They've been hiding there all along...

Photo courtesy of PublicDomainPictures.net

An excerpt:

The three of us walked across the field on a hot, sunny Saturday afternoon that smelled like new growing things.  We could have gone down the road, of course, but it seemed like the sort of day when walking across a field would be a nice thing to do.  Wildflowers were just beginning to appear.  They always take me by surprise.  It seems, each year, as if winter will go on forever, even back in town.  Then when you've resigned yourself to a whole lifetime of grayness, suddenly bright bursts of yellow and purple and white spring up in the fields, and you realize they've been hiding there all along, waiting.

~ from A Summer to Die,

written by Lois Lowry

I remember reading A Summer to Die a year or so ago and being struck by the images in this passage. I love Lowry's description of the day smelling "like new growing things" and how the wildflowers take the character by surprise.  Spring is like that for me, as well.