Red witchhazels in snow

In a break from a long-running tradition, the Westerly Morris Men, a local dance troupe, couldn't make the trek up Lantern Hill to celebrate the first day of spring. There was still too much snow and ice on the trail and the peak, so the dancers performed their vernal-equinox-welcoming moves in the parking lot and in the road by the trailhead. Then, of course, spring fled as a storm dubbed Ultima spread snow over the landscape. All the hard-won stretches of brown that had started to appear quickly disappeared as the white reasserted its claim on the ridge, and that song about "beginning to look a lot like Christmas"—an old Currier and Ives Christmas, not this past holiday, which was anything but white—re-ran through my head. Clearly the newly opened red Witch Hazel blooms, which don't mind wearing a snowy crown, were singing happily along.