Typical Winter weather here in the southern Willamette Valley of Oregon provides us with an over abundance of long, dark, cold and, rainy days. People become depressed.  Those who can, usually head for Mexico or Hawaii sometime in the first few months of the year.  It can be bleak.  Days and weeks and months of rain. Really.

This year is different.  Yes, we've had some stretches of dreary wet days, but, now it seems that Spring has arrived.  It can't be true.  Surely, it won't last. But right now everyone is happy.  People are taking walks, working in their yards and enjoying this respite from the rain.

What worries me is that the plants also seem to think it's Spring.  The large Magnolia tree outside my window is bursting with big pink swelling buds.  In the last week the daffodils, crocus and, forsythia have bloomed along with the much anticipated daphne odura.   There are flowering trees everywhere. 

This has happened before.  There was the time of the heavy wet snow that came silently during a March night years ago.  I remember lying in bed listening to the rare city silence, punctuated only by the repeated crack . . . .  and thud . . . . as the limbs of our prized Magnolia fell to the ground under the weight of the snow.  I dressed and tried to save the tree by knocking the branches with a broom, but in the end, sadly, our front yard lay full of fallen branches.  Years later, the tree has now fully recovered and is anxious to bloom - a full month ahead of schedule.  Do I need to worry, or simply enjoy it?