We had a “cool” front blow through here this morning…Cool is now at 71° and rising. The front brought an hour or so of rain and then clear blue sky.
The real sign of spring though is the cardinals, you know…Red birds chasing other red birds out of their perceived territory. When the cardinals start enforcing territory rights you know spring has hit. It doesn’t matter if the wildflowers have come and gone, or the trees have leafed out. Once the little red birds start chasing each other around the yard while their lady friends sit and watch, spring is really here.
The way you can really tell that spring is here is I just put my riding lawnmower in the shop. Why is it that the only time the mower manifests it’s desire to forestall my using it for what it was designed for is in the spring time as the yard begins to look like an unmade bed for the fourth morning in a row? Even while I enjoy the look of the back pasture (for lack of another term) all decorated in wildflowers (weeds to the uninitiated, or my wife), the family draws the line on the front yard being filled with dandelions and nettles and other uncivilized versions of flowering plants. So as anyone who has lived in the coastal south will tell you, once the grass starts growing in the spring you better keep on top of it or you will never catch up until the heat of summer kills everything (if you are lucky) or a tropical storm waters everything so deeply that you can look behind the mower and watch the grass grow as you cut it back. In those summers you need a gas tank truck following you around in circles as you keep the mower moving 16 hours a day…And it’s only just April?
This is a buttercup spring. Most of the roads in this area are bordered right now with the pastel colors of buttercups. Pinks and whites and an occasional blue…Miles and miles of the little pollen cups. You know the ones I am talking about right? Didn’t you ever as a kid pick a buttercup and offer it for someone to smell before you rubbed the pollen all over their nose? You know you did…Don’t try and deny it.
