Welcome spring!

It all seemed too good to be true. Hither and thither through the meadows he rambled busily, along the hedgerows, across the copses, finding everywhere birds building, flowers budding, leaves thrusting everything happy, and progressive, and occupied. And instead of having an uneasy conscience pricking him and whispering "whitewash!" he somehow could only feel how jolly it was to be the only idle dog among all these busy citizens. After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working.

~Kenneth Grahame, The wind in the willows~

I took a ride by the train this weekend, to the north-eastern part of Slovenia. Ž comes from there. He loves those places and I sometimes wonder why the fortune separates us from the things we admire and we do not live happily without. After all we decide for ourselves, don't we?

We walked through the woods and along the rivers, we searched for the Middle Spotted Woodpeckers and toads. We wondered at the nature showing its first signs of spring. We met friends and talked to the people. For me it was like a holiday. I was taken care of after a long, long time again. It is spring, the time of a year when I get restless and when great changes start happening in my life. Each and every year. Sometimes they are happy and sometimes they are not. This time I can only hope for the best. When I was going back home, I had tears in my eyes but also a smile on my face. I felt all this:

He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.

~Kenneth Grahame, The wind in the willows~

My favorite time of a year has started. It lasts until my birthday and sometimes even after that. Whatever this spring will bring into my life, it will be good. I know.

I hope yours will be wonderful, too!