I’VE NEVER TRAVELED to Washington, DC, thus never seen the masses of cherry blossoms. I’m quite certain I would love them. Flowering trees began blooming here about two weeks ago and I can’t get enough of their beauty.
Whether pink or white, the petals add an artistic and poetic touch to the landscape. It’s as if an artist meticulously brushed petals upon a tree. It’s as if a poet wrote lovely words upon apple and ornamental trees, petal by petal.
In poetry, every word counts. In art, every brush stroke matters. On a flowering tree, both create a canopy of loveliness.
I don’t paint. But I create with my camera and with words. I write poetry—poetry which has published on the pages of anthologies and literary journals, inspired artists and a musician, graced signs in public places.
And so I see poetry where others may not. A flowering tree is not simply a tree with flowers. It is a work of literary and visual art. It is a love letter. It is a painting. It is romance. It is a thousand stories. It is more than a tree blushing beauty into the landscape on a spring day.
In residential neighborhoods, in parks and in other spaces, flowering trees bloom poetic verse. Above. And in a carpet of petals upon the ground. I’m inspired to write: Apple blossoms fall/like kisses from their lips/teasing, tempting, tasting/not of promised, forbidden fruit/but of young love blooming.
And so spring seems a time of young love. Of beginnings. Of feeling the heart beat faster.
Yet spring also celebrates the seasoned love of many years, even decades, together. Love that has seen countless springs of flowering trees blushing beauty into the landscape. For my husband, Randy, and me, 44 years of married life marked on May 15.
We walk beneath those trees, petals underfoot representing the poetry of days past and those above of poetry yet unwritten.
© Copyright 2026 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Minnesota Prairie Roots 
Courageous crocuses April 9, 2026
Tags: blossoms, cold, commentary, crocus, crocuses, flowers, Minnesota, nature, seasons, spring, spring flowers, winter
EACH SPRING THEY EMERGE, poking through a layer of dried leaves mulching my front flowerbed.
When I spot the tender green shoots of crocuses, I feel a surge of optimism that winter is winding down. However, as a life-long Minnesotan, I also tamp my excitement. Snow falls in April here and sometimes in May. And these crocuses were bursting already in late March.
Days after I removed the leaves, exposing the crocuses to sunshine and air, they grew quickly. Soon purple blossoms spread wide, revealing golden centers like spots of sunshine.
I delight in the shades of purple, notice the lines tracing the petals, the way the flowers hug the ground as if also tentative about the season.
This first flower of spring seems to me courageous. Braving the cold of Minnesota, determined to reach the sunshine, to make a strong statement of hope that the cold and dark of winter will give way to warmth and light.
TELL ME: I’d like to hear your first flower of spring story.
© Copyright 2026 Audrey Kletscher Helbling