I didn’t have to wait for spring to come this year. It came when it was supposed to. Maybe the winter was mild, maybe the anticipation of our trip to Tobago made the rest of the cold months go by faster.

The tulip and daffodil greens came up, and I saw buds forming. The forsythia bloomed. One lone daffodil bloomed earlier than all the rest. It was visible through the back windows of the house, and I checked on it each day, eventually watching it wilt, and waited for the others to bloom.

They never did.

I can be impatient about the spring flowers. I check for green coming up out of the earth, and then blooms, sometimes weeks before they’re ready. But this year I gave myself credit for being patient. The world is falling apart, I told myself, but spring will come anyway.

Except in my backyard, it never fully did.

I went outside to take a closer look at what was happening. The daffodil fronds were healthy and full. There was no obvious reason why my flowers hadn’t bloomed, until I was standing right above the clumps of green. I saw where each bud had been plucked cleanly off at the top of the stalks.

I never found the buds. All I know is that all over my yard are naked clumps of tulip and daffodil greens with no flowers.

These days, nothing can be taken for granted. Nothing, it seems, including springtime. I assumed my daffodils and tulips would bloom this year, bringing hope like they have each spring.

In twelve years of living at our house, slowly adding bulbs every few autumns, there has never been a spring without daffodils and tulips until this one.

A few days after this discouraging discovery, I went grocery shopping for the first time in weeks. The Chaplain has been doing most of the shopping since he still leaves home for work, but he’s been quarantined recently due to known exposure to the virus, so it fell to me to go when our shelves grew empty.

While I was picking up items to fill our pantry, I detoured into the garden section of the store and picked out a few spring perennials to bring some color to our largely brown backyard.

I spent hours pulling weeds and putting the new plants into the ground, knowing that their status as perennials will be challenged by the conditions of our backyard. Some of them won’t survive the rigors of our family life.

For now, though, our backyard is looking a little brighter. I know from experience it will only get better.