A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood

Ah, sunshine. Three days in a row of sunshine! With more to come -- Yahoo Weather keeps moving the prediction for rain four days out! After a winter that gave us 197.8 inches of snow, which you don't get without days and days and days and days and days and days and days of clouds, three days in a row of sunshine! My great-grandmother used to say, "Thank God for small favors, and large ones in proportion." And this, I am here to tell you, is a large one. Were these Old Testament times, I would be burning sacrifices. Botanical, rather than zoological, as I would still be a humane woman, one would hope. Sunshine is a rare event here, any year. This year it is a flipping miracle.

Instead of waiting inside for the Care-A-Van to pick me up, I am going outside and waiting there. At home, there is a small pocket park less than a quarter of a standard block away, that has two benches that were covered in snow from November through the end of March, and wet from rain until Tuesday! When I sit on them, I can see downhill to Admiralty Island. Across the street from work, Rainbow Foods has a bench that has been in the same condition as the ones on 8th Street. Ah, the wonder of it all. Usually my afternoon pick-up I'm hoping the driver doesn't get delayed so I can get home at a decent time, but now I'm perfectly willing for him to be late while I sit and watch the ravens and work on freckle maintenance.

I'm working on building up the strength in my back, lost what with one thing after another over the last few years, and so now that there is no ice on the street, on the way downhill to work, I am getting out of the CAV earlier each week and walking the rest of the way. Today I saw crocuses and there are tiny green leaf buds on the tips of the tree branches. Just a sort of haze, at this point, but such a promise! And with almost 15 hours of sunlight already, the plants will take off and we will have fully leafed trees and flowers galore faster than you would believe if you haven't lived here.

I'm far from the only one with a new spring in my step, and the normally friendly people in this small town are practically effusive right now. We've been let out of winter! There is still snow melting on the mountain tops, so the creeks are running full. The avalanche danger decreases by the day, and no one is bothering to set off the guns and trigger any these days.

It's up to 50 degrees and taking a walk at lunch I don't need my jacket, which I'm not buttoning in the cooler mornings at any rate. Soon I will have it cleaned and put it in the closet for the summer. And that presents a minor problem, since I don't like to carry a purse and without jacket pockets (since it is reversible, two outside and two inside) where am going to put my wallet and keys and check book and calendar? They just don't put enough pockets in women's slacks! That all the days of my life would be full of such problems!

Crocuses courtesy of Nancy Rotenberg, natural tapestries