the incredible signs of spring

Me, I always looked for flowers. In March -- tiny green shoots first, then buds, then the full face of a crocus or snowdrop.

Too, Spring arrives with daylight savings time, though in recent years this has been complicated, as I have been going through two separate daylight savings jumps - one here, and one a few weeks later in Europe (to be repeated this year).

And now I have another marker -- a beautiful one at that!

But first, there is breakfast. With daffodils. (Grocery stores begin carrying them by the bucket load a good month before they open up their bright faces outside.)







And even earlier, there is farmhouse cleaning: the upstairs today, the downstairs tomorrow. And writing! Don't forget about writing!

Alright. I'm happy to have a clean home (or at least a clean bedroom and bathroom) and I am very happy to finish the editing job on the next one of the (too many) chapters of my Great Writing Project. But it's sunny outside and we're a bunch of degrees above freezing. Many on the east coast would be green with envy. Ed and I need to spend some time outdoors.

We do the easy walk -- on the trails of the newly discovered park segment just up the road. Through a dormant prairie...






... Onto a slip of land jutting out into Lake Waubesa...






(where you will still find a few bold fisher people doing their thing...)






An hour later, we are driving home and this is when spring really hits me in the face full blast. I mean, I knew they was coming, I heard them, I sensed their presence, but seeing is believing, no?
















The sandhill cranes fly away from our state for the three months of winter: they leave in December and come back in March. They are back now.










And that makes me so happy!