Wind and sun and a bright yellow tablecloth snapping and kicking on the clothesline. Dog watching a hen watching a black beetle. Two feather-frayed robins hopping into a gust. Even their beaks look blown back. Me on my wet knees, hacking brush and deadwood out of a flowerbed that has no flowers yet but that just possibly might have flowers someday. It's that sort of hopeful afternoon.

from Christabel

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

'Tis a month before the month of May,

And the Spring comes slowly up this way.