Here in the Northern Hemisphere, we're two weeks away from the official beginning of Spring.  Just when it feels like Winter will always be here, those subtle hints of change appear.  Outside my kitchen window, a lone rosebud, yellow with wisps of brilliant red, sits on the gray skeleton branches of dormant wisteria.  

After all those dark days when the sun seemed lost, when cold rain came down in torrents and wind howled through the trees; after snow flurried and piled into…