Harbingers of spring

Sometimes, my job requires me to travel outside of the city I live in. Today was such a day, with an " outside" appointment that will be keeping me out of town well into the afternoon.
The vegetation in the forests and on the fields is still a drab, dried-out brownish color, with nary a sign that anything might be blooming or growing leaves anytime soon. But in the garden of a villa I passed by en route to my appointment, I was delighted to see a flowering carpet of snowbells and purple croci.
In my corner of the world, those usually come out in early March, so, with the freaky cold weather we've been having these last weeks, Nature's a good month behind schedule.

Which means one more month where walking for exercise was out of the question unless I were keen on catching pneumonia, as the only time I could regularly carve out the time for exercise is the early morning, and we've been having sub-zero temperatures every morning for several months in a row.
As I had to cut out my lunchtime walks, too, due to the high workload that kept me at my desk over lunch break, I'm actually having a bit of a case of being eager to get moving again. So, I'll take my walking equipment out of storage and lay it out ready for use as soon as the warmer weather that has been forecast really arrives.
For those wondering- I do my nordic walking in a public park. For one, the route is not safe when it is dark, there have been several attacks there on women in that area. So, I stick to exercizing there only when it's daylight, thank you very much. And they don't shovel away the snow and ice there, either, so in winter the pathways(no tarmac) are either slippery as hell or ankle-deep in slush. Which is why I prefer not to use them in winter. Usually, that results in a hiatus of no more than two or three months where conditions don't permit my morning walking. Being, in spite of my good intentions, kept from walking till well into April is a first.
So, I am hoping for spring to finally arrive. Maybe it really takes exercise to get that condensable matter off me again.


Julia