ATHENS — What is spring to me? It's not a date on a calendar, nor is it something a rodent of questionable psychic talent can predict.
It is a feeling, a palpitation of the heart, a moment when your senses suddenly kick into high gear. You can smell the earth in all its sensuous glory, preparing to awe us with colors, sounds, smell, and wondrous touch.
For me, March is the month that would prefer to roll over and go back to sleep, pulling a white blanket of snow back over itself and settling down for a few more weeks of quiet.
April is like a child leading us down a path, demanding that we look, we listen, and we touch all the beauty that is unfolding in front of us.
We search for the first flower; we watch the trees as they bud, bloom, and leaf out in glorious technicolor. We stop and sniff the air, wondering where all the scents are coming from.
We listen as the voices of birds fill the early morning hours, as the geese call while flying in V formation to their summer home and, finally, as the evening air warms, we hear the peepers and the tree frogs as they fill the night with their chorus of love.
Spring, at least to me, isn't just a moment - it is many moments, strung together like crystals, shining individually and together.
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As a gardener, I look forward to playing in the dirt. To coming up with more ideas for my gardens and my outside world than I could ever implement.
To standing among the wild and man-made beauty that is my little piece of heaven. To breathing in the scents of the day as they change by the hour. To complaining about the aches and pains of maturing years, then lying down in the grass and feeling like I was 10 again.
We walk slowly in spring in New England. It draws us along the path and demands we look at its beauty.
Maybe that is why New Englanders seem to spend so much time outside once nature opens her doors to the warmer months and why we hold on till the last moment of fall and the first snowflake before we head inside to start dreaming of spring again.
Carpe diem!