For my friends in the snow

It's coming.  Spring really is on its way.  You will have blue skies and green grass and trees in bloom.  The air will be full of the sweet smell of growth.  If you stand quite still, and listen hard, you will be able to hear the buds popping open.  And in the meantime, you have hard freezes which have killed the slugs and bugs, so your summer will be a lot less pesty than ours.

Now that DH is retired, and the weather is SO lovely, we are getting lots of walks.  We took a little stroll through the suburb of Gladstone along the Clackamas River.  

I do love the place where I live.  There is a small-town neighborhood right across the street from this view.  Well, the best part of the view takes me home with him and I get to enjoy him all to myself, but the trees and river and stuff are all part of the suburb.

The cottonwoods smell so good as they are leafing out.  I suck in great lungfulls of fragrance as we walk.  Sometimes I make myself dizzy.

Usually the flowering plum is seen through a mist of soft rain, against a cloudy gray sky.  But this year we have had the 3rd driest march on record, and blue skies with fluffy clouds has been a lot more common.  I worry about the water reserves, but I also revel in the exceptional warmth and sunshine!  This is March for crying in the sink.
And so, as my birthdate commands, I March fourth.