Breathe In, Breathe Out...Repeat

The wind is relentless, a persistent hair-whipping, tree-rocking, wind-chime conductor's exclamation point to the month of April. I can't recall so many days marked by wind, but it's not surprising after such an unexpected Winter....deep, cleansing breath gusts, exhaling the long frigid nights and piles of snow, inhaling beginnings. Today it's a sun-warmed wind, but rumor has it that the gusts are pulling heavy rain, freezing tempratures and possibly even a smattering of snow behind it. In mid-April. I know it happens, but we have the barest beginnings of rhubarb blushing against the soil; she survived the Winter even though we never quite got around to moving her from pot to ground.

I know Winter can rear its hoary head even into May; I remember joyfully spending one Mother's Day planting tomatoes and basil and zucchini, only to lose it all to a hard frost. But still....the quince buds are tiny, pea-sized kaleidoscopes,

the geese are flying north even by the light of the moon, wrens are singing their sweet dee-Deet-dee-dee-DEE song, and I passed a golden-brown colt walking close to its mama's side as I drove past a stud farm on my way to work Saturday.

Ah, and Saturday! I'm so enjoying my new job, but Saturday required every ounce of will power to turn into the parking lot after a glorious drive. I passed the tiny gargoyle at his lonely solitary post, newly emerged from the snow at the beginning of a long farmhouse driveway. White wraiths of fog drifted off the remnants of last Summer's corn fields shimmering gold in the morning sun. A male ring-necked pheasant posed next to a farm field as if waiting for the next Peterson's Field Guide photographer to discover him. As I neared the Taconics, thick clouds tumbled in the gentle mountain clefts like breaking waves. Dragging my feet towards the library door, I heard red-wing blackbirds and a killdeer. All day long people sang the praises of the beautiful day. It was the kind of day that lets one bask in the unspeakable joy of the Universe. And the kind of day that promises that Spring will finally, truly come. Briefly....until Summer shows up, anyway.