On my way out of the drugstore, where I had picked up envelopes and blood pressure medication and, on a whim, an Almond Joy candy shaped like an egg, I noticed the sale items just beside the door. What caught my eye was the juxtaposition of a jangled pile of ice scrapers, each with bright snow brush and slanted blade, beside rose bushes in plastic-wrapped pots.

The rose bushes look like sticks thrust into pots of dirt. And planting season's miles away. We've got two feet of snow, and dunes left by the plow waist-high. Once we returned from seder in Boston bearing lavendar bushes from my sister's yard, and planted them in the raw wet of April -- but mostly we garden in late May, early June. Certainly not now.

Still, there's something charming about seeing roses on sale. I'll bet everyone who walks by them today smiles a little. The days are measurably longer now than they were; it may still be the depths of winter, but the breeze felt like thaw. With gloves and a hat on, I drove home with the windows of my car open, letting in the sunshine and the almost-March air.

Technorati tags: 413, winter.