There are strange flowers blooming.  I’m watching the almost-rainy day unfold in the back garden (the dead-rat smell has dissipated enough now to make the study a viable place to spend time again).  It’s heavenly: things are green, or starting to be green.  The grass has new, fragile vibrancy; the trees, which have looked naked for so long, are budding tiny leaves at long last.  Weeds are springing up in the flower pots and when the wind ruffles branches and stalks it’s easy to believe that things out there are alive.  That maybe we’ll all start to thaw out, now.