Spring arrives in San Miguel during the night, in heavy tarpaulin-covered trucks. They roll by my door in early February—a welcome sight. They carry plants for the annual Candelaria Plant Sale at Parque Juárez.

Scores of itinerant plant vendors roam all over Mexico, converging on whatever city is sponsoring a plant sale at any particular time. Entire families come. They work harder than you or I ever have, unloading tons of potted plants and building booths. They cook meals outdoors and they sleep in their trucks. True nomads, these people are constantly on the road.

They work through the night, lining the walks of our park with tens of thousands of plants.

A midnight ceremony is part of the setting-up ritual, a mixture of Catholic and indigenous mysticism. This woman lays out a cross of burning candles. She's burning resin-scented copal while behind her, men play lutas and the people sing.

A mother and daughter blow conch horns. Mom is wearing a traditional huipil and lace-edged underskirt over her pink J. C. Penny turtleneck.

The woman below is not grimacing in pain from the prickly plant she's holding; she's singing along with the luta players. She's pulling leaves off a Green Desert Spoon. The leaves are used to build a súchil, a sort of traditional altar dating back to prehispanic times.

The ceremony lasted past my bedtime. Next day, I revisited the site of the shrine. You can see the súchil—the yellow feathery things attached to the cross, yet another example of the blending of indigenous tradition with Catholic.

The plant sale opening is announced by floral arches at the park gates. Those are all fresh flowers, plentiful and inexpensive in Mexico.

I walk through an abundance of flowering plants. No commercial nursery could hope to compete with the variety and occasional rarity of the plants here.

Many vendors buy plants from wholesalers. Others grow their own in improvised containers like this rusty can that once packaged Herdez sliced mushrooms.

Filling the basketball courts, a thousand macetas await buyers. The sharp smell of sealer, painted on the pots to order, fills the air.

A doll beckons from among bougainvilleas, eerie, somehow fascinating.

The Candelaria Plant Sale brings our community together. It's a chance to talk with people you haven't seen for awhile.

This year's sale sale brought out 96-year-old resident artist Leonard Brooks.

Early one morning he painted this view of the Candelaria Plant Sale.

Leonard captures its essence better than any photographer could hope to.

The Candelaria Plant Sale opens at the beginning of February every year. And when it does, the chill of winter is replaced by sunny, warm days. Millions of Chinese New Year celebrants are trapped in snow in China. The high today in Minneapolis will be 18º. Here in San Miguel de Allende on February 13, we experience springtime. Those who have managed to find their way to this city of sunshine and flowers can be thankful.