Happy Spring!

Yes, folks, spring is here in good old Greenwich, Connecticut. It's warm and sunny, and the trees are starting to put out leaves. Your scribe saw a dogwood in bloom the other day on Butternut Hollow Road. Reports have filtered in about forsythia flowering. If it feels like spring, looks like spring, smells like spring...well, then,

It must be time to duck! Mother Nature is no doubt just softening us up for the blizzards ahead. This is, after all, New England, where the weather is as fickle and changeable as a gold-digger's heart. Woe betide those who put any faith in such feminine blandishments, be they those of Mother Nature or the daughters of Eve. See St. Jerome's famous treatise, "Adversus Jovinianum", for more details, including the well-known line, "mulier est hominis confusio." A translation of this (of sorts) can be found in Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale, as formulated by Chanticleer: "Woman is all man's joy and all his bliss." Well, Chanticleer was perhaps not the greatest Latin scholar, but he knew how to keep his wife, Dame Pertelot, a happy hen.

So do not be lulled by the balmy breezes of today, gentle reader, for the blasts of winter are sure to come, sooner or later. But take heart: as the poet sings, "If winter comes, can spring be far behind?"