The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another.

The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.

-Henry Van Dyke

 

No winter lasts forever;

no spring skips its turn.

-Hal Borland

April is a promise that May is bound to keep.

-Hal Borland

The calendar says spring.

The backyard flowers say spring.

My allergies say spring.

The air says, put your sweater back on. It ain’t spring yet.

Whenever you’re ready, Mother Nature.

I’m rarin’ to play, and I’m tired of waiting.

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People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball.

I’ll tell you what I do.

I stare out the window and wait for spring.

–Rogers Hornsby

Only, today is Opening Day (well, technically I guess it was yesterday but for Phillies fans it’s today) and someone missed the memo about baseball being a SPRING sport.

Here I’d been stressing over what kind of April Fool’s Day prank I could play on my kids this morning, that wouldn’t make a mess or make them late for the bus… Mother Nature got smart and played a joke that got them jumping out of their beds in a jiffy.

“Quick! Look out the window, guys! It’s snowing!”

And at that very moment, the snow was thick and furious and freaking unbelievable It tapered off to pretty much nothing in moments, so my pictures aren’t too impressive… April Fool’s on Mom, too.

Well done, Mother N. How the heck am I gonna top THAT?!

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The sun is brilliant in the sky but its warmth does not reach my face.
The breeze stirs the trees but leaves my hair unmoved.
The cooling rain will feed the grass but will not slake my thirst.
It is all inches away but further from me than my dreams.

-M. Romeo LaFlamme, The First of March

If this is tiger weather, I’ll take it.

The sun is shining, the snow is finally melted from the ground (we’ve been blanketed in white since Christmas). The wind is chill but the air warm.

And keep in mind please, that last year on March 8th— only a week away!— I posted fully bloomed snowdrops:

The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

-Oscar Wilde
(quoted by Willy Wonka in Charlie & the Chocolate Factory)

There is light at the end of the tunnel! The endless winter is coming to an end.

Green things should be uncurling, unfurling from the ground any time now… keep an eye out for fresh, tender life.

Just because it happens every year doesn’t make it any less of a miracle, one of Emerson’s “wayside sacraments,” and to miss it? Feels like sacrilege.

This is the moment worth waiting for; the catching of breath before the landscape explodes into color and buzzing and sunshine on your shoulders. It’s like Christmas Eve for grownups.

Please don’t let it pass you by in a blur of tax documents, parent-teacher conferences, and grocery store runs.

To learn to appreciate winter you need to see the spring come.

The March wind roars
Like a lion in the sky,
And makes us shiver
As he passes by.

When winds are soft,
And the days are warm and clear,
Just like a gentle lamb,
Then spring is here.

-Unknown

To me, the arrival of spring is heralded quietly by the snowdrops and the appearance of snakes in the bushes sunning themselves; makes itself more obvious with the sound of peepers in the creek; until it bursts and overflows with the glorious bubbling cacophony of the house wrens returning to build a nest in their birdhouse.

How does spring sneak into your neck of the woods? What do you look forward to?