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On Monday afternoon, the first coltsfoot opened in the middle of the driveway – the earliest wildflower in Plummer’s Hollow.

Spring comes to Blogistan. Leslee returns from Mexico, Karrie digs out from under a mountain of work, and Jarrett emerges from hibernation:

The rainforest winter is always claustrophobic — grey skies so low they seem to press us into the little grooves of our scurrying. At other times (and a bit further south) I’ve thrived in its indoor pleasures, but here it overwhelmed. If I’m fated to have another winter here, it will have to be under a skylight, I think, where I can hear the rain in its gentleness and capture any hint of actual light.

Paula visits with springtime ghosts.

“Tell me about camera, Uncle. Camera obscura, camera lucida.” The ghostly face wrinkled. A smile, perhaps.”Camera,” he explained, “is from the Latin for vault. As in I am lying in camera. There are light rooms and dark rooms. Rooms with and without doors. Do you understand?”

My uncle handed the camera back and wafted off toward the river.

Meanwhile, in her temple in South Korea, Soen Joon ponders more earthy spirits:

I’m quite fond of the kitchen god, despite having grown up in a godless kitchen. We had a little God (“Come Lord Jesus, be our guest…”) right before we ate, but compared to this kitchen god, offered rice each day, greeted respectfully in the morning by us all, flowers arranged for him by the kitchen bosalnim and even money from time to time, it looks to me like Jesus got the short end of the kitchen-god stick.

I guess we are what we worship. In northern Alabama, spring fever is taking a most peculiar form:

Everywhere we went, my husband ogled piles of dirt. “Look at that dirt! That’s good dirt. Where do you think they got that dirt?”I feared he’d have a wreck and I’d be left tearfully explaining to police officers that dirt envy did him in.

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Down in the boggy corner of the field, Indian hemp is still working on scattering its seeds.

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