Spring

The weather's being cooperative today, by which I mean it didn't rain in my neighborhood, and the clouds cleared out. I did some wandering about in the resulting sun, having brunch, running to Trader Joe's. The trees have almost all put out their first shoots, and some of them even have all their leaves, tiny and tender and lovely. There were a good number of small, battered leaves on the sidewalks everywhere, because yesterday we had a ridiculous ten minute hail storm followed by stiff and steady rain for a long while, with wind and thunder and lightning scattered throughout. But all that was just a memory today, except, I suppose, to the trees that lost those leaves. They might regret that later.
Spring's probably my favorite season in Seattle. Winter tends to the chilly and gloomy: perpetually overcast, misting rain, late sunrises and early sunsets. Summer is gorgeous, but I'm a real heat wimp, and I burn easily, so too much sun is the sort of thing I reach in about ten minutes. Fall has its charms: apple season, the first woodsmoke on the air, the leaves changing color. But it's getting colder and darker, too, and eventually all those leaves will be in giant, moldering piles on the sidewalks, in the gutters, on the edges of lawns. Spring though: the days are getting longer, and warmer; the air is scented from the plentitude of flowers everywhere, legs cautiously emerge from pants into shorts and skirts, and everyone starts to smile again. Your favorite restaurant sneaks three little tables out onto the sidewalk and if it's not too late in the day, if the wind isn't too bad, if it isn't still cloudy, you have a perfect hour there sipping a coffee or a glass of wine and pretending you live in Paris or someplace where sophisticates do that sort of thing every day.
It's a slow build, spring in Seattle (remember that hail storm I mentioned, and all the rain, too.) But it's the time of hope, and wonder, and delight, and that's the important thing.