View from the bike path

Last ice disks of the season (?), gone now.

There’s been no ice in Travvy’s outside water dish for days now.

No need for my trusty Yaktrax. I just put them in the cold-weather drawer to slumber spring away with my fleece hood, scarf, and most of my gloves and mittens. They’ll go into deep storage when I make the winter-summer switch around Memorial Day.

I haven’t turned my winter lights on since the end of last week. With the sky still light past seven o’clock, I don’t need to brighten the night. Time to put them away too.

The sun has moved far enough north that if I don’t draw the shade in the morning, I can barely see my laptop for the light streaming through the window.

So many signs of early spring are negative. How to photograph things that aren’t there? How to photograph the smell of thawing earth, the feel of the wind? See? says the experienced writer to the novice photographer. Words can do some things that pictures can’t.

The last couple of days I’ve been looking for things I could see.

The rhodrodendrons have been hunkered down all winter, their leaves drab and droopy. The green is returning. The leaves are opening up to the sun.

My neighborhood is short on floral color at the moment, so I trespassed into the yard of a summer resident, where something’s always flowering. No flowers yet, but I did find a jolly big shrub with what looked like new leaves on top.

Buds really are appearing on twigs, but you have to look close to see them. I haven’t figured out how to do good close-ups with my new camera yet, so this will have to do.

I found some color at one corner of the West Tisbury School. The crocuses are up. The daffodil buds are getting fatter.

The scene along the bike path still looks wintry, but the thawing earth smells of spring. It gives under my boots. And do you see any snow in this photo? I don’t either.

Above me a plane drew an ephemeral path across the sky. It could see more than I could, and at the same time not as much.

Back home, my next-door neighbor said, yes indeed, there were crocuses up by the fire pit.

Sure enough, there they were.

Up on my deck, I sat in a chair and took my boots and socks off. They spent the rest of the day on the railing while I padded around the apartment in my bare feet, rather than the brown sheepskin slippers I’ve been wearing since mid-fall.

My feet notice that the floor’s a little gritty. With light streaming through the windows, it’s obvious that the windows need cleaning and dusting is long overdue. They don’t call it spring cleaning for nothing.

Sure — after I get my taxes done. I downloaded the forms and instructions last night. I never start procrastinating before April Fool’s Day.

Boots in waiting