Yesterday, it rained and rained. Everywhere, the snow has retreated. In spots where I had shovelled away a path, bare ground now lays open. It seems that Winter, who we thought would never leave, is now holding the door open for Spring.
As I went out this morning, a cardinal was singing from his treetop perch, his spirits in no way dampened by all the rain. An occassional “Oak-a-leeeeee” rang out from the riverside, as the newly-returned Red-winged Blackbirds called.
Around each evergreen, a tree ring of dried grass has appeared.
The bright green of a few patches of moss or lichen has appeared along the driveway, and in the farm field next door, the ridges of snow are accented with the dark brown of plowed earth. As Hal Borland observed:
No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.
Willow House Chronicles 