Primavera

First spring, for us, is always forsythia and pussy willow—although I see here the faint early blooming of some trees. The background still obligingly retains the season that has just been left behind. Forsythia belongs to the olive family, which surprised me, but a branch that produces a dry capsule holding several little seeds. The pussy willow is, well, a willow—although that word evokes long, hanging branches and, for me, an immigrant, a famous verse:

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered thee, O Zion.
We hung our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. [Psalm 137:1-2]