She stood slender and tall, majestic and noble, clad in her sapphire gown of petals and glittering diamonds of dew.  She was, at once, royal and proud, yet demure and gracious.  Posturing amidst the wind and rain.  A beacon of loveliness and tenacity.  A sign of Summer’s emergence. This weekend we’ll be celebrating Memorial…

The landscape lay waste to February’s warm arrival and took on a most pathetic look.  The once beautiful, pure white blanket of snow had been reduced to the dirty, grungy spoils of a Winter warming, but that wasn’t all that remained in the receding snow. As the landscape below the mounds of snow began to reveal itself,…