Snowmelt

The smell, more than anything else, gets to me - it should be disgusting, wet dirt and rotten leaves. But late winter smells clean and effervescent, as the air, frozen for so many months, breaks free in a bubbly rush. I bend down every time I pass a glimmer of green. Is that a new leaf? Or a remnant of autumn, surviving the cold under the snow's thick blanket?

Lying in bed, I hear in the night and in the early morning the CRACK-thud! of mammoth icicles plunging from roof to the soggy ground. Thump, thump, thump. The baby doesn't wake, but the whole world is waking. My tiny thyme has lived through another winter and tentatively extends a stem. The rosebush blushes green beneath its thorns. Hurrah!