A promise of spring

As I was walking across the yard to fill the bird feeders today, I saw a promise.  In the middle of a swirl of dead  brown leaves and weeds was a welcome sight: slender green shoots - the first sign that the  jonquils  are waking up from their long winter sleep. This winter has been strange.  At Christmas time,  the weather was  too warm and seemed totally out of season. Then the  winds and rain moved in, bringing freezing temperatures and day after day of bone-chilling cold.  There were times when it seemed the sun had taken a permanent vacation and had no intention of returning. There have been days when I felt that spring would never get here, that  some force was holding it captive and would refuse to release it. I 'm reminded of the passage from Hemingway's A Moveable Feast  where he recounts similar feelings:

“With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life. This was the only truly sad time in Paris because it was unnatural. You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.

 In those days, though, the spring always came finally but it was frightening that it had nearly failed.” ~Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

  But now,  with the  tiny  jonquil shoots reassuring me that spring will indeed finally come, I feel reassured.