Spring has Sprung! :: Anne McAllister

It's that time of year again!

I've spent lots of years in a cold climate  blessed, most years, with plenty of snow.  So when it gets to be March, I start looking around for signs of spring.

This year the signs began appearing well before March.  I teach class one day a week, and the first week in February one of the women in my class came in late and rather breathless and announced, "I've just seen a flock of robins!"

We practically all stampeded to the door to see what she'd seen. And yes, there they were.

There were crocuses well above the snow a couple of weeks ago, and the daffodils are pushing their way up by the back door.

When we went for a walk with the dogs yesterday, I could see that the scilla was beginning to come up, too. In a few weeks -- or less -- it will be blanketing the lawns hereabouts.

Blue lawns always make me smile.  I didn't grow up in this climate, so I've had to learn all about it. The first time I saw a

blue lawn, I thought I was seeing things as I drove past in a car.   I couldn't imagine what was making it blue.  Now I always make it a point to walk the dogs past all the blue lawns in our neighborhood just to enjoy the spectacle. It doesn't take much to make me happy, I guess.

Or maybe it's the feeling that we are coming out of hibernation, that we don't have to bundle up to our eyeballs to go out and get the mail anymore.

It even makes me happy -- most of the time -- to wipe the dogs feet every time they come back in after an excursion around the back yard.

In spring I measure the weather in 'dog-foot days.'  The more times they go in an out, multiplied by how many feet I have to dry (or sometimes wash and dry) is an indication of just how muddy it is out there.  Today was a "48 dog foot day," which is pretty

muddy -- particularly since I ended up washing one dog's feet every time she came in.

Still, I'm not complaining. It's spring. The book is coming along.  I'm going to see three reprints this spring when my Tanner Brothers trilogy comes back with brand-new covers. And I'm going to get to post them on my newly updated website (still in progress, but check around Easter and it might well be there!).  That will feel like spring all over again!

What are your favorite signs of spring?  (My apologies to all readers from Down Under for this very geographically oriented post. Feel free to tell me what you love about autumn.  I'm pretty fond of it, too!).


Photo credits: 
1) Dakota Lynch: own work. An American robin searching for food in a Missouri field.          CC BY-SA 3.0 Creative Commons license.
2) crocus By Thomas Wolf (Der Wolf im Wald) (Own work) CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
3) Ixtlilto (Own work) [Public domain], Creative Commons via Wikimedia 
Commons
4) BSchenck: own work 
5 BSchenck: own work