And now, it seems, we are blessed with an early spring. I know that there is a very real possibility of snow again, and everything will freeze up and grey days will drag.
But for now, early spring has arrived on Maple Lake.
As we waved goodbye to daddy this morning I noticed the chipmunks out from hibernation and scurrying around the front garden. Several robins were up in the trees singing their "up, down, up down, up a little more, down again" song. Last night I was out for a run and heard red-wing blackbirds.
I haven't managed to get out for a walk in the woods yet - I'm rather tethered to the ol' homestead having a one year old attached to me most of the time. I have managed to poke around the house, though. There isn't any new growth out there that I have observed, but mosses and other evergreen plants look particularly vibrant when finally free of their snowy cocoon.
My husband announced the other night that he "smelt it". I said, "that disgusting rotten mud smell outside?" and he said, "no, spring. It smells like eight years old". How poetic. And he's right. What other season evokes childhood memories so sharply? Spring is a season full of smells. Some amazing, some...not so amazing. Smell is the sense that can bring us back to times and places we thought we had forgotten.
I know we may not be entirely out of the woods yet, winter wise, and I'm bracing myself for winter's last hurrah. I welcome it, though, and am loving the onset of early spring living in a place where I feel I can intimately observe the changing of the seasons.
As I grew older I began to hate winter with a passion, that was just me, but nothing else could lift one's spirits like the smell of spring.
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