SPRING TIME

SPRING TIME

Every year when it was spring again, and you felt spring in the air, in the wind, you saw it in the light, for her it was time to adventure, her heart beating tightly, in the ditches between lawn and lawn, looking for those jonquils so rare, which standing upright with their sober , solid, enchanting appearance (look) among needles and weeds. They, with their glazed appearance that made you think they were ceramic flowers, yet with their unmistakable perfume, even if barely perceptible, a bitter sweet scent which reached you, which you could perceive mixed with the wind, they were there, almost at the same place of the year before, every spring.

Those incredible wild jonquils bloomed in the steepest corners of the ditches, among brushwoods and thorns, as if they wanted to make themselves inaccessible. Every time, every spring it was a truly priceless emotion to find them there, in the usual place., as if to challenge you with their appearance of a miracle emerged from the earth , despite the pollution, despite the climate changes, despite the destructiveness of the operate of men. They, the wild jonquils , were again back there, every time when it was spring.

There were also the wild violets , which blossomed not only into the ditches, but on the edges of country roads too, always hidden among tufts of grass and also among weeds.

Even the wild violets were rare. To find them, after you had been looking for them, walking and walking, rummaging in the grass, going down into the ditches . it was something which, more than amazing you, made you think of a miracle : oh, I found them! Oh , they are here again! And , as soon as they appeared, you felt your heart fill with joy, you seemed your heart was dancing for joy. The wild violets were small, their petals were of an intense purple, which, however, was not the deep purple of the bunches of violets that you found at the florist, or that the hawkers sold on the street. The color of the wild violets was intense, of an intense purple blue, but at the same time it gave the impression of transparence, since their petals were very thin. Their petals were not only smaller, but even more unequal than those of the violets you could find at the florist Those violets had a very thin stern, so much thin that you wondered how it could hold the flower and the leaves. Their leaves in the upper part had that shape____two arcs of the same width joined at one point___which made you think of the shape of the heart , as it is schematically represented. Those little flowers, with a diaphanous , almost fleeting appearance_____but they were  really there, where you was seeing them, or rather they were only an apparition?

__(they )smelled only a bit. To be able to perceive their scent, you had to put your nose ( nostrils) close them. Theirs was a  subtle , fleeting smell, difficult to perceive, yet as soon as you could perceive it, that smell was pungent. It was a smell of earth, of grass, and of something else that made you remind of the wind. The wild violets had a completely different smell of those you could buy from the florist.

One day it happened to Louise , who every spring came back walking through the countryside looking for jonquils and wild violets, to be enchanted in front of the garden of a villa. There were many flowers in that great garden, but what caught her attention were those white roses, with incredible petals which looked like silk. Oh, maybe it was only because of the light that they looked like silk, since ( as) she could only see them from some distance. Of course, she would have liked to be able to enter that garden, but she dared not ring the bell, she would have had to answer the intercom…..Ah, and what could she have told to obtain the permission to enter the garden? Could she say that she asked to visit the garden because she wanted to see those amazing white roses close up? No, she really didn’t feel like it. So she had given up to try to enter

that garden. ( to get close the marvelous roses), but she had started to wish that, at least, the wild violets and the jonquils , which sprang out again every time in spring, that they could meet those magnificent roses, which certainly  were not wild or spontaneous flowers. They had to be rather the result of grafts and experiments, that (since) who knows how long it took to get to have roses like those.

Louise began to think about how she could fulfill her desire to make the jonquils and the violets of the meadows meet the white roses of the garden. That they met for her meant making them stand next each other on the same ground. But how could she do it? Even if they had let her enter that garden, they would certainly not allowed her to transplant her violets and her jonquils which, moreover, she did not want to take away from the ditches and the meadows, and the edges of the road.

Then suddenly everything seemed to be resolved. Louise was in front of the great garden, its gate was open, she was entering the garden. And, what wonder! The wild violets and the jonquils were there, at the foot of the magnificent white roses. It even seemed to her that the violets and the jonquils were talking with the white roses. While she was wondering how this, a truly miracle, could have been happened, she heard someone, without she could know who he was, said that it had been the wind which had carried the seeds of the wild flowers into the garden. “ Ah, but sure, it had been the wind…” she said . And at that moment she woke up. It had been a dream, then , only a dream. But, who knows, maybe what she had seen in her dream would really happen. Not yet completely  awake, Louise looked at the window and, on the first light of the morning she seemed to see the magnificent petals of those roses beating on the window panes, as if to say her___Good morning____And, to increase the wonder, in the midst of the white petals, which looked like rustling silk, the wild violets and the jonquils also appeared. They all seemed to be dancing.