fondness for faux-spring

Early February in Idaho. A sky as cloudless as midsummer. The massive snowfall from a couple weeks ago has melted completely off some peoples' yards. Birds are singing.
The sky is light a little longer every day, and the growing daylight makes dinner and other evening activities sneak later and later.
The sun melts down the snowpack a little more every day, and then it freezes up again during the night. The sun falling on your skin says nice things to it, and a step on the bare, dry pavement brings warmth through the soles of your shoes as noticeable as the cold when you cross a patch of leftover snow and ice. When you go to the car, rather than putting gloves on and spending ten minutes scraping frost and wiping fog and warming up the engine, the seat and steering wheel are pleasantly warm.
The birds have been congregating in the bare branches of the trees and swinging across the sky to their own dance music. Their flute-silver child-like voices and their miniature wavering operatic voices and their pastel-soft, twirling voices never stop.

In all its delight, this springtime weather is messy. Where there is no longer snow, there is dead grass and chocolate-colored mud. A forgotten newspaper in its plastic sheath was discovered this morning just beside my front walk where the snow used to cover it. Other trash is likely to be still hidden under our sinking snowbanks and splotchy yard. My car is splashed with the grime of the city streets. The windshield is grey-flecked and smeared. And the entirety of my car is fouled with the various colored and textured poop of the charming birds that have been hanging out in the tree by my parking spot. The top is liberally, if irregularly, splotched. The trunk is lightly decorated. The slight curve of the hood's length is splattered with interesting piles and drops. Looking through the windshield means looking past the off-white and construction-orange and mustard-brown and different greens splashed on there as if it were a clear canvas for a modern-art painter.

Thankful this faux-Spring day for (#254-263):

dry socks
the magic a hose and some soap and a rag can work in the driveway
glass after glass of cool water
cuffed-up jeans
Louis Armstrong, The Temptations (My Girl), Dean Martin, and Bobby Caldwell
the pale grey of dry pavement, smelling almost dusty
turning off the heater and rolling down the windows
the mixture of windchimes and birdsong outside my house
sunshine almost too bright to look at even through the white curtains
realizing that if it snows on this hopeful town, that's ok; we have a couple months until the season really should be here