When I was little I loved the Crayola color called Spring Green. I'm not convinced that I truly understood the origin of the name at the time. I remember thinking that I never saw green so yellow and bright in the spring, just as I remember thinking that grass wasn't really the same color as the crayon named "grass green". But perhaps that was just a matter of location. My Texas grass wasn't the same shade of green as grass green, but I now realize that grasses come in many shades of green.
Yesterday I was entranced by the new leaves on shrubs and on trees. They bright color of new growth, the velvety softness, like new skin. I couldn't help but touch, stroke, caress the new leaves. Even the prickly leaves of evergreen shrubs are silky smooth and tender those first few days. And the new leaves on trees, limp, soft like down.
Already this morning they are firmer, meatier, and you feel the texture of the leaf, the veins in the tree leaves, the coarsening. But the memory of that tender gentle new growth remains.