March

"The following March, Mr. Linton had put on her pillow, in the early morning, a handful of golden crocuses; her eye, long stranger to any gleam of pleasure, caught them in waking, and shone delighted, as she gathered them eagerly together.
"These are the earliest flowers on the Heights!" she exclaimed. "They remind me of soft, thaw winds and warm sunshine and nearly melted snow. Edgar, is there not a south wind, and is not the snow almost gone?"

That beautiful extract from "Wuthering Heights" is so apt today, on the verge of March! After so much snow and ice and gloom this long winter, today there was a southerly wind and even a dawn chorus of spring birds singing so beautifully even before it was light.

March is such a wonderful time - and the pun on the name seems so apt! The march forwards after the long sleep of winter, the earliest herald of spring, or new life, of new birth of hope and wonder. Isn't funny how every year, when spring comes and the daffodils and snowdrops and crocuses surprise us - and still more, later, when the blossom begins to form - we notice it and comment on it and even strangers in the street look different because the sun has come out? It's like we never saw spring before. It's like everything being new forever...As, indeed, it surely is.