The First Green is Gold

There are lots of big, green trees where I live in Germany. This was one of the first things I remember thinking the first day I arrived here. How green everything was....the trees, the fields, the farms.

Now that our time here in Bavaria is dwindling down, every day is poignant. I'm rediscovering the first impressions that maybe I got a little too used to over our three years in this country. I'm trying to pause a few moments longer to take them in, lock them into my memory, and thank God for giving these lifetime gifts to me. You can't hold on to a breathtaking view, or pack it in a suitcase. But you can take a mental snapshot that lasts forever, or at least until dementia kicks in (which in my case, may already be kicking.)

The view out my kitchen window is something that has always been a tremendous source of pleasure to me, though it continually changes. From green to gold, gold to white, white to gray and brown. And just when you think one more day of the grays and browns will surely make you perish, the green returns... almost overnight, magically, and without fail. The crocuses begin to pop through the weedy soil in my front yard. The daffodils show up en masse in my neighbors' flower beds. Tulips begin to rear their green leafy fingers, awaiting their turn. The smell of cow poop fills the evening air, and I hate it; it makes me gag. But I know that nasty, putrid smell means the fields will soon be alive with green seedling sprouts, which will grow tall into bright rapeseed fields that blanket the region with shades of yellow. Poppies will come next...and corn, and of course hops. Seasons are the one thing you can depend on here in Bavaria, even if you can't predict the weather.

Living here has made me reflect a lot about the changing seasons. Of course I had the four seasons growing up in New England, but I was too young to ponder such things. Now that I'm older and more sentimental, the changing seasons have become a metaphor for my life. They give me predictability and comfort. We don't fight the seasons because they are oh-so-much-bigger than we are. We can't change them. The seasons control everything. And no matter which is your favorite season, you'll do yourself a favor by learning to make the most of each one as it comes to you....knowing that your favorite will, eventually, come back.

Summers are for Festing, eating eis at the village Eis Cafe, picking sunflowers and gladiolus from the Blumen fields, Biergartens, and August holidays. Even the Kinder Eggs take a break.

Nana and Georgia making a tough decision at an eis cafe in Regensburg

Fall is for raking leaves, Kurbis suppe, harvests, taking long walks beneath colorful canopies of foliage, cozy sweatshirts, and picking apples.

Winter is for warm boots and scarves, Christkindlmarkts, gluhwein, skiing, schnitzel and gravy, flannel sheets, and warm fires.

Rothenburg ob der Tauber Christkindlmarket

Hannah and I enjoying the Nurnberg Christkindlmarkt

Spring is for soccer, Volksmarching, Easter egg markets and hanging colorful eggs all over the trees, Starkbier, Spargel, and more soccer.

Annual Hohenfels Elementary School Volksmarch

Casey's first soccer season with TSV Hohenfels

Spargel!

Living in Germany has shown me the beauty of each season. And each season we have lived here is now Gold to me.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

By Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf,

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day

Nothing gold can stay.