Hanging on hints of spring

Between the weather and the flu, February felt like it was sucking the life out of me, and I take the arrival of March as a sign of hope. This is perhaps a universal sentiment...

We talk about spring as at hand before the end of February, and yet it will be two good months, one sixth part of the whole year, before we can go a-maying. There may be a month of solid and uninterrupted winter yet, plenty of ice and good sleighing. We may not even see the bare ground, and hardly the water, and yet we sit down and warm our spirits annually with distant prospect of spring. As if a man were to warm his hands by stretching them toward the rising sun and rubbing them.

-- Henry David Thoreau
March 2, 1859

(from The Thoreau Blog)