The flipside of Easter

Easter has always represented a bit of a mind-fuck (excuse the french) for me. See, easter is all about the birth of new life, specifically Christ dying and rising again. But it's also represented by the birth of spring - eggs, bunnies, spring flowers, etc. The thing is, on my little scrap of the earth, as I'm sure it is for most in the Southern Hemisphere, it's nowhere near Spring right now. And so I find myself - as I do at Christmas with the snow/blinding heat paroxism - finding easter's acoutrement of all-things-spring somewhat ironic. And then I find this little gem and have to take a photo, because apparantly even the mushrooms are getting into the swing of things:

It looks like an egg, no?
I snapped that yesterday, while wandering around my Uncle's farm in the mountains behind the area I spent much of my childhood. I also stumbled across this perfectly framed glimpse of the endless hills ambling along the horizon:

This year easter is a little less ironic for me, and not just because of the mushroom. With the rains we've had over the last few months, and the fires of last spring, these hills are greener than I've ever seen. They've found new life in the last moments of summer and, with that, brought new life to a once dead valley and all its flora, fauna, and peoples. The easter message - from death springs new life and hope - seems to resound around this place, even without spring on the doorstep.