First Day of Spring

At the exact moment of the vernal equinox this morning - 7:02 EDT - I was dropping Richard off near the Starbucks at 35th and 8th Avenue here in New York where a Cape Air shuttle would pick him up, drive him to White Plains where he would embark on a 9 seat Cessna to Lebanon NH where a snow-covered Subaru awaits to carry him on up to chilly Vermont.

As I wrote the above, Richard called from his car, heading north, crossing the Ompompanoosuc River where the reception gets sketchy, and in between static bursts he said that it was a winter wonderland up there, the recent storm having sifted down about 6 to 8 inches of new snow.  Our caretaker at the "farm" (as we've come to redisignate our Vermont place, as the equation of time spent at "home" shifts to favor New York City rather than Vermont) has cautioned us that the roads are very slippery, a coating of snow over both an icy layer, and, below that, the remnants of deep ruts begun a week or so back when balmier weather beckoned in mud season.  Shifts and changes.

After bidding my husband goodbye, I headed north myself for a trek through Central Park in search of crocus (croci?), a large Pain le Quotidian coffee in my mitts for warmth and sustenance.   It felt like an Easter Egg hunt with the crust of snow serving as earthen excelsior.  It took awhile to find some.  There were plenty of daffodils just at the end of their cocoon stage, yellow blossoms tuliped tight within the thinnest of green membranes, but no crocus.  I loved this, since the memory was fresh of last year's unseasonably warm winter with daffodils and crocus blooming in profusion in January.  Finally Shakespeare's Garden just south of Delcorte Theatre became the treasure trove of yellow and purple buds, surrounded by tiny, tiny fireworks of iris exploding around them.  What a delight!  A lowly gardener troweled quietly, quietly beside a hemlock, invisible, hidden.  Everything, even the air, said hush.  Tread softly, tread softly, on mouse feet.  Even the runners were mute as breath, respectful of the fragile beginning of things.  Spring, hope, new, blossom, sun, renaissance, rebirth, color, green, yellow, purple, white.  Blossoms breaking through snow.  There's something of the miraculous in that.  Resurrection!  And now with both New York and Vermont and realistic spring measured against actual spring being about a month apart, we will get to experience spring twice, today in New York and a month from now in the Green Mountain State.  Not bad.  Good.  Lovely, lovely, lovely.

Happy Spring everyone!