Spring Has Arrived

This is an early post for tomorrow. Tomorrow I will add a new picture of Luke, but I think it's important to post this today. Such exciting news!

Today in the fashion of nearly ALL our recent history, it is gloomy and raining, but I saw my first signs of Spring in our very own yard! Here are my tulips, lilies, buds on my hydrangea, and a little four-leafed weed in Sookie's paw print! I can hardly wait to get some dirt under my fingernails, plant a lawn! When I saw the tiny pink tulip leaves my stomach flip-flopped and I raced inside for the camera with the wild thought, "I have to photograph this before it's gone!"

Winter was so incredibly long this year. I have been going stir-crazy and having mood swings. Even though the snow melted a few weeks ago, it has been grey and the plants are all brown and everything and everyone is tired and dreary.

I can imagine what the end of Winter must have felt like for people surviving on their stored vegetables when Manitoba was first settled. Everyone has lost some weight from depression and malnutrition, the days are getting longer but we don't necessarily have more get-up-and-go, and the land is in the limbo of not being covered in snow and frost, but we are still not able to get out and plant. Everything is gaunt, drab, bleak and tired-looking.

And then with a sigh of relief, and an anti-climatic drizzle, Spring proves (against all odds) that She was not a figment of our imagination and-at long-last-arrives.