Spring's Slow Unfurling

Photo: Daffodils of Skagit County

Compared to Hawai'i and Virginia, the Puget Spring's emergence happens...very...slowly. I am told this year is cooler than usual, which of course has elders, suspicious of Al Gore to begin with, clucking their tongues at Global Warming.

On this Earth Day, you are bound to find a better blogsplanation of how Global climate ain't the same as Local weather, and point is more that the long, Spring dawns cool and slow here. Which is cool, because whereas cherry blossoms would come and go in a few days in the south, they have hung on for a couple of weeks here. Cool, moist air reigns (and rains), like the refrigerated trailer we used to have at the greenhouse to keep hyacinths from blooming too fully too soon. And this Spring, the lack of more than a day straight of sun has probably suppressed the flowers that normally bloom on the light cycle instead of temperature. As a result, the heather only started looking bad after about 3 months of flowering, and bulb-blooms last to a ripe old age without showing it.
Spring climate may be slow in coming, but the weather often changes from minute to minute. Sure, it rained 6 out of the last 7 days, but most of those six days had patches of sun, sometimes hour upon hour of photons raining unrestrained. In the last week, we've experienced sun, snow, sleet, hail, rain, mist, a smattering of spattering, clouds black blue and white, and weather I could not even begin to name.
If Eskimeaux Sneaux goes by 100 names, I'm thinking that Nisqually must have a hundred shades of gray. Like people are wrong when they say there are no seasons in Hawai`i (you could go with the direction and kind and amount of rain, or just go by the fruit), to call it just "rainy" in the northwest misses the rich drama of precipitation and clouds here.
So, a diversity of momentary diversions, with a slow rollout of process. What could be better for the malihini wanting to learn the rhythms of the place?