[Image]{the pink hail of cherry blossom storms, originally uploaded by manyfires}I am so ready for Spring. The calendar says Spring, the temperature says Spring, and yet the ground is still brown and the trees are still bare. I like winter in New England, but right now I itch to get the chill of it off me. I long for that day in May when everything seems to be bursting forth at once and the trees are covered in a bright green haze of newness.

I've never been to the Cherry Blossom Festival in DC, I hear it is a sight to behold... if you can see beyond the crowds and put up with the traffic. I remember going on Sunday drives in Fairfield with my family the weekend that the dogwoods were in bloom. The volume of them was breathtaking. But there is something to be said for driving down a country road and spotting a lone pink dogwood in the midst of a wood, a stalwart champion of Spring, heralding its arrival alone.