Happy spring!

For winter's rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne, from "When the Hounds of Spring are on Winter's Traces"

The grass is spectacularly green today. It's deep and lush, and my bare feet are just itching to walk in it, to feel the tenderness of it. The daffodil leaves look just the same, and the daffodils themselves are gloriously bright; they look like shattered and shaped fragments of sunbeams. When I look more closely at the lawns, I spot some blue as well. Those tiny gingham-blue flowers that seem to be nameless are in bloom now, and it thrills me to see them, scattered like stars in the green grass. On the downside, all of this brilliant color is especially brilliant because the sky is miserably grey. The contrast is quite startling, actually. There is not a drop of color in the sky; it's completely possessed by a blanket of clouds. Even worse, the clouds are not impotent space-fillers; no, these have rain. And sleet, and supposedly snow. That's right. It's officially the first day of spring, and forecast is predicting snow. What is that?!