What a lovely, slow Saturday morning--waking to sunshine and no alarm. Now, freshly showered, I sit with my cup and saucer gazing into blue sky, bare branches, glinting snowpack. An invisible crow complains. Young Chuck peers at me through the balusters. The little house quietly breathes. I have nothing particular to do.

Yesterday we had our last zoom meeting before Sarasota. It seems this trip is really going to happen: soon a gang of pallid northern artists will be lurching among snowbirds and hungover college students and long-suffering year-rounders, the four of us gawking naively at tiki bars and roseate spoonbills and expecting alligators to slither out from behind every palm tree. Florida of the Imagination: sinkholes, Republicans, theme parks, hurricanes, poisonous snakes, sunburns, Florida Man, revisionist history, orange juice spurting from every water fountain. Who knows what's in store for us?

Well, for a few more days my life will remain safely refrigerated. Today temperatures are supposed to rise to a balmy 40 degrees, so maybe I can go for a walk without wearing a wooly hat. The chickadees are singing happy tunes, and I ought to figure out my seed order, and yesterday Chuck was amazed by the sight of a possum trundling up the neighbor's driveway. Signs of spring in the frozen north! Who needs manatees when you have a bedraggled possum eating snacks right outside your very own window?