another thing I look forward to are cherry blossoms. I was staying at my employer’s house in the hills west of south Reno when I wrote these. A month earlier I got to watch the cherry trees bloom in and around Ukiah, California. Then I got to see them bloom again in Reno, like clouds of light, as spring came to the higher elevations. Yet on the mountain where I was staying it still snowed some.
Such surroundings are bound to inspire the occasional proper haiku.
Cherry Drifts
