I shouldn’t even ask that question. I have spent a lot of the past few weeks searching for signs of spring. Frogs, peepers, flowers, plants… they have all be showing signs.
Now this weekend I have been sitting around wondering if it’s a bit early for some of these things.
The big one was the fact that a lot of the trees have that sort of reddish glow to them. The buds are swelling and some are bursting open. Leaves are starting to appear.
This tends to be something that happens later in May. And while May not be far off, it is still April.
But we have had some pretty nice days. It certainly doesn’t happen every year. Many years it seems cooler weather just does not want to let go and persists far into the spring before it releases it’s grip on us. Temperatures win the high teens in April are not really that common, although we might like them to be.
And this has been an interesting year. Just last week I chuckled as I drove by a popular local ice cream place where people were lined up top get a treat. In what any normal person would likely call a blizzard. It was snowing. The wind was howling. And people were lined up for ice cream.
That might seem strange in some places. But not so much here. Most of us are well aware that if you wait five minutes the weather will change. And in this case, the sun was back out in about that amount of time. When you live here, you get used to having four seasons in one day. Sometimes in one hour.
But you have to feel a bit sorry for some of the plants. I have a a few early rhododendrons. For one of them, it is about time. The flower buds are swollen and ready to pop open at any time. The other two seem to think it’s still winter. Although many of the trees around them seem to think it’s time to get their leaf on.
It certainly is interesting, although lacking a bit in consistency. And there is one more indication of spring that I can probably do without.
It did not escape my notice that there were a few black flies hanging around over the weekend. They didn’t seem overly hungry just yet, but that will come quickly.
We seem to be only a day or two of sunshine away from full fledged spring breaking out around us. Both the good and the bad.
