Spring in Minnesota is both beautiful and strange. In the course of a day, you can watch the leaves of your tulips and daffodils rise inches from the ground; you go to bed one night and the world is shades of brown and grey, only to walk outside on your lunch break the next day and see a haze of green covering every tree and bush in sight. Spring comes quickly and quietly sneaking up on you and then knocking you over the head with its brilliant colors and vivacious personality.
The first truly warm weekend of spring in Minnesota is always a little like a circus sideshow. There are the "beautiful people" out biking or walking, children running and riding their bikes all over the neighborhood (no doubt assuring themselves that all their "secret places" are still there from last year), elderly folks sweeping the last of the oak leaves off their immaculately tended front walks. There are also flabby, Minnesota-fish-belly-white legs hanging out of shorts and capri pants. There are floppy, equally pallid upper arms jiggling in the breeze as folks bare their skin in attempts to soak up every last ray of spring sun.
The sounds are just as mixed. Joyous birdsong is a bright counterpart to the desperate groans of women trying to fit into summer clothes that 'somehow shrunk while they were stored' in the back of the closet or the garage all winter long. The evening song of peeping frogs and re-emerging crickets is drowned out by the outraged shouts as folks find out what a gym membership (needed to get back into swimsuit shape after a winter of layers and hot coco) is going to cost them. Children's shouts of glee at being able to play outside again rise into the air alongside the pained moans of gardeners who forgot to 'start slow' and worked winter-weakened muscles too hard.
It is a wonderful time, and I am proud to be a part of it....
What is Spring like where you live?
2 comments:
Spring is also a strange time in SW Washington. Unlike most of the rest of the country, the average high today is 59 degrees.
We get a few days here and there in which the temperature soars to, maybe, the mid to upper 60s, but it never lasts very long. While the rainfall is not as copious as it is in the winter, we still average about one-half foot in April.
But when we get those few nice days, EVERYBODY gets outside. You know the weather is nice when you hear about ten different lawn mowers starting up and the beaches are full (by our standards) of walkers and sunbathers.
What is spring like where I live?
I don't know if this will link up barefoot, (you might have to cut and paste the Picasa link into your browser window) but if it does then the photos were taken by me every Tuesday for five weeks in Kent, SE England at a community I am a volunteer at.
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/Revcounter/PilsdonOnLineAlbum?authkey=Gv1sRgCP3vzeG_t-yGXA#
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