Do March Showers Bring April Flowers?

There's an old cliche back home that April showers bring May flowers. Honestly, I never paid much attention to the expression, mostly because of the fact that I had never been much of a flower person. If you said April showers brings May happy hours, or April showers increases solar power, then I would've shown more appreciation of the fact that a colder and wetter April invites a warmer May.

I think there a couple of things I must state here. First, back home the nature of the San Francisco Bay Area is stunning in its own right, however it isn't really famous specifically for flowers. We have stunning ocean views with crashing waves, towering pine and sequoia trees, jagged mountains, and almost any other imaginable natural setting-yet I can't tell you any place you can go to see beautiful flowers. The second thing, is that I am a typical man. Because of my manliness, I think that I have just assumed that I wouldn't appreciate flowers or anything related to the blossoming world in the springtime. I have always thought of flowers in the spring as a 'girly' interest. I have therefore closed myself off from the aesthetic realm of the power of flower for a large portion of my life.

That all changed when I came to Korea a couple of years ago and noticed the breathtaking scenery of the cherry blossoms in April. It is a beautiful world we live in, and one of the things that definitely contributes to that beauty without a doubt are the lucid white cherry blossoms surrounding cities and the countryside. Additionally, as an added bonus the blossoms come out a bit earlier than one would normally expect. Despite the old notion of an April shower, here we are greeted with Spring bloom almost a full month earlier. The temperatures are still quite breezy and a little uninviting, but not in a way that will keep one indoors. All one needs is a free day, a light jacket, and a 1000 won to hop on a bus to a local temple to take a few snapshots of the hundreds of trees lining the grounds in the afternoon.

Which is what I did last Sunday with my friend Eric. Living in Suncheon in Jellonamdo has a couple of temples both within an hour by the city bus. The easiest to reach is Seonamsa, which can be taken directly from the train station on bus 1 for 1000 won. Once we arrived we quickly bypassed the other tourists piling off of the tour buses and made our way to the temple itself up the hill behind the bus stop. The temple is quite small itself, but the highlight is in fact the sheer beauty of the blossoms popping out of the trees in every direction of the temple.

After firing off about a hundred pictures, we both decided to give our lazy feet a rest and have an ice cream from a souvenir shop. Looking at my watch I had noticed that the month was still actually March. Which meant that, March flowers had already sprung! I guess in Korea March Showers bring just March flowers. There was no waiting or anticipation for anything of the like! The flowers just Sprung like Spring tends to do here. How's that for Korean productivity!