A spring arrival

Photo credit: Sister in Law Unit.

Spring is here and one unexpected sign of it is a baby great horned owlet that was recently born on our hill. He (or she) is pretty cute.

Speaking of spring, here's a great quote about it by George Orwell. I posted this on Facebook a while back. Sorry for the duplication but something this good deserves to be read more than once.

“ I think that by retaining one’s childhood love of such things as trees, fishes, butterflies and—to return to my first instance—toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable…

At any rate, spring is here...and they can't stop you enjoying it. This is a satisfying reflection. How many a time have I stood watching the toads mating, or a pair of hares having a boxing match in the young corn, and thought of all the important persons who would stop me enjoying this if they could. But luckily they can't. So long as you are not actually ill, hungry, frightened or immured in a prison or a holiday camp, spring is still spring. The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it." George Orwell, Some Thoughts on the Common Toad

 Orwell didn't explicitly mention owls, but I think he'd be down with them.