“The seemingly everlasting winter has held its grasp far too long. Cabin fever lingers, and we find ourselves bursting with a craving for green grass, budding blossoms, chirping birds, lingering daylight, and the opportunity to shed the layers of clothes we’ve been trudging around in for months now.

And then, finally, spring arrives. As if it has been sleeping for months, the earth begins to awaken.

To me, there is nothing more exciting than the moment the first bit of green, that long-lost and forgotten hue, emerges from the thawing ground.

The moment you can throw open the windows and inhale the first breezes that soften the bracing winter air.

The moment the stillness comes alive with birdsong and buzzing and a constant trickle from the thaw – when the sweet scents of daffodils and forsythia awaken our senses, fiddleheads make their way through the soil, ramps spread wild over the forte ground, stalks of rhubarb gain height, and spring parsnips (wintered over, now sweet) are finally ready to be pried from the thawing  ground.

New life, new hope, and new dreams emerge with this season that I wait for most impatiently, the season of new beginnings.”