The people responsible for creating the Gregorian calendar that we follow obviously never experienced the seasons in upstate New York. It may say that the first day of spring is March 20 on paper, but up here we are as likely to have several inches of snow on the ground as we are to have the first snowdrops popping up in our gardens. This year we were blessed to have a cool but sunny day to welcome spring and I could not resist throwing open my windows to usher in the new season inside as well as outside.
Still, I have been blessed to be able to see small hints that spring is finally upon us. The “angry birds,” as I call them, are once again building a nest in the hollowed out piece of siding on the house next door. Day after day I watch the mother bird haul in nesting material, sometimes pieces of long grasses or corn silks so big she has to drag them inch by inch through the opening. My squirrel family has been more active as well. During the winter they only go out in search of food and return to the warmth of their home under the porch roof as soon as possible. Lately, however, I’ve seen them playing tag in the huge pine tree and across the fences out back. My daughter and I have been putting out scraps of fruit, veggies, nuts and seeds all winter, and now when they see us coming, they sit and wait patiently instead of running away. It warms my heart to think that they trust us now. Of course, the biggest sign was the one that woke me up the other morning as a huge flock of geese came squawking and flapping across the sky overhead announcing to all that they were, indeed, home again.
As cold as it’s been up here (wind chills in the single digits only a week ago), there have been tiny green shoots poking up through the front gardens of the neighboring houses and in the area surrounding my church, the daffodils have begun to show themselves. I know that we are still far from safe where the weather is concerned, having lived through many April snowstorms in the 30 years I’ve lived up here, but I hold out hope that, perhaps this year, we may get lucky. Yesterday I actually saw an insect flying around outside my window, the first one I’ve seen since autumn. If that’s not a sign that spring is really here, I don’t know what is. I call it a sign of hope carried in on tiny wings. Spring has come again!
And so it is.
