The Official End of Hibernation

Here is a summary of my favorite time of year:

Spring!!

All the beautiful flowers bloom, grass starts growing, things are turning from grey to green and life is sprouting everywhere. The weather gets warmer, days are longer, it stays light later so you can do outside things after dinner. Ahhh Spring. What a relief it is to have Spring come after the long, cold, snowy, dark, grey winter we have had. But the joy of Spring's arrival is short lived. We can love Spring for all it brings to us, but we have to take the good with the bad!

All the dead leaves, acorns, and pine cones have to be removed off of the growing grass and out of the blooming shrubs and flowers. Yard work is tedious, and exhausting. You do get a good sense of accomplishment after you finish, but it seems to take FOREVER to finish.

Then there are the bugs. Black Flies. Mosquitoes. Ticks, Bees. Lady Bugs. Carpenter Ants. Insert any other exotic bug that lives elsewhere in the country. You barely get a few days of enjoying the nice Spring weather when you have to start swatting black flies out of your face and mouth. Then you have to start terrorizing the dog by searching her coat for ticks.

Let's not forget about the pollen that accompanies Spring's arrival. Allergy sufferers begin to feel it as things start to grow. The yellow dusty pine pollen makes our eyes itch, gets into all our window sills, covers our driveways and lawns. This lasts for about a month. Itchy, itchy red eyes. Darn pine pollen. Then there are the maple keys that fall all over the yard, the road, the roof, the gutters, and those fuzzy things that fall from the trees and get stuck in the dog's coat so she brings them in; they too make me sneeze. This is just part of the joy of Spring!

Saturday mornings become a cacophony of lawn mowers, tractors, weed whackers, blowers and other outdoor power tools. Forget sleeping in! All of this growing grass needs to be tended and all of the flowers and shrubs need to be maintained. Sand needs to be blown out of the driveways and out of the road. Yard maintenance is a Saturday morning staple in the Spring and Summer.

Living in New England, we get a constant rotation of seasons. One season is with us just long enough to outstay it's welcome and then Oila!! The next season arrives and we feel happy and renewed.

At this point, the early spring, we can enjoy the nice weather, and curse all the yard work that comes with it. We can anticipate all of the cookouts, and get togethers we host in the warmer seasons, and we can mumble under our breath about having to clean last year's pollen off of the window screens. We can look forward to the ice cream man coming around the neighborhood again and laugh at the kids that yell "stop" from covert locations, just to see him stop, without having any intentions to purchase any goodies. Ahh Spring time.

In my neighborhood, Spring is the time we all come out of hiding; we leave the safety of our hibernation and reconnect with neighbors we have barely seen in months except for when we were all using our snow blowers after a storm. It is a great time to stop and chat, take a walk, send the kids out to play.

Despite all of the downsides, sniffle, sniffle, sneeze, Spring really is my favorite season. I love that in Spring, life begins anew. It reminds me that no matter how dark things can get in life, you always get another chance for renewal and growth.