The sun will shine and drear will lift

IT’S been a wet and dreary winter but already there are signs of spring.

There’s a stretch in the evenings, and the grass — which, here in the southwest, never stopped growing — is, every day, a denser carpet underfoot.

Beneath the beeches across the stream from our house, montbretia is putting up its pastel, spear-shaped leaves, bursting through the brown carpet of last year’s leavings. A cock robin sings, marking out territory, letting every robin hen within earshot know that he’s there and in good voice, a fine, strong fellow, capable of reproduction and of looking her while she sits the eggs, and of hunting out food for the chicks.