Mid-March, the unlovely muddy Vermont: I bend beneath the snarled rose bushes, seeking green nubs pushing through the wet earth. By June, this world will be verdant, lush, those old roses a tangle of green, tiny blossoms each a delicate bouquet of pale pink. These roses, planted by someone doubtlessly long passed over into the other world, ruggedly fence my house, their flowers such a dear sweet fragrance.

In this brown world, I wander to the places where, in springs past, I’ve heard the early songs of redwing blackbirds. Yesterday, I hear these birds, not the full chorus yet, but the warm-up crew. We are well before the yard clean-up and gardening season. The town roads are rutted, hard to travel, and the summer folks have not yet returned. Hidden in this clump of cedars, the blackbirds steadily, without any fuss, go about their blackbird lives. Not so many weeks away, marsh marigolds will blanket these wetlands — dazzling yellow, killer green — but for now, the dun palette of silvery cedar, umber earth, the birdsong melodies yanking us along to spring.