Thursday, February 23, 2012

Thursday, February 23, 2012 - No comments

"Fresh" is in the Air



"Don't you think daisies are the friendliest flower?"

I'd have to agree with Kathleen Kelly (of You've Got Mail fame) on this one. There is just something about daisies that makes me smile. We've had an unusually cold winter for the Eastern Mediterranean - the kind that makes me work from under my covers with the heater on full blast even in the middle of the day. So when I was walking to the grocery store last week, mittens on my hands and a fuzzy scarf tied tightly under my chin, and I saw a patch of white daisies bobbing their heads in the biting wind, I had to laugh at them. "Who told you it was time to show your faces?" I asked them out loud. "Go back to sleep until spring."

But today those precocious daisies are the ones laughing at me - good-naturedly, of course. The weather has taken a sudden turn for the warmer, and it's practically spring-ish outside! The sun's shining brightly - not the "liar-sunshine" that tricks you into wearing your autumn coat and then mocks you as you freeze at the bus stop, but the kind that means hot water for dishes and clothes that dry in just a few hours and cheerfulness itself streaming through the windows. I daresay the snow on the mountains has even receded an inch or two.

Perhaps it wasn't quite warm enough to keep the windows open all day long, but oh, that fresh air did my heart good! Carried on it were the sounds of birds chirping and children playing and the scent of hope and anticipation and fresh life.

See! The winter is past;
the rains are over and gone.
Flowers appear on the earth;
the season of singing has come...

- Song of Songs 2:11-12

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