Despite the ominous look of the sky in yesterday's photo, a sudden burst of spring happened today. That's it; it just happened, out of the blue. Er, gray. The promise of the rainbow came true, at least for a few hours.

The ground is still soft, and downright soggy in places. An overnight rain two nights ago filled up some of the driveway puddles that had started trying to dry out. But it was warm enough for me to be drawn outside today, just long enough to do a little puttering in the garden. Not much, because there's no point in doing much. This isn't the real spring, and winter will be back.

But this was a perfect day to pull up some of the dormant dandelions. They came up out of the damp ground, roots and all, with little effort on my part. Easy as it was, though, I ran out of steam before I ran out of room in the yard waste container. Still, it's a start, and it got me out of the house.

I also set out ant stakes in appropriately safe locations. There's only one species I consider an enemy of the people. I'll never forgive them for all the cereal I had to throw out last week. Now I will never be bothered by ants again.

Yes, in fact I did get more work done on the year-end obligations, but I also sat in my recliner with the front door wide open for nearly an hour this afternoon. Reading! For pleasure! For the first time since the lights went out on New Year's Day, I think. I must have become confident that the work will be done (not necessarily correctly, but on time), because I haven't allowed myself time to read all month.

It turned into a pretty wonderful Sunday, actually. The blue sky turned gray in the afternoon, and it cooled off very quickly after that, but I haven't had a day I felt this good about in some time. At least, not a day when I was alone all day and left to figure out for myself what to do. I have good days when other people tell me what to do, but not so much when I'm alone. It's nice to chalk up an exception to that rule.