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It was an autumn morning shortly after my husband and I moved into our first house. Our children were upstairs unpacking, and I was looking out the window at my father moving around mysteriously on the front lawn. My parents lived nearby, and Dad had visited us several times already. "What are you doing out there? I called to him. He looked up, smiling. "I'm making you a surprise." Knowing my father, I thought it could be just about anything. A self-employedjobber（批发商）, he was always building things out ofodds and ends（零碎东西）. When we were kids, he once rigged up a jungle gym out of wheels and pulleys. For one of my Halloween parties, he created an electrical pumpkin and mounted, it on a broomstick. As guests came to our door, he would light the pumpkin and have it pop out in front of them from a hiding place in the bushes. Today, however, Dad would say no more, and, caught ups in the busyness of our new life, I eventually forgot about his surprise. Until one raw day the following March when I glanced out the window.Dismal（凄凉的）.Overcast（阴暗的）. Little piles of dirty snow still stubbornly littering the lawn, Would winter ever end? And yet...was it amirage（幻想）? I strained to see what I thought was something pink, miraculously peeking out of a drift. And was that a dot of blue across the yard, a small note of optimism in this gloomy expanse? I grabbed my coat and headed outside for a closer look. | 
