In journalism, stories that can run any time (and which frequently repeat) are called hardy perennials. For the last week, I’ve had the pleasure of watching some real hardy perennials come back to life on my balcony. It’s as if they knew the solstice had passed, and after a few days of cautiously dusting themselves with hints of green, were called back into riotous life by some greater force than themselves. (Which is, of course, what happened, with that force being the sun.)

Spring is here with a vengeance — the naturalized daffodils in Spring Valley bloom in pert patches, trees that seemed bare just yesterday are thick with blossoms, and my pet ficus lyrata, which grows half a foot each year, has started on its annual growth spurt. Sunday, I watched its new leaves grown from morning to night, and this morning I awoke to find a new four-inch leaf that I swear still lay coiled in its one-inch bud as I went to sleep.

It’s days like these that make you wish you had the gift of Verlyn Klinkenborg, whose Editorial Observer column consistently proves that it is possible to reproduce the mental act of observation in acute, sensitive prose, and that the category of naturalist-writer did not in fact fade away with the end of the 19th century.