Nature provides its own stimulus package

The weekend teased us with two events — an unseasonably warm couple of days and an early return to daylight saving time — just days after a March snowstorm reminded us that winter is not over.

I spent part of Friday afternoon sitting on the deck at my in-laws' house in Statesville, where clumps of snow still hid in the shadows, chatting with members of my wife's family and watching the tall poplars expose their soft buds to the warm sun. The buds were most prevalent at the tops of the trees, where the buds reached up out of the low-lying shadows toward the sunlight at higher elevations. Other early-budding trees are catching the sun's warmth, and daffodils have already spread their green-and-yellow carpet in the natural areas at the edge of our lawn in Wilson. The warm days have coaxed the forsythia's yellow flowers into braving the cooler nights and the likelihood of more cold weather.

With the sun setting after 7 as daylight time has taken effect, it will be possible to sit on the deck in the evenings after work and watch the sun set beyond the bare tree limbs now budding with new green life. Spring officially returns in less than two weeks, but already we're being teased with these warm, sunny days that prompt us to throw open windows and smell the fresh scent of revived grass and moist soil.

Perhaps the advent of spring will catalyze a new optimism about the economy, which has given us nothing but dreary darkness and shivering cold since before autumn began last year. There is something in the renewal of spring, the warmth of the sun on a cool day, the colors budding forth from a gray landscape, that gives us hope for the future.

It's a hope we all can use more of these days.