Spring?

It felt like spring today for the first time this year. After weeks of buffeting winds and bitter cold, today was calm and mild. The puddles had melted, the snow piles were gone even from the shady spots, and a loud chorus of birdsong greeted me everywhere I went. In wet woods just up the road from the house, skunk cabbages are beginning to poke their leaves above the water. In our meadow hive, the bees are stirring, ferrying their winter dead out of the box and heading off in search of pollen. Buds are swelling, the first green shoots of bulb plants are stretching out of the dirt, and the good clean smell of earth rises like a mist from the ground. Yay! I'm ready for a change of seasons.

The year's first leaf buds on one of the lacecap hydrangeas