A Shakedown Day

After a brutal February (the eighth coldest since they started keeping records here 135 years ago), we've finally started warming up. It may be a weekend pass, rather than a pardon, as the last two Marches have seen heavy snowstorms in the middle of the month. Still, it's nice seeing our snowcover melting, and gurgling down the ravines to the pond below. Nature seemed to be having a shakedown cruise today to get ready for spring: the deer shambled down the hill, looking like they'd just gotten out of bed and hadn't brushed their hair yet. They hoped to scrounge a little grass from the back yard, but our small tabby and white cat was sitting there on the retaining wall, with her back to the yard, looking out over the valley that she considers her domain. As the deer silently came up behind her, they startled her, and she wheeled around with her tail up... the deer scattered in an instant, going four different directions, leaping over fences and shrubs as they went. I was admiring the cat's bravery, when I heard the cat door bang, and she flew up the stairs to the upstair's landing... it was a draw, I guess.
I put on my jacket and headed out to the garden, and spent an hour picking up some of the thousands of branches and twigs that had fallen on the garden beds and paths in the recent ice storms. The birds were just getting tuned up today, checking in one by one... first the cardinals, of course; then the chickadees whistling their bittersweet spring call, and the tufted titmice lofting their liquid Peter Peter from the tops of the tall cottonwoods. Finally, the Carolina wren chimed in, with its call of Teakettle Teakettle Teakettle, floating out of the deep ravine. It is not truly spring; the ground is still frozen solid, and slippery with ice melt, but as Swinburne once penned:
The hounds of spring are on winter's traces.