Ahhh! Much better.

Until you live in a place where it really becomes winter, where it snows for four months of every year, with below freezing temperatures for much of that time, I do not think you can full appreciate just how deprived those of us who do live in such a place become. For months we see white, gray, and brown and not much else by way of color in the world around us.

Unrelenting chill
Oh, how I appreciate
the smell of wet dirt!


Spent Bloom on Snow

It is amazing just how delightful a trip to a greenhouse can be during winter. To walk down a long aisle of magnificently cyclamen, reveling in their cyclonic blooms, summons all the hope of spring.


Water Drops on Cyclamen

The humid air is awash with the smell of dirt and green growing things, scents forgotten since early November. The intensity of the colors dazzle the eyes - Where to look next?!


Ka-Pow!

And for those few brief minutes it does not really matter where you look. The simplest flower does the trick of rejuvination on one's spirit.


Primroses

Ahhh! Much better.