I'm not one for rushing the seasons by. I'm not wishing for spring by the middle of February; I like mid-February just the way it is. And I like March the way it is.

This strange and fickle month has no mercy on any of us. When the body aches for a snow day, we get an overcast 50-degree day that never quite produces even a drop of rain. When we'd like to wash the car, the air is 20 degrees with the wind chill.You can't plan or prepare or pretend to know the slightest thing about what to do next in March. March will let you know. The only true thing about March is that it is scheduled to deliver spring. And it does.

I like to feel spring coming in days that are little-by-little longer and warmer and brighter. It was especially nice one cold and very windy day at the very beginning of the month when it seemed the hand of March lifted the lid off the pot of winter and air and light spun round and round and the sky could not be bluer. It was a magical day, and I was happy to be out in it with my camera. I happily posted a photo from that day on my blog--a birch tree against the blue sky. A blogger in England chided me for failing to come up with something springier. I laughed out loud. What could be springier than a blue you could dive into after so many weeks of grey dull days that looked the same from beginning to end?

On another day, someone else stopped by my blog and registered approval of a images of new boxwood greenery, warmed-up rhododendrons, geese, and birch leaves about to let go in the wind. She said her family makes a game of counting the number of signs of spring they see. I like that sort of game, and I have tried it myself.

After a week of shaking off the residual effects of the flu, I was able to take a walk and work in my little garden and enjoy all the signs of a spring that is not so far away. I came across baby squirrels and hungry robins, countless of those temporary streams that babble through the melting woods, bird songs of every kind, the sound of woodpeckers fast at work, divots in the soft moss where squirrel after hungry squirrel had dug for a new meal, buds on the hydrangea bought at church years ago to remember loved ones in no danger of being forgotten, Canada geese not quite at home in our intemperate pond, boxwood unfolding new waxy leaves to the sun, bulbs from grocery store flowers that insist on their inheritance year after year after year, and neighbors happy to come outside and say, "How have you been?" and "We have missed you."

All of these images are grey and brown and soft. Some of them are mucky. None is very photogenic. This is New England getting on with the business of thawing out, but even the littlest of birds know it's something to sing about. But you have to stand still if you want to hear it. And not wish it was May. And that is a blessing.

More about
Blog Your Blessings