Spring arrives late in a northern city. My mother always said one couldn’t plant before the Victoria Day Weekend…the third weekend of May. I miss the wonderful springtime in Bavaria, which lingers between the thick-laden snows and the delicate summer alpine meadows. But it has come at last to my part of the world, and everything seems brighter and full of promise, even in these difficult times of pandemic. The budding and luminous green of spring is the sign of life and of hope. In a northern town, seasons are not things that simply pass by, but actors that shape and inspire with equal parts of awe, dread and reverence.