Sean had surprised me with a half-hour visit on his way around the world, just long enough to have a cupcake and a cup of tea, and to climb the gumbo limbo tree that had replaced the big juniper just outside the spider gate. 

“We have to walk a fine line here,” he said as he restrained himself from kissing me. It was alright. When he left shortly thereafter we kissed with pursed unhappy lips, but it was alright. At least I got to see him one more time.

I also dreamed the crocuses were up as the snow melted. Half the snow melted in a day, revealing patches of giant crocuses, twice the size they used to be, in brighter shades of yellow, orange, purple, blue and green. Other small, glorious, strange bulbs also emerged in groups of three or five among the extravagant crocuses. 

I am grateful for dreams. These days, they’re more comfortable, like clouds and flowers. For decades there were nightmares mixed in with the absurd, about as dense as citron in a fruitcake, along with rare and lucid prophesies. I haven’t suffered a nightmare in a couple of months, and can’t remember the last one so it couldn’t have been traumatic. The most recent absurd, delightful dreams which may or may not hold meaning came this morning.

The crocus part is not far off of true; some years recently they’ve bloomed in early February. I’m so grateful that the first possible crocus may be only three weeks away, and this thought welcomed me to wakefulness today: a day, a week, otherwise fraught with uncertainty bred of a mean man’s evil ego. I’m grateful for all the true American patriots, who represent this week what my father, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, great-greats, all the way back to the founding of this great country strove for, the service women and men who will do what they must to protect the authority of the United States Constitution, instead of some aggrieved minority’s dream of what they think it should be.

But I digress. Dreams of all kinds, healthy and delusional, seem to be coming to mind all day as time progresses inexorably toward nightfall, farther away now than it was three weeks ago, creeping toward equinox. The garden wakens. Crocus dreams grow beneath the dirt.