Chickens close their eyes while pecking!

And an hour later, the next band of snow swung through.

Cut flower season has returned. My vases have been so lonely, my windowsills so naked.

These may be the lucky ones. Their companions, outside tonight:

Let’s go back to this, shall we? Isn’t that color a shock to the heart gone dead during winter?

Now that’s better.

Damage control begins in the morning.  I suspect that soon there will be many short-stemmed daffodil arrangements in this house.

Woke to three inches of snow on Monday, yesterday started with socked-in fog and ended with the wind blowing the broom straw in the fields flat to the ground. And today was 62 degrees and sunny with a dusting of snow forecast overnight.

Spring.

In my front yard right now.

These tiny irises—planted just last fall—are just a few inches tall, and yet their color is so violent in this winter landscape that to look upon them assaults the eyes. In the best possible way.

Tuesday morning it rained harder than I’ve heard it rain in a long time. By midday, though, the skies were clear. So I headed out to walk up a mountain at Mint Springs Valley Park. I figured I owed Tucker an outing as he’d been inside all day Monday while I attended my master gardener class.

The rain was still pouring down the mountain, turning the trails into creeks. It made for beautiful but very muddy hiking. I have many times swum in the lake at Mint Springs, which has a nice sandy beach and is ringed by mountain ranges. But this was my first time on the trails at the park.

There were a couple of old homestead chimneys along the path.

And the lime green evidence of spring just starting to appear.

I was hiking along the ridgetop and was clobbered by a fragrance memory as I entered a grove of pines. For a minute I was zapped more than a decade back to college and hiking in the pine forests of Mount Lemmon near Tucson, Arizona.

Looking southwest over Greenwood toward Nelson County.

First tick of the season, crawling in the waistband of my jeans. It hadn’t bitten me yet, but definitely signaled the insect misery of the summer to come.

Super happy flying trail dog

The upper lake at the end of the hike. In all we did a few miles up, and then down, the Little Yellow Mountain. The trails aren’t extensive at Mint Springs, but they travel through a nice variety of topography and best of all, I was the only person on them.

As I was leaving the park I saw this blazing barn in an old apple orchard. I ditched the car, jumped out,

scrambled across a creek on this handy fallen tree,

and got a few photos right before the sun ducked behind the mountain and the whole scene went dead.

Don’t read Annie Proulx in front of the wood stove alone during a power outage while heavy snow blows horizontally outside the window and the wind screams down the chimney. YOU WILL FREAK YOURSELF OUT!

Instead, try Tina Fey’s “Bossypants.” Good for a unexpectedly feminist laugh and a reminder of 21st century luxuries like “30 Rock.” And, oh, t.v. And electricity.

And when you’ve read that straight through, continue on with a healthy dose of Joel Salatin’s “Folks, This Ain’t Normal.” Which will make you feel so wonderfully normal as you get up to fill your wood stove with wood you fed, named, petted, felled, split, stacked and carried in yourself.

P.S. Please do read Annie Proulx at any other time. She is just such a freaking badass in the way she lays down a story, and her writing thrills me in a way few others do.