Sarah's prompt: "exploring somewhere you know well"

I hear the water flowing somewhere off to my left. There’s a blue jay making a terrible racket up ahead. Spring is making its appearance in big and small ways along this path. There are new shoots appearing on the branches of the trees, some so pregnant with them you’re certain if you look away and look back they will have burst forth in that short time. Amongst the trees here and there you will see one or another covered in white or pink or lavender blossoms. In another couple of weeks they will have green leaves on them and look like every other tree but now is their time to shine, to inspire, to cause you to wonder about them.
As a high school English teacher I feel the same way about my students. Most of them look the same but here or there are a few that are blooming in amazing ways. The potential, the possibilities of what could be is there to be seen by those who are paying attention. Too soon they will look like the rest, hopefully there is a harvest of something sweet to come but sadly I’ve watched the blossoms fall away and fruitless they live the lives of everyone else. Not understand that they have opportunity to shine.
Like the trees, there are times of blossoming and times of harvest and interestingly enough those times vary. Peach trees bloom and produce fruit within a few short weeks. It takes pineapple plants years to produce a single fruit. Perhaps my students, that I have seen bloom, will have opportunity to produce before their gifts are destroyed by blight or neglect, the wearing of the day to day life they have to live. Perhaps they will find that match that will bring fruitfulness to them, that cross pollinator that will help bring forth the sweetest of fruit in their lives.
As I walk further I suddenly come to a place where the river comes near the pathg I see the water has risen high and there are wild flowers growing everywhere, I wish there was a way to bottle this sense of fresh hope. Save it, store it to be given as gifts to those who have grown weary in the day to day, to remind them and myself of what can be found here down a path, around a bend and just beyond the winter.