Spring is an impatient lass

   Winter is still hanging around here in New Zealand like that last guest at the party, the one who's had a little too much to drink and, as a consequence, believes he is so entertaining that it is his duty to tell us just a few more tasteless jokes and treat us to at least one more rant about how hard it is for a smart and ambitious guy like him to work with incompetents such as those chimpanzees in his office.
    In so doing, he is pointedly ignoring all of Spring's hints - a succession of warm and sunny days, new buds on bushes and tree - that it's time for him to grab his hat and coat and shuffle off home.
    Spring is, however, an impatient lass and like that hostess who starts doing the dishes when that last boorish guest refuses to take the hint and pack it in, she's ignoring his pointless stories and bad jokes while proceeding as if he's already gone.
    She has, for example, awakened brilliant pink and red flowers, which are now in full bloom everywhere I look, and she has opened the hive doors so that honey bees are now buzzing in the air outside. Birds are building new nests in the rain forest that is our front yard and the wind is warm most days.
    Offended, perhaps, that she is not hanging on his every word, Winter is making a few sarcastic comments: A gray day, a sudden rainstorm that seems to come out of nowhere and chilly morning fog now and then. Spring is, however, intent on getting everything ready for her sister Summer who will be along soon, and has turned a deaf ear to his sharp-edged observations.
    I will not be here when Spring finally opens the door and throws Winter out on his drunken ear. The time is rapidly approaching when Josep, his cousin Elena and I will board an airplane in Wellington for that long flight home that will take us first to Australia, then Singapore and then London before returning us to Barcelona.
    I cannot help but wish it were not so for as glorious as this country is in Winter I am willing to bet it is even more so when the temperature rises and Spring is fully here.