Who’s ready for spring? Winter doesn’t usually bring me down. Short days are all the better for reading while wrapped in a quilt, and I love fires and big pots of soup. But this year, by mid-February, I’d had enough. Please, I thought, no more walking on sodden ground. No more bicycle commutes that end with me slopping my wet clothes into the bathtub and shivering until the furnace kicks in. No more gray sky, gray earth and gray attitude.

Today, it’s still rainy, but seemingly overnight the daffodils have shot up, and some even have buds. On my walk to the grocery store last week, I passed through clouds of daphne and osmanthus. Best yet, it stays light past six o’clock…

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