The snow has melted, at long last, here in Northern Virginia. We have relatively solid, earth-toned ground beneath our feet again.   Gone are the high banks of  gray snow that had lined the roads, making it nearly impossible to venture out of our neighborhood on two legs or four.  Kiko had become increasingly frustrated, bored with each day’s limited circuit.  In recent mornings, he prances excitedly as we head toward  the winding county road that offers a choice of routes and a million fresh new smells. 

It looks, feels and sounds like March, just as it should.  As the wind whistles around the corners of the house, I can hear Winnie the Pooh commenting on the blustery day.  The sky is in constant transition.  One moment white fluffy clouds race across the deep blue.  The next, the sun shines in golden streaks through a leaden blanket.  The raw, newly exposed fields by the lake are the color of straw.  Bird choruses are tireless.    

 

On our lawn, so recently flattened by snow, green blades of grass are interspersed with white.  It’s a speckled, signature look of early spring that I love. 

Budding branches are sharply highlighted against a brilliant blue sky.  Spring is, without a doubt, in the air. 

And in the ground.  In a little patch of desolation beneath our still bare redbud tree, our first crocus blooms.  Every year it amazes me that these delicate-looking, solitary little flowers on thread-like stems manage to force their way up through the cold, dark bleakness of the earth.  Proof of spring’s reliable, eternal, unstoppable dependability.