We had three prime reasons to buy a second home in North Carolina: to be able to ride motorcycles through the winter, to be closer to Randy’s Quilt Shop, the amazing mecca of master quilters where I took monthly master classes and found artistic inspiration, and to be near Victory Junction.
Randy closed the shop last summer, and we aren’t involved with Victory Junction any more, but the riding still rocks. And with the riding comes the new, bonus reason to stay here – we get to have two springs!
After going back to blustery, blizzardy Maine from magical, tropical New Zealand, I couldn’t handle the harsh winter for more than a few days before fleeing south. As in past years, I was surprised and delighted by what I found.
The third week in February, when snow banks in Maine climb a dozen feet into the air and bare ground is a distant memory, it’s already spring in Carolina! Early pansies and snowdrops are blooming, tulips, daffodils and hyacinths are poking buds out of sturdy tall leaf clusters. The air feels like a warm caress.
Out on the bike today, I was assaulted with scents: overpowering fried food fumes as I snaked through town, then mud at the edge of the reservoir in Summerfield, eau de skunk, fertilizer, flat fauna and an indefinable fragrance of new growth everywhere.
It felt like I was slowing way down to take it in, but when I looked, I found I was doing 70 mph! No wonder no one was behind me! Grammie might just get a speeding ticket yet, despite all predictions to the contrary.
The absolute, miraculous, unbelievable gift is that I have TWO springs! This month, March and April, as I return to ride and walk and sew, I’ll soak up the southern warmth with unending gratitude. Then, later in April, through May and into June, I get to do it all over again in Maine. Some of the smells will be different there – clam flats, crashing surf, lilacs, apple blossoms and pine forests, but the joy of new beginning will be the same, even if I have already reveled in it here.
There’s something very right about a life that has five months of spring time.
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