A harbinger

It's been in the high forties here all week.  A welcome change from the recent and crazy snows.  I'm sure we have at least one more good snow before Spring is here to stay but, at least I feel hopeful that is around a not too distant corner. 
I've been thinking about taking out my seed packets and starter boxes.  Possibly most disturbing I have been dreaming about tomatoes. Yup, tomatoes. 

I have restrained myself all Winter (with admittedly only a few slip ups) from buying tomatoes at the grocery store.  I love tomatoes - I mean really.  I am one of those people who can eat a tomato like an apple and thinks there is nothing better in the Summer than a cucumber & tomato cut up with a little salt, pepper & vinegar.  Every time I buy a tomato out of season at the grogery store I am dissapointed by the styrofoam-y tasteless substance masquerading as a perfect fruit.

Today, another trip to the grocery store brought me home with bag full of carrots, beets, turnips & potatoes, those resilient root vegetables of Northern climates that always remind me of the fingers of the hands that grew them.   

When getting out of the car, I saw it....

The years's first crocus!  

I almost cried.  It means I can take out my seeds & growing boxes, Crockett's Victory Gardens & Alys Fowler's Garden Anywhere. It will be hard for me to buckle down and get some "real" work done today - but I will.  Soon enough though I will have tiny seedlings in the window and yarn drying in the sun instead of in front of fans.  That first tomato, still months away suddenly seems worth waiting for.

Welcome back old friend!