THE FIRST WHIFF

Inspired with the first whiff of Spring I was out working yesterday in the Winter shambles of the garden, at last raking out the cedar twigs, digging in the compost, throwing on some dolomite, trying to get anything - anything at all - out of the tool shed (when it’s cold I tend to just toss tools, twine, buckets, snow shovels etc. in there quickly and head indoors, so over the Winter months the overall mass gradually becomes the gardener’s equivalent of the Gordian knot).

About evening the manic warbler joined me in the early spring endeavor thing, apparently having forgotten his songbook from last year, so singing perforce from memory, without apologies he just broke into a kind of disjointed medley of old favorites from back around the time of Charlie Parker and riffed that over and over and over and over until it sounded like he fell off the branch, he was so happy with the breath of Spring.

The first whiff will do that. We’ll get everything straightened out, just like Spring will.