I gathered the first eggs of the year yesterday. Among them was one of Emma’s, the biggest duck egg of all. With duck eggs for breakfast, I can forget about the snow.

It is above freezing, the sun is burning away the clouds, the glaciers around the house are receding, and I have finished shoveling the driveway so I can deliver eggs, bread, and tofu tomorrow.

Not quite the twenty meter (sixty-five feet) high snow walls along the Tateyama-Kurobe Alpine Route you can see from April into June in the Northern Alps of Japan, but it’s fun to pretend the snow here is that deep.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjmm9EOOe-4&w=700&h=394]