Spring Is Springing (Hopefully)

One day there is deep snow, and everyone is going about in woolly hats, gloves, boots and parkas. The next day, we are going about in light jackets, short sleeves and sneakers, and a few ebullient souls are even contemplating shorts. Temperatures are well above freezing, skies are brilliantly blue, and dazzling sunlight turns everything in sight golden.

In the park, pileated woodpeckers are excavating nests, a process that will take several weeks. Starlings are donning warm weather plumage and putting on bright yellow beaks, and a pair of crows is building a nest in the big pine behind the little blue house. Every once in a while, they take a break from flying in and out of the old tree with nesting materials, sing their pleasure in the season, preen each other, do a little dancing and execute brief "flurry flights" over their territory.

A clump of snowdrops emerged from dead leaves and sun warmed soil in the woods this week, nodding their delicate heads in greeting as we (Beau and I) headed up the trail one fine morning. Remembering the colony from a whole sheaf of Aprils gone by, I hunkered down and thanked them for showing up this time and blooming. Getting down to earth was all right, but getting up again was quite another story.