Break out the shorts and garden spades because spring has sprung and summer’s right around the corner.

But as North Enders are gearing up for warm weather, we’d like to pause to applaud the work of Puget Sound Energy and the residents of Hansville for thinking of the bigger picture. With the sun in your eyes and the Mariners on the tube, it’s sometimes hard to remember that just a few months ago, we were socked in with snow. People across Kitsap County lost power for some period of time — some for minutes, others for days — including Hansville.

But after a year of negotiations over the location of a potential emergency generator in Hansville, it looks as if PSE and residents have finally come to an agreement. It would have been easy to just say, ‘Hey, the bad weather’s over, we don’t need to deal with this now.’

But they didn’t.

Kudos to PSE for listening to the concerns of residents and, more importantly, responding to them. And good work to the residents for sticking in there and making your voices heard. You probably learned a lot about political processes through this albeit frustrating and long experience.

But just think — you can enjoy the warm weather because Old Man Winter doesn’t have anything up his sleeve.