elephants and sunshine

i've been a warm-weather person since the day i was born, and these longer days are sending me towards giddiness.  getting home before dark... driving to the dog park before dark... leaving the dog park before dark... you do you, sun!  bring on the vitamin d and the daffodils!  it's supposed to be SIXTY-SEVEN on sunday!

(and then we have mornings like today's when it's twenty degrees and my hands are freezing and my thighs are starting to go numb and it feels like i'll never be warm again, but let's not dwell on that)

anyway, a while back, i followed these girls down someone's driveway to see if their way to campus was faster than my way to campus, and it was, so now i go that way most of the time if i'm not biking, and the thing is, it's really really lovely.  it's all children's-book-ish with a swing straight out of the secret garden, and an old house covered in vines that is not in paris but could definitely house twelve little girls, and an elephant like the one in the india scene in a little princess, and fairy lights, and green grass, and, and, and...

i use the elephant as my personal sundial.  for a while when i walked home, it was still light out but the sun had dipped below the treeline, and the elephant was all in shadows.  as it's stayed light later, more and more of the elephant is lit up, first its back feet, then its belly, now the light hits everything but its face and trunk and tusks and one day the whole elephant will be touched with sunlight and that's when it'll be spring.