Midwinter Spring

    Midwinter spring is its own season
    Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
    Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
                                    Little Gidding, T.S. Eliot

"Midwinter spring" seems like an appropriate label for these days, even though Eliot was writing about a warm midwinter in England, and ours is a spring that keeps slipping back to midwinter.

Several batches of balloons blew into our back yard one day when the sun was out and the snow had mostly melted and the calendar declared spring had arrived. So I tied them on the birdfeeder in celebration of spring. The photo above was what they looked like the next day, March 21.

Below there is a slideshow of the corner of our front flower bed where the snowdrop bulbs are planted. I took these about every two days between March 3 and 18, eagerly watching for the snowdrops as the snow came and went. And came and went. And came and went. Even with the sempiternal snow, the snowdrops lived up to their name! (If you receive this as an email, you may need to go to the actual website to see the slideshow. The cycle ends with a photo of snowdrops with white blooms).

The view this morning, with the most recent dusting of snow. We haven't made it to "sodden by sundown" yet, though warmer temperatures are on their way.