The hillsides are a melange of every shade of green. Purple wisteria drapes from the canopy, a pastel shawl thrown around verdant shoulders. I’m just home from 10 days on the road. While I revel in tracking the minute shifts from micro-season to micro-season, a stretch of time away reveals the speed with which the landscape is changing as spring fleshes out into early summer. We drove up the driveway and I stood on the deck to see, with stark relief, how those minute shifts stack up into great leaps. Our vast yard feels crowded, the yawning spaces between buildings now thick with green. Just days before leaving, I was digging the first bamboo shoots with my 6 Spring Bounty guests. We shuffled through the leaf strewn grove searching for the tiny, spiky tips poking out of the ground. In that same grove several shoots now stand far taller than I, their tips up hight and out of reach.

While it’s the deciduous trees that burst forth, draped in newness from head to toe, the pines too, in their understated way, are flashing new growth. If it seems the deciduous trees are showing off a whole new wardrobe, it could be said that the pines, with pops of color at the tips of every finger, are flashing nail art in the latest shade of spring. It’s time to head out and harvest them. I’ll make a cedar tip tisane, the citrus freshness sweetened with honey, for cocktails and tea.