This year the entire outdoors is suitably lacy for Valentine’s Day. The snow is piled artistically on every tree branch, the cardinals flit about like red paper hearts, and I spent some time in the kitchen making fudge for Doug. The three classical radio stations I listen to (interspersed, not all at once) have been playing Puccini arias, Brahms intermezzi, slow movements of Mozart, and other blissful romantica all day. The UPS man delivered a long, green florist box that opened to a dozen long-stemmed red roses.

I love all of it, but there’s something especially romantic to me about Valentine’s Day in the snow. Red roses are more special against the white winter of Michigan. In California they had to compete with spring in full sway, cherry and plum blossom, azalea, geranium, tulips – a banquet in a yard that never went hungry. But here came my roses, my box of roses, delivered by a figure booted and hatted against a temperature barely out of single digits. We’re halfway through winter, sledding into spring. Let’s enjoy the ride.