It has sprung.

When we moved into our house last year everything was already unloved and overgrown. The only attention we paid to the yard was looking over it from our perch on the deck every night.

After a long, hard, cold winter...something extraordinary happened. One day when I was on my way to the garage still wearing a coat and scarf for cry eye - I saw a tiny green leaf sprouting out of the frozen ground. I had to do a double take. After so many months of T and I playing the same games over and over in the basement (push baby in stroller, pick baby up, give baby fake water, put baby back in stroller) I thought I had willed spring to come early. I thought it was a sign that things were going to get warm soon! That finally I wouldn't have to fit my kid in her car seat with a coat on and watch her not be able to breath or move.

I was so moved by the sight of this leaf that I took a picture. It's a good thing too. Because that night it snowed a giant snow and that leaf was gone diddly.

Winter dredged on. Snow, snow, frozen snot, snow, snow, frostbite. And so it went.

One morning it was back. And it had so many friends.

I had no idea what they were or what they would become, but I've been taking pictures of the strange (giant) leaves for a while now.

I TOTALLY count this as a gardening success even though I didn't plant them, know what they were, know they were there or any of the small details that a more seasoned gardener might consider a necessity to take credit for a plant. I'm more of a hey, it lived it - score one for me kind of gardener. Well technically, I'm actually more of a I built a wall but haven't actually planted anything yet kind of gardener. Details schmetails.