Spring At Last

It's feeling like the snow storms that fall freely up here on the hill have finally moved on for a while - at least for the next 6 to 7 months or so.  The massive piles of snow all around the house and property are finally beginning to recede, freeing up areas to walk and assess the damage from the long winter.

That said, it was windy yesterday - one might say brisk! So, the wood stove down in the basement was in service, and took the edge off inside. Which is the only place you want to be when those icy gusts tear up your eyes, freeze up your leg bones, and encourage the drip on the tip of your nose.

Holidays, and the emergence of spring, especially, sparks memories of Mom. Though I don't celebrate much these days, I drove by a house the other day that had a small shrub in front decorated with plastic Easter eggs, reminding me of the many times Mom would decorate for the holiday. She'd put plastic colored Easter eggs on a shrub or small tree in front of her house, and even long after us kids were too adult to receive a basket of candies and small gifts, there would still be a small basket of chocolate eggs at each plate set at the table for the holiday. Mom would also have snipped a small branch from a birch tree a few weeks earlier, set it in a beautiful vase of water, decorated it with small, delicately painted wooden eggs, and placed that either as a center-piece or on the buffet.

She and Dad would have gone to a Sunday service, and once she was home, she's pull together a grand meal. We'd all gather and eat and drink and usually the weather would be nice enough to stroll around and admire the crocus, tulip, daffodil and forsythia blooms. The happy chirps and trill of the Red Breasted Robins punctuating our delights and Mom's or Dad's spontaneous outbursts from a song echoing the music of the birds.