Self portrait. 6:00 AM.

Spring is pretty much here at this point. A lot of folks are saying it is finally here but come on. It is here. That is enough. Here, where the field slopes up from the river, the fields are greening. The flood waters have receded, at least this far from the lake. The house wren is back, happily singing in the old Christmas tree farm. White crowned sparrows are pecking away at the remainders from the bird feeders. The sun rises earlier each day.

In some places, daffodils have faded to brown. Ours are just blooming. We still have apple blossoms and lilacs to look forward to smelling. We were in California recently. In Santa Barbara we smelled a garden full of thousands of roses, of scores of colors and shapes. It was an olfactory delight let me tell you. Roses won’t be blooming here for a while. Green has just arrived, yellow in its heals. Other colors are on the way.

Savannah Sparrow enjoying the spring day

Each day things get a little more beautiful. Rain has fallen the past couple of days. It has not fallen all day but on an off. Things get wet and the sun comes out and everything shines. Then it rains again. Water hammers the porch roof, then the solar panels start making kilowatts again. Then drips fall off my hat brim. Rain gives me a lens to look through–real and metaphorical. Wordsworth said “The world is too much with us,” that, when it comes to nature, we “are out of tune;/It moves us not.” But the savannah sparrow singing over the new grass, and the rings of raindrops in the puddles, and the buds bursting from the maples, all those, as he put it, “make me less forlorn.” I keep my heart yet.