Last night, after a busy expat weekend--walking and talking and gossiping and eating and looking at art--Tom and I went into town, sat at the bar of the Sicilian pizza place, drank beer, ate big slabs of cheesy tomato delight, and watched college basketball. I never quite believed that my beloved northcountry friends would figure out how to find us down here, yet they did, and they do, and they are. The snowpack is deep up north, but here in the variable Portland climate, grass is peeking through ice; there's a scent of thawing earth. We picked out way through ice and puddles and snowcrust, and the winter-bound visitors celebrated their brief foray into spring, before heading back north into 6 more weeks of winter.

Today I need to catch up on schoolwork that got postponed for partying. I need to gird my loins for a week of driving and teaching and poetry events. A big new editing project has dropped on my desk. I'm rereading Fowles The Magus, for the millionth time, and trying to make progress on my second apron so that I can move forward into cutting out the material for my shirt. I have to clean the house. But my seed order has arrived! The cardinals are singing; the chickadees are piping their mating songs. Real spring is around the corner.