Redbuds and cedar~

Driving up though the Shenandoah mountains last week, I took in the just-blooming redbuds along the road with a smile. The bright new spring greens of the pastures, the old silos, the farms with sprawling barns big enough to swallow five of the farmhouses next to them.... I love the way an oak tree out in a field spreads it's great arms out.... as if basking in the glory of being allowed to grow to just the shape that it was meant to.  I love seeing the overgrown hedgerows of locusts marking the boundaries of former farms and fields.

There were long sections along I-81 in Virginia where I swear the redbuds and cedars outnumbered the cars on the highway.  Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

Driving home several days later I was still surrounded by the purply-pink blossoms.  A big full moon rose over the sprawling farm fields as we approached our destination for the night, a hotel up on a hill in Harrisonburg, Va.

Sometimes that drive feels so long, particularly the long Virginia stretch, but if I am aware enough of my surroundings, it changes everything.  At least during those long lovely stretches in the Shenandoahs.  It isn't exactly bothersome to have nothing to stare at but cows and pasture and blooming redbuds.