winter is ending. i love the changes of all the seasons but i hate this part, the dying
breath: it is stubbornly cold, still choking out drifts of snow; the city is grey, grey and
dirty and dreary. flowers are waiting quietly, the trees are checking their clocks, and
there is a sense of ebbing patience in the air.
i love the beginning of every season. the first sharp scents of autumn, the sudden
real cold of winter, the sweetness of the blossoming spring — even the bright heat
as summer descends. but it all withers and dies, and there is always a week or two
when you can smell the decay. it is a fading, a perpetual wash: the brilliant oranges
and golds turn to brown in december and the stark sheer white turns to grey in march;
the new flowers, so pink and delicate and shy, by june they are bold and suntanned and
naked. and the saddest are the september trees, still a lurid green, as they give themselves
up to the inescapable grey.