Ray of Sunshine

It has been gloomy, cloudy, blustery and showery the past few days. The snow is gone but mud is everywhere. I know that the muddy season needs to come before Spring really arrives but it has been so thick and dirty that I have almost been missing the bright cold days of the past few weeks which were great for working outside.

On the one hand we feel impatient for Spring to arrive but on the other we have so many things to do before our first animals arrive (laying hens later this week!)  that our to-do lists are a mile long and it is difficult to decide what to do first. It was in that torn frame of mind yesterday that I was driving to town through the rain on some errands. Not far from our house my eye was caught by a flash of yellow on a lawn. I pulled over and was delighted to see that it was a big patch of winter aconite, a lovely very early spring flower that naturalizes on lawns. We had some in BC and brought some bulbs with us, hoping they would do well here. And there, like a ray of sunshine on  this gloomy day, was the largest patch that I had ever seen!

To make me feel even more at home, a little further down the road, I spotted a little clump of snow drops in bloom, a big favourite of ours in our Abbotsford yard. It is mid March, and I am aware that BC people will have seen so many snow drops by now that they likely don’t seem very special any more but that scrawny little clump on the side of our road seemed to me like a special gift from Heaven, a sign from God that all is right with this world, despite the mud, rain and our busyness.