Spring is full of happy accidents. Like trying to get a close-up of one Star Magnolia bud and botching it, but then seeing that what I have instead is a picture of a whole web of white branches against a blue sky. The longer I work in the garden, the more I am aware of which colors lift the spirits--and normally I wouldn't say that grayish white is among them. Still, sunlight on these branches brightens what all winter has been a mass of somber grays and changes the palette completely.

The only branches that show their true colors here are the magnolia twigs in the foreground, their bronze-red like blood flowing just under their skin, telling me they itch for spring. All winter these buds have been swelling in their chinchilla coats, looking to the east for some sign that only magnolias know. One day soon, probably the first week in April, they will see what they have been looking for. They will light up the edge of the woods with a cascade of white flowers which will delight neighbors and passersby who look for it every year.

The magnolia is about thirty years old, about thirty feet tall, and one of the true joys of this place in the woods. Until we moved here and my gardening education began in an avalanche of trial-and-error, I never knew that magnolias grew in Minnesota. I hadn't been paying close attention or I would have seen them here and there, but even now they are not common. I have planted two more, a Leonard Messel which failed on its first attempt but whose replacement is now ten feet tall (and ten years old), and one of unknown parentage which appears to be more of a shrub than a tree, but which has buds this year for the first time in its four-year-old life.

Another happy accident here is that this photo shows me something I hadn't noticed before: that quaking aspens--poplars, in common parlance--are trying to get in on the action behind the magnolia. In fact, they look like they are really crowding this wonderful specimen. Then again, they may just be trying to get a close-up, too.