SPRING!

The following is an excerpt from the Writer's Almanac. I especially the Thoreau quote.
Did you see the lovely moon last night? If not check it tonight. I am sure it will be equally beautiful.


Today is the first  day of spring. The vernal equinox occurs today, the time when the earth's  axis is not turned toward the sun (summer, for those of us in the Northern  Hemisphere), or away from it (winter), but is aligned with the center of the  sun. The word equinox comes from  Latin: aequus means equal, level, or  calm; nox means night, or darkness.  The equinox, in spring or fall, is a time when the day and night are as  close to equal as they ever are, and when the hours of night are exactly equal  for people living equidistant from the equator either north or south.
 Margaret Atwood wrote: 'Gardening is not a rational  act. What matters is the immersion of the hands in the earth, that ancient  ceremony of which the Pope kissing the tarmac is merely a pallid vestigial  remnant. In the  spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.'
 Henry David Thoreau wrote: 'This phenomenon is more  exhilarating to me than the luxuriance and fertility of vineyards. True, it is  somewhat excrementitious in its character, and there is no end to the heaps of  liver, lights, and bowels, as if the globe were turned wrong side outward; but  this suggests at least that Nature has some bowels, and there again is mother  of humanity. This is the frost coming out of the ground; this is Spring. It  precedes the green and flowery spring, as mythology precedes regular poetry. I  know of nothing more purgative of winter fumes and indigestions. It convinces  me that Earth is still in her swaddling-clothes, and stretches forth baby  fingers on every side. Fresh curls spring from the baldest brow. There is  nothing inorganic. These foliaceous heaps lie along the bank like the slag of a  furnace, showing that Nature is 'in full blast' within. The earth is  not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a  book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry  like the leaves of a tree.'