Can this be spring?

In University Heights, here in Madison today, a statue crouches, mournful somehow despite all the blue flowers, and the storybook house cowers within a cage of leafless trees:



Magnolia buds are willing to begin the effort to pop open:



There are assorted floral manifestations of conventional spring prettiness:



And just as I arrive home, I see this chalking -- maybe a child's interpretation of the spring flower or maybe of the sun: