Delicious Spring

This morning I woke up with the windows open. It's the first time since last summer that it's been warm enough to do that...and I have to wait til it's quite warm because of the creatures with which I cohabitate (the birdies cannot have a draft blowing on them). Waking up to the morning sounds and a warm breeze is really the most pleasant way to wake up, I think, and I am not a morning person.

The sunlight and the air put me in such a great mood this morning too. The commuter rail seemed to glide over the tracks on its way to Boston; I looked out the window at the marshy areas in Weymouth and Braintree (I have learned that the left side of the train is the good side). I paused during my re-reading of Kalahari Typing School for Men to check for the lone Canada Goose and the set of turtles on the "turtle log" in a swampy bit before the Braintree T stop.

Once I got on the shuttle bus, I became reabsorbed in my book, but stashed it away when we crossed over Huntington. The trees near the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Simmons and the Fens are blooming and look gorgeous. The leaves are just starting to come out. I really do love spring.

Whenever this change of season happens, I can't help but to think of Kenya. I was there from January to May and yes, there was the marked change between "the dry" and "the wet" but other than that, there was no way to mark the passage of time. As much as my heart sometimes aches from missing Africa, I know that deep down I am a New Englander who requires my year to have four distinct seasons. I feel somewhat unhinged without them. As glorious as Kenya is in both dry and wet, the warmth, the flowers, the birds, there is something truly delicious about New England, Boston, in particular, clawing its way through the grey and brown end of winter to emerge colorful and lush in the spring. Of course by August we'll all be bitching about the heat, the scorched lawns and wilted flowers, but for now, we're reveling in all of April's spring tidings and May's potential. We're soaking up the warm rays of the sun (with SPF 45 on) and thinking "This....this was just what I needed."

Give me a few days and I assure you that I will return to the harried, overworked cranky yankee I normall am ;-) For now though, I'm going to go outside and smell the tulips.