And just like that it's spring. It's stopped raining, the air is clear. One side of the block smells like wild onions, the other of fluffy vanilla narcissus. The neighbors have let their clover go wild and it's a tangle of acid green and furled flowers. One cherry tree can't wait to get on with it and it has blossomed already.

The boy wants to tell me about the oldest survivor of the Crimean War, a tortoise the British took into battle as a mascot. We had an entire evening's adventure around a doorknob. I think it left me more invigorated then did him, but perhaps he knows more now about the secret lives of things we touch every day but do not notice.

I think the faucet is next, and the woodland strawberries.