And we haven't even hit the rhododendron season yet.
It's all so beautiful and so full of life and hope and great expectations. It's enough for even a dyed-in-the-wool pessimist like me to break a heart over, for the sheer beauty of it, for the sound of birdsong in in the air and the sunlight which is warming now and is no longer that brittle sharp winter light which pierces like an icicle where it lands - this light flutters and folds around tender shoots, the beat of butterfly wings, the softness of new petals.
It's usually fall and winter that have my vote - I like it when the days get cooler and the light gets sharp and uncompromising and the winter days follow one another as though etched in frost and glass - but really, spring, out here where we live.. it's enough to convert me. At least right now, right at this instant, when I'm watching flowers open like children's dreams.
It's spring.