Spring Fever

Spring has finally—finally—sprung in Minnesota. This morning, I awoke to the sounds of birds singing outside my window. I dressed for work and walked out the door without a coat. Despite the springtime morning chill, I didn't even put on a jacket. I brashly walked to my car in nothing but my long sleeved t-shirt. There is no longer snow on the ground in my yard—with the exception of a thin line of dirt-caked snow surrounding my flower beds in the back yard. The waist-high mounds that filled my yard a couple of short weeks ago are gone. And those flower beds surrounded by a thin line a snow...they are bursting with new life. Daylilies are pointing tiny green shoots toward the sky. Hostas are unfurling their curled leaves a little more ever day. Irises are beginning to poke through the muddy ground. If I push aside the piles of wet leaves, I find a mound of purple shoots carrying with them the promise of giant pink peonies later this spring. As Sophie and I ran from flower bed to flower bed yesterday looking for signs of green, her squeals of delight became louder and louder. She and I planted over one hundred flower bulbs in our yard last year. We cannot wait to see the fruits of labor.

Spring fever has invaded my body. I am even looking forward to the prospect of getting out in my yard and raking up all of those dead, damp leaves to reveal the greening grass below. I hate to rake with a passion, so Spring is definitely having an effect on me. My body is desperately craving green. And if it takes a rake and little sweat to find some green, I am willing to do it. The snow came earlier than we expected last autumn. The snowflakes flew before we were able to do one final raking of our yard. As a result, our lawn is covered in an obscene amount of wet, brown, dead leaves. As the snow melted, it even revealed three pumpkin-decorated plastic garbage bags full of leaves in our front yard—leftovers from our Halloween decorations that were never removed before the snow fell. Jack-o-lanterns aren't exactly Easter decorations, so we should really get them out of the front yard sometime soon. Then again, sitting under four feet of snow for five months have changed them from a bright orange to a soft pastel peach shade. Peach is a nice color for Easter. Maybe we'll leave them there.