Or in this case, back on the snowplow. We played, “Little House on the Prairie,” yesterday, weathering the fourth largest storm in Denver as we watched golf and I did my “fancy work.” Of course, after staying home for a year, the advice from transportation officials to, “stay home,” was probably redundant.

My sewing skills have become renewed in the last month as I work to finish a few old embroidery projects I started approximately twenty years ago. Being sequestered can have positive outcomes other than sore muscles and an aching back. Baking also comes into play. Cleaning rarely does.

As the snow melts from the windows and quickly dissipates on the roads once that brilliant orb begins its melting task, I know the world will once again be crystalline and sparkling, clean and new. I do not always look forward to Spring and Chaucer’s observed cruelty of it, but this year, I am ready for it. (Mostly because I fertilized the trees and shrubs pre-storm!)

Enough. Off to dig out.

Spring

BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINSNothing is so beautiful as Spring –         
   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;         
   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush         
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring         
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush         
   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush         
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         

What is all this juice and all this joy?         
   A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,         
   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,         
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,         
   Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.