Last Sunday, I looked outside, and to my great amazement the forsythia was in bloom and the leaves were beginning to emerge from their buds. I was amazed because this is several weeks before it usually happens. And I know that because every year for the past eight years I've blogged the arrival of spring.
It's the only ritual I've observed on this blog, and it's come to matter to me. However, I've been sick this week, and that--combined with a trip to DC--meant that I didn't get around to marking the arrival of spring in my usual fashion. As a result, I've post-dated this entry...mostly because I use my blog to track my personal history, and I want it to properly record the early arrival of spring in Rochester this year.
Part of the tradition is to share this poem by Robert Frost, one of my favorites, and one that I think of each year when spring begins to emerge from the grayness of the Rochester winter...
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature’s first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
—Robert Frost
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