It’s safe to say we all had a crappy, long, drawn out winter, weather-wise. So imagine my surprise that when the new season finally arrived, it wasn’t one of those small and hasty slots wedged in between freezing and roasting.

Up here at the foot of Monadnock there has been a delicate progression, a slow introduction of green at our feet, buds ripening, canada mayflowers carpeting our path through the woods.

Fiddleheads thrusting up and unfurling, daffies and tulips bringing the first color in months.

Daylily leaves are curving gently, rambling roses sending out new shoots, flower beds repopulating. The rhubarb bed is lush. The weeping cherry and plum tree are full of color. I didn’t know before moving here that plum blossoms smell, well, plummy, but they most certainly do.

The apple tree outside our kitchen door is now in flower, and the lilacs have just emerged.

Many years this all happens like a collapsing telescope, but not right now. The temperature has crept slowly, slowly upwards. What a gift.

Added to all this largesse there are the new birds. At least, new to this place since I’ve been here.

Indigo Buntings, Pine Grosbeaks and Baltimore Orioles have joined the line-up this year. Wonderful flashes of color, especially the Indigo Buntings.

We live at the junction of piney woods, the mountain’s lower reach, the Fassett Brook delta, and Perkins Pond, so we see some nice birds year round. Lots of Ravens. Bears too.

The slate colored juncoes and cowbirds have moved north for the summer.

The usual suspects have all turned up to join the winter jays, woodpeckers, mourning doves, titmice and chickadees — American Goldfinches, Purple Finches, Rose Breasted Grosbeaks, 6-plus varieties of sparrows, Catbirds, Ruby Throated Hummingbirds, Bluebirds, Red Wing Blackbirds, Tricolor Blackbirds and Evening Grosbeaks. Grackles too.

Great blue herons cruise by, with their unmistakable wing beat and are all over the wetlands. Thrushes are singing in the woods at twilight.

The butterflies and moths are making their entrance too.

So I’m feeling pretty flush right now. Livened and renewed by MN’s wonderful Spring, after the fight this winter proved to be, and grateful, definitely.