Monday, March 03, 2008
Spring is in the Air
We hit 67 degrees today, and just as I suspected I saw crazy people in capris, sandals, and I could hear commuters belting out oldies from their semi-rolled down windows. Ahhhhh, denial! We're all pretending it's Spring, just for a bit.
We're actually surrounded by all sorts of signs - here's what I've been observing lately:
On the hopeful level:
Snow shovels, snow blowers, scrapers, coats, gloves, boots - all on sale at Sears!
People have quit wearing coats, completely ignoring that it's still freezing outside. There is no scarf cute enough that you don't tire of it after five months of wearing it wrapped around your neck, draped over your head and shoved down your jacket.
Kids are starting to hang around outside after school. I even saw some un-bundled up kid riding a crazy striped skateboard in the middle of the street today.
Birds, mating, right past our deck, at the Love Motel we put up for them a few years back. Very amusing to watch, and conjures up all sorts of thoughts that will never hit this blog.
Everywhere I go, women about to burst with pregnancy - just like spring rabbits, chicks, kittens, here come babies! Makes me count back nine months and wonder what on earth was going on? Did we all have a long power outage?
Easter and communion dresses, short sleeved tops, shorts, and horror of horror - bathing suits, the shelves and racks at the stores are full of them.
Easter dishes, easter baskets, those marshmallow things that I find hard to believe anyone really eats, easter grass, jelly beans, easter oreos, easter is abounding.
Patio furniture, new grills, seeds for the garden, all at the local hardware, along with garden hoses, grass seed, and new lawn mowers in all sizes and prices.
Now for a dose of reality:
Tomorrow is rain, the next is rain mixed with snow, the high this Saturday is 23 degrees. Keep the shovels, rock salt, and scrapers.
We can start wearing the new cute spring fashions, being brave enough to expose to the world our lily-white legs and freeze to death, or we can be reasonable and grab that stupid coat and gloves we're sick to death of. 23 degrees is not warm enough to live in denial.
Three or four days from now all those crazy kids will be home with another virus, driving their mothers stark-raving mad. They all got out of their houses just long enough to share the freshest crop of germs. Love those spring flu germs!
I don't know whoever said, or thought, that birds only mate in spring. Those crazy birds do it all summer long! Many fill the nest three times. That says something about either hormone levels or mortality rates of birds, I'm not sure which.
Easter will likely be, this year as the many that have preceeded it, freezing and wet. Even when Easter hits in April, Pittsburgh isn't known for great egg hunts outside, rather for finding that lone egg in the sofa a few weeks after the hunt is over. Take a tip from me if you live in a cold climate, number the eggs or at least count them! You'll be sorry if you don't do this and end up with an indoor hunt. I speak from experience.
We won't be able to sit out on our patios, grilling burgers and eating watermelon for at least two months to come. Right now the patio furniture is either covered up with ice and snow and the yuck that has rained down all winter, or it's deep inside the basement, nowhere near ready to be dragged out to the patio.
And if I am dumb enough to venture out to the garden, checking out the little green shoots coming up out of the ground, I'm going to have to walk across the doggie section of our estate. That alone will tell me that those tracks being brought in by the two four-leggeds in this house, they're not that deep rich earth Pearl S. Buck referred to. I think they're a bit more organic than that. Give me either freezing January, when the ground is hard and solid and we're all safely inside in our jammies, or move me right on to Hot August, when the ground is dried up and cracked, and anything that lands on my lawn is baked completely dry within hours.
Spring? I don't think so, and even if it is, in my book it's a bit over-rated.
We're actually surrounded by all sorts of signs - here's what I've been observing lately:
On the hopeful level:
Snow shovels, snow blowers, scrapers, coats, gloves, boots - all on sale at Sears!
People have quit wearing coats, completely ignoring that it's still freezing outside. There is no scarf cute enough that you don't tire of it after five months of wearing it wrapped around your neck, draped over your head and shoved down your jacket.
Kids are starting to hang around outside after school. I even saw some un-bundled up kid riding a crazy striped skateboard in the middle of the street today.
Birds, mating, right past our deck, at the Love Motel we put up for them a few years back. Very amusing to watch, and conjures up all sorts of thoughts that will never hit this blog.
Everywhere I go, women about to burst with pregnancy - just like spring rabbits, chicks, kittens, here come babies! Makes me count back nine months and wonder what on earth was going on? Did we all have a long power outage?
Easter and communion dresses, short sleeved tops, shorts, and horror of horror - bathing suits, the shelves and racks at the stores are full of them.
Easter dishes, easter baskets, those marshmallow things that I find hard to believe anyone really eats, easter grass, jelly beans, easter oreos, easter is abounding.
Patio furniture, new grills, seeds for the garden, all at the local hardware, along with garden hoses, grass seed, and new lawn mowers in all sizes and prices.
Now for a dose of reality:
Tomorrow is rain, the next is rain mixed with snow, the high this Saturday is 23 degrees. Keep the shovels, rock salt, and scrapers.
We can start wearing the new cute spring fashions, being brave enough to expose to the world our lily-white legs and freeze to death, or we can be reasonable and grab that stupid coat and gloves we're sick to death of. 23 degrees is not warm enough to live in denial.
Three or four days from now all those crazy kids will be home with another virus, driving their mothers stark-raving mad. They all got out of their houses just long enough to share the freshest crop of germs. Love those spring flu germs!
I don't know whoever said, or thought, that birds only mate in spring. Those crazy birds do it all summer long! Many fill the nest three times. That says something about either hormone levels or mortality rates of birds, I'm not sure which.
Easter will likely be, this year as the many that have preceeded it, freezing and wet. Even when Easter hits in April, Pittsburgh isn't known for great egg hunts outside, rather for finding that lone egg in the sofa a few weeks after the hunt is over. Take a tip from me if you live in a cold climate, number the eggs or at least count them! You'll be sorry if you don't do this and end up with an indoor hunt. I speak from experience.
We won't be able to sit out on our patios, grilling burgers and eating watermelon for at least two months to come. Right now the patio furniture is either covered up with ice and snow and the yuck that has rained down all winter, or it's deep inside the basement, nowhere near ready to be dragged out to the patio.
And if I am dumb enough to venture out to the garden, checking out the little green shoots coming up out of the ground, I'm going to have to walk across the doggie section of our estate. That alone will tell me that those tracks being brought in by the two four-leggeds in this house, they're not that deep rich earth Pearl S. Buck referred to. I think they're a bit more organic than that. Give me either freezing January, when the ground is hard and solid and we're all safely inside in our jammies, or move me right on to Hot August, when the ground is dried up and cracked, and anything that lands on my lawn is baked completely dry within hours.
Spring? I don't think so, and even if it is, in my book it's a bit over-rated.
Labels: Glimpse of the Heart
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