spring?

I had a friend who had a descriptive phrase that was the opposite of 'indian summer', meant to describe a 'false spring.  This time of year when winter is dragging along, and we are all anxious for a change. Which would be the much awaited season of renewing. I am wondering if we might be looking at an early spring: you are ready for the end of winter, right?

I know what the report was from the groundhog, Phil up there in Pennsylvania - but this is what you might consider an 'alternate ending' to the story from Feb. 2. Just because they dress up pin fancy clothes, does not mean they get to have the last word, or their pronouncements are the absolute infallible truth. Pick the one you like the best....

I was looking around in my yard, on this warm sunny afternoon, to see if I might spy anything that would indicate a reason to hope for a change right here in early February. And see a daffodil or two smiling out at the world, in bright happy yellow. And a couple of hyacinths that are trying to bloom: one white, and another hyacinth blue. Plus buds trying to turn into blooms on the rambling forsythia plants that have quadrupled in size over the years. 

Some of that ever expanding forsythia I have relocated around the yard, some I have given away, some I have sold on Craigs List, some I have dug up and thrown away.  Meaning it is an amazingly hardy and remarkably prolific plant. Always a welcome sight when everything is bare and drab in the final throes of winter. It's not yet showing any of the bright yellow blooms that appear as an unlikely, poorly timed swarm of tiny, sunshine-y butterflies, but a few more days like this of warm sunny days, and those happy yellow blooms will be making me smile.