And, I was right. Father Wiinter is indeed gone 'till next year. The weather right now is back and forth and back and forth...it rained HARD for the last couple days. Yesterday morning started out cold and chill and raw and rainy, and by the time the day was over, it was 60 and sunny.

I have to say, I love the seasons up here, so far. I am actually appreciating Spring for the first time in years. I mean really, really appreciating. Because I hate summer. And Asheville, while very lovely indeed, just more-or-less stopped having a true Winter, by the time we left it, and there were times it felt like it went right from late Autumn to Summer, by February.
Don't get me wrong-- I'm very much a mountain gal now, and I miss Asheville acutely most of the time-- but the weather here, I.just.love.it.

I am going to go down to the empty, overgrown lot on the corner and appropriate some forsythia for my kitchen table. The lot doesn't appear to belong to anybody. All the other forsythia is on people's front lawns. BAD idea, borrowing theirs!
And, there are daffodils everywhere! I love that the Earth has chosen bright yellow to herald the Springtime. It's such a banner color.

Here is what I did yesterday. I pulled over to the side of the road and got me some skunk cabbage leaves. I rolled them, kind of like a cigar, and tied them up with embroidery floss. I'm going to see if they'll work for smudge, once they dry. Yes, stinky...but local. Someone I knew in Asheville was talking about cultural appropriation, and the use of sage smudge came up, which is a SW USA thing, not here, so she was going to try to make smudge of rabbit tobacco, which is native to the WNC mountains. I should ask her how that went. So it occurred to me that what is abundant up here is skunk cabbage. And we'll see if and how it turns out!