the first smell of spring

so today during a wonderful thaw of 10 degrees, with the snow all melting away (sort of), we've resorted to a funny mixture of muck and gritty grey remnants of snowbanks that are going through this yo-yo cycle of melting throughout the day and then refreezing overnight when the temperature drops.

but today... today was a different kind of feeling. i could smell something in the air. something foreign. something... mucky.

you know the smell; the mixture of old leaves and new growth, the smell of rain and melt and dirt, all mixed into one. not quite the warming smell of spring (as a matter of fact, it was ridiculously windy here today and therefore a bit on the chilly side), but just the fact that there was something to smell in the air at all today was a milestone. that's one thing that i really miss throughout the winter - there are no smells. aside from a fire burning in someone's fireplace, there's nothing really in the frozen air. but come that spring thaw... it just makes me want to breathe it all in before the temperature drops below 0 again tonight. ah well. it's better than 2 feet of snow.

(picture courtesy of kosmonautica)