Welcome Spring and War Pigs

Today brought the first sun we've seen in England in months: short but delicious bursts of sun punctuating an otherwise impassive cloud cover. And the rain stopped long enough for the slate paving in our garden to dry. This convergence of good fortune lured us outside for a while to observe a variety of spring activities underway all around us:

Male jays, tits, robins and blackbirds battling one another to impress the ladies. A solitary daisy growing out of the lawn. Lady bugs gathered on a fence. A white tailed bumble bee queen searching along the planting beds for a place to set up her colony. Pear and apple blossoms soaking up the intermitent sun. And, new visitors--a beautiful pair of goldfinches at our feeders.

It's been a long, dreary, rainy winter. I can't begin to describe how numbing and depressing it's been. Interminable rain. Skies so heavy and low you slump to avoid them. A damp, penetrating cold that no amount of tea, or wool, or upturned collars can ward off.

When we last lived in New York, I regularly prepared for my morning subway commute by cranking this before leaving the house:



This morning, perhaps out of disdain for the climate, we turned to vintage Black Sabath. I've always felt a place's climate shapes the kind of music produced there. It couldn't be more true here. Despite it being 7:45 am, the music somehow felt cheery; it at least gives you a sense of having a fighting chance against the gloom: