March 18th, 2011

Yesterday, - what a lovely morning!

The clouds are light and buoyed with whipped cream, so they float  airily through a bright blue summery sky.

The air is still, and warm.  Breakfast over, and I am out in the garden, tackling the rest of the golden straw mulch and Charles is warming up the tractor....

I poke around, moving dead leaves and grass, and underneath the daffodils lie in a beautiful thick mat, tenderly green and bursting with promise .The tulips and grape hyacinth are pushing sword-like through the damp earth and finally the hellebore stubs make themselves known and strive to be part of this sweet March morning.

We come in for lunch, and in the distance I hear the West Wind whining and moaning, spurred on by Old Man Winter where he loiters in the hills.   Enough, he says, in a querulous voice - they've had enough - a small taste is plenty - go, go now and blow up a storm, - scatter those summer clouds and make room for my dark brooding babies.

And so the West Wind comes and blows the top off one of the bird feeders, whirling the others around while the little birds cling to the edges, and the crows caw caw and wheel through the air and down into the orchards, and the sky grows grey and sombre.

Today I am making muffins - the tractor man is hunched at his computer, listening to music and reading the news..  Off to the west the hills are hidden by misty clouds.  Snow falls on the mountain tops. But the promise of spring is still green in the garden, and we look for Tomorrow and content ourselves with the forsythia sticks and pussy willows blooming in the house.

Charles is much more sanguine than I about this late spring and constant snowfall in the hills as

he anticipates the underground aquifiers in the valley being replenished from the snow pack as it sinks and spreads itself into the ground.