Primavera, the Italian word for springtime, is also the name of Botticelli’s famous painting. I was privileged to see the original in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy, and stood before it for hours, entranced by its beauty. There are over 500 identified plant species depicted in the painting, including 190 different flowers.

Detail of Flora

As I write this, the earth shifts into the vernal equinox, the time when there is an equal number of hours of light and dark all over the earth, and the official start of spring for the northern hemisphere. I’ve been dreaming of light in dark places lately, even of singing of light in those places. Without light, we cannot see color and it is color that is promised by the arrival of spring.  As in Botticelli’s depiction of Flora scattering flowers on the earth, the vernal equinox signals a shift in the turning of the earth to more light and new growth.  Happy springtime!

Images of Primavera courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.