An amazing year for the beauty of Easter

For the past two weeks every conversation has included at least a mention of all the flowering trees we've enjoyed this month.

In particular, the ornamental pear trees have put on an amazing show. So have the tulip magnolias. Now the redbuds are adding their color, and the dogwoods are about to pop, perhaps in time for Easter.

The whole month of March has been ideal for things that bloom. If you don't get excited about blooming trees, perhaps your eye is drawn to the flower beds where hyacinths are particularly bold this year.

And, of course, I have to say a word or two about the daffodils. Have you ever seen such a display?

When I was growing up in the Ozarks over yonder, we called those early golden blossoms "Easter lilies," because their blooms always seemed to coincide with Easter. I don't think I ever heard of a daffodil or jonquil until Â… well, it's embarrassing to admit how old I was.

Country churches in those days didn't get their Sunday flowers from a florist; Easter came too early for real lilies. So women gathered whatever was blooming and brought bouquets with their stems crammed into Mason quart jars. A few buckets of pussy willow and forsythia would add to the marvelous display. And if the dogwoods were blooming by Easter, they were given a place of prominence in the little churches, because of their bloodstained symbolism of the sacrifice on the cross.

Nowadays churches are filled with spectacular lilies, which are wonderful to look at. But sneezing does increase when the lilies appear.

While the trees are showing off and the early bulbs are turning into bright hyacinths and tulips, isn't this the time to dye Easter eggs?

When I was young, coloring Easter eggs was an important part of the season.

(I just checked on the Internet. You can, indeed, still purchase Rit dye. That's good to know.)

We used eggs from the henhouse, boiling them in preparation for decoration. Then there was the dipping and dipping and dipping into cups of dye-filled water, trying to get the brightest and boldest color possible. Sometimes you would dip an egg into more than one cup, achieving a blended color no one had ever seen before. That was magic.

Easter eggs were meant to be hidden and found. This was an outdoor activity, both at home and at church. If the weather turned rotten, which it certainly can do for Easter, the egg hunts would be held indoors. Finding eggs behind a pile of old hymnals gathering dust in the pulpit was always a special prize.

Occasionally, of course, not all the hidden eggs would be found -- until the smell led you to them and they were properly disposed of.

Most Easter eggs were, eventually, eaten. It would be wrong -- maybe even a sin? -- to waste a good egg just for fun.

Without young children or grandchildren, we've lost touch with the modern take on Easter eggs. Do parents still boil eggs to be dyed at the kitchen table covered with old newspapers? Or have chocolate and plastic eggs become the thing?

My wife and I drove by a yard this week filled with brightly colored plastic eggs the size of footballs. They were fun to see, but it was sad to think that no kid risked staining his shirt or jeans with egg dye.

Here's hoping you are preparing for Easter and that you are careful with egg dyes. On the other hand, there is something to be said for purplish blotches on the kitchen floor that resist any attempt to remove them. Those are the stains that bring back good memories. The floor was stained when your brother -- or was it your sister? -- tried to pour two cups of dye, yellow and blue, into the cup with red dye and, in the process, knocked over the cup with orange dye trying to keep the red dye cup from overflowing.

We are all stained, in one way or another, by our childhoods. I hope your Easter is filled with good memories. Drive around and see all the "Easter lilies" in bloom. Let your eyes feast on a mature pear tree resplendent in white. Get ready for the flowering crab trees.

Spring is here, and it's wonderful.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.