Spring is a scamp, and fickle these days to be sure, but it is back with enough wherewithal to end this hermit-blogger’s hibernation. And after a winter of fierce highs and lows, he cannot help but welcome a kind bit of mud, and that foreign, trickling sound — running water! — from nearby ditches.

Today’s walk was a quick tramp down highway 22, over to a neighbour’s place. Conditions ran the gamut as sun, wind, and clouds competed for superiority — leaving causality the poor pedestrian who finds himself at odds with balm and bluster, and tempting him to accept rides offered by pitying driversby. Indeed, Dirletonians are kind folk. But to drive is to miss March’s competing smells: thuja, woodsmoke, and manure.

The window-thermometer gave up the ghost, I remember, succumbing to January’s worst, as we all thought we might do. It fell into a snowbank, and disappeared. Yet this fate is all but forgotten now. Outside, we can plainly see that it is warm enough, as can our impecunious tenants — the squirrels in the roof, the mice and voles in the walls — most of whom have given their notice, at least for the next little while.