Spring! (Finally!)

Virginia has one of the most beautiful springs around.  And it's been teasing us for weeks with a glimpse of warm weather, only to replace it with freezing temperatures the next day.  Well it seems as though spring has finally come for real.  (Very bad timing for the cold I seem to have caught over the weekend...)

The pools in Ivy Gardens and Huntington are open and as soon as I'm feeling better, I'm looking forward to relaxing out there while doing my reading for class.  I even got to warm up a bit this afternoon between classes with a club meeting we held outside.  I think what I'm most excited about this spring, though, is the golf clinics sponsored by the Graduate Women in Business club that I tweeted a preview of on Friday.

I've been playing a variety of sports for most of my life (some competitive and some not so much), but I've never tried golf.  Unless, I suppose, you count the time that I found some awesome plaid pants and played caddy for a friend.  Last Friday, we had our first lesson on pitch shots.  I kinda went into it thinking, "well how hard could this be? I'm a relatively athletic person..."  Um, yeah.  I think we know how that story goes.  I mean, I wasn't horrendous, but let's just say I'm looking forward to practicing more.  It's pretty fun to learn a new sport, though, and the beautiful weather and views we had made up for any frustrations with my lousy swing.

As the first year wraps up over the next month, I'm hoping I'll be able to get out there more and keep practicing.  (Maybe next year we can even get a few ladies' games going so it's not just the second year guys out there at Birdwood every day.)  Of course, the nice weather also brings other, more passive forms of outdoor entertainment, like enjoying a glass of wine on the sunny porch at Pippin Hill Vineyards.

I'll leave you with the words of one of my favorite poets who seems to capture the feeling of today's weather:

Today

BY BILLY COLLINS

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.

Source: Poetry (April 2000).