Thé Vert Roger & Gallet 2000

She knew it from the moment she opened her eyes.
Something was different in the room, different from last night when she had gone to bed, shivering in the cool night air that had streamed in through the window and tugged at the curtains.
Quickly, she had slipped under the down comforter and had been glad to feel the fluffy beaver of the sheets on her skin, which would otherwise have been banished to the farthest corner of the closet by Easter at the latest.
But Easter had been white this year, whiter than Christmas - instead of hiking boots, she had worn skis on her traditional Easter walk.
She must have misunderstood something about global warming.

But now it was different.
She still didn't know what it was - heavy and warm, the comforter lay on her, wrapping her in a cocoon outside of time and space, the threshold of sleep just a breath away.
Softly, the chirping of a bird reached her, a second responded, bright and clear, a third voice enticing - and suddenly she was awake, listening, straining, still, not wanting to lose any of those first sounds that flowed into her like a half-forgotten melody from childhood.
A light breeze billowed the curtains, brushed over her still-warm cheeks, tickled her nose, and filled her lungs as if by itself.
Surprised, she began to sniff: Cool and clear was the air, smooth and fine like silk, green and golden sparks flickered here and there, dispelling the last veils from her mind.
In one leap, she was out of bed and at the window - pale blue stretched the sky over the still-bare trees, white cotton balls had lost the gray of the long months, milky gold poured over the dark brown earth, which just yesterday seemed never to awaken from its winter slumber.
Tiny green bursts broke through the monotonous surface, from which a male blackbird began to tug at a fat worm.
Further back, the yellow tips of the flowers from that bush, whose name she could never remember, pushed through.

She went to the kitchen, put water on to boil, and filled the teapot with her very own blend - one part Lung Ching, one part jasmine tea.
She loved the light freshness of the Dragon Well, whose fine aroma reminded her of chestnuts and that combined like no other with the floral sweetness of jasmine tea.
The morning sun had reached the pots with her kitchen herbs, the scent of which filled the air and mingled with the lemons in the glass bowl.
She dipped her hands into the stream of light, felt the warmth of the rays, which was so different from the heating air of the past months.
It tingled - she could already feel the damp, rich earth on her palms and fingertips, sensed the blackness under her nails and the small cuts and scratches that would adorn her fair skin in the evening.
She would plant freesias and lily of the valley, the wild jasmine needed to be pruned - she would have to get some soil and this and that...
Quickly, the pencil dashed across the paper as the list grew longer and longer.

But first, she would chase the beaver from the bed.