BS: Spring is here

Subject: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Mar 16 - 08:37 AM

Taken by surprise I came to
a grandiose Magnolia tree
Its magnificent one hit wonder
Blossoms with an arrogance to winter

There, the first Robin standing resolutely
despite how near I approach her
She is so staunch her name should be
Stands with fist

Bowing in the rain the simple daffodils
are being called to muster
to wage a mass demonstration soon.
But for now quietly assemble

Tiny Crocus draw all attention
from the winter debris to its oasis
of color and a promise of
great things to come

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 14 Mar 16 - 09:10 AM

Brilliant sunshine today, I just took a drive up the coast road. The sea rolling in, white cap on the waves as they caressed the shore.

Beautiful.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Mar 16 - 11:08 AM

Very sharp east wind this end but nice and sunny. Could be that my grass is dry enough to cut for the first time since October. Lost Gardens of Heligan yesterday when the wind was much lighter. Magnolias starting to come out, a few rhododendrons and h*sts of g*lden d*ffod*ls. Went there and back with the roof down too. Bracing!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 14 Mar 16 - 01:50 PM

Spring sleet and wind is over here. Never mind, this too shall pass.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: GUEST,#
Date: 14 Mar 16 - 02:27 PM

Snow here in ten days or so.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: GUEST,bbc
Date: 14 Mar 16 - 09:27 PM

Nope, not till my birthday!

Barbara

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: GUEST,MikeL2
Date: 15 Mar 16 - 02:32 PM

Hi After wettest Winter weather I can remember we had a change about a month ago. Managed to mow my lawns then.

This week , still dry but now in the daytime much warmer.

Actually got some gardening done and sat outside for lunch.

West is Best.

Mike

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 15 Mar 16 - 02:57 PM

Croakarses dying back now, together with my snowdrops.

Daffodils on one side of the garden out, other side finished.

Just bought a new camera so have been busy out with it in the garden...

Mind you, I hope the Canadian Rockies are going to get some more ruddy snow before I get there next month. Sunshine is apparently living up to its name rather than the irony behind the naming of it. Lake Louise is making snow and Revelstoke isn't looking too hopeful which is a bugger as I booked three nights in a hotel and paid for them the other day.

Oh, back here in Blighty. I have had to cut my lawns three times already. They are green, lush and growing too fast.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 15 Mar 16 - 03:32 PM

I am posting too much
I think it is a symptom of exiting hibernation mode.
This too shall pass.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 15 Mar 16 - 03:36 PM

Groundhog day hangover, Donuel.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Mar 16 - 05:57 PM

I went out into my garden wearing shorts this afternoon, and within thirty minutes I had acquired three vicious bites on my legs. I mean, what the bloody hell is biting me in MARCH!! Blood was running down both my legs fer chrissake. I didn't notice the first two culprits, but I saw the bloody thing third time round. It will bite no more. It was black, oval and about 5mm long. Little minibeastly bastard.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: GUEST,Richard Bridge on the Intel Quad Core
Date: 16 Mar 16 - 01:28 PM

The warmest February on record. By a HUGE margin.   Climate scientists panicking left right and centre. But the usual anti-science retards will deny it as usual.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Mar 16 - 05:46 PM

That applied to December, Richard, but not to February, at least in the UK, which was more like average.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: gnu
Date: 16 Mar 16 - 07:54 PM

Saw my first robin today. Probably been robins before this but I don't get out much since I heard the surgeon say, "We may need a suture." Also today, I heard Blue Jays singing that distinct spring song. Since I can't replicate that song herein, I will interpret it for humans (English version). It goes, "Wanna fuck? Wanna fuck?"

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 18 Mar 16 - 07:36 PM

It must be spring. An ant was wandering around my kitchen. I know there will be more soon. Eek!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Joe Offer
Date: 19 Mar 16 - 02:37 AM

After four years of drought, El Niña brought rain to California this winter. When there's been rain, I head for the desert to look for wildflowers. I went to Anza Borrego Desert State Park in San Diego County, and then to Death Valley National Park. The flowers were wonderful in both places. Death Valley was carpeted in gold.

Today I drove two retired nuns to Daffodil Hill, near Jackson in Amador County in the Gold Rush area. The people-planted daffodils were wonderful, but what I really loved were the wildflowers on the way to and from our destination. The redbuds were especially beautiful, and there were lots of California poppies. A fair amount of dark blue ceanothus bushes, too. No lupine yet - I think it's a bit too early.

And in July, we go on a wildflower tour in Zermatt, Switzerland.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 19 Mar 16 - 04:58 AM

Went for a walk along the bank of the river Mersey on Thursday. I found in flower: Lesser Celandine, Opposite-leaved Golden Saxifrage, Butterbur, Dogs Mercury and Spring Crocus. I also found the leaves of: Ramsons, Sweet Cicely, Cuckoo Pint, Autumn Crocus and several others.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Mar 16 - 05:56 AM

I remember when I lived oop north seeing lots of bistort, the stuff you roll up with egg, porridge oats and bacon fat to make Easter ledges pudding. It must grow in Cornwall but I haven't seen it. Moschatel will be out by now. I know one or two spots. I have a list of hundreds of plant species I found in Radcliffe in the early 1970s. It would have been longer but for the fact I wasn't very good with grasses ands sedges!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Will Fly
Date: 19 Mar 16 - 06:02 AM

Steve - was it by any chance a Blandford fly that bit you? They're nasty little devils and found in the west country, often near rivers.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Mar 16 - 09:35 AM

Could be I suppose. It's a bit early and I haven't seen reports from Cornwall. I was unwell the next day and slept for hours in the afternoon. The bites have only just subsided.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 19 Mar 16 - 10:41 AM

Yes, Steve, we've got Bistort in the Mersey Valley but it's a bit early for it - haven't even seen the leaves yet.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: gnu
Date: 19 Mar 16 - 12:33 PM

As from previous posts, it's been a great winter. Lulled into a false sense of security by Old Man Winter, the bastard strikes Monday with a Nor'easter. Warnings/watches are out but alerts have yet to be issued and they may not be as the track is uncertain. Alas, the temperatures have dropped... -15C tonight... so this could be a real Nor'easter given that the cold air may stall the storm when it hits the Isthmus of Chignecto (The Isthmus of Chignecto is an isthmus bordering the Maritime provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia which connects the Nova Scotia peninsula with North America.). I have seen us storm stayed for over three days with one of these late winter storms stalling over us but, given the weather over the last 15 years or so, even *I* have been lulled.

Nonetheless, I welcome the vernal equinox in the early hours of the morrow.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 19 Mar 16 - 05:54 PM

Spring will be back after an interruption from Winter Storm Regis.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Joe Offer
Date: 20 Mar 16 - 12:46 AM

I came across an interesting piece on Equinox/Equilux. Take a look:

http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-vernal-equinox-isnt-what-you-think-it-is-1765944094

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: GUEST,Iain
Date: 20 Mar 16 - 05:32 AM

Just had 5 dry days in a row for the first time in months. The lambs can finally run around outside without getting instantly blathered in mud and do not have to worry about the river flooding and trapping them.
The odd ray of sunshine would be a bonus. Another year is now well under way.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: bradfordian
Date: 20 Mar 16 - 06:53 AM

SPRING SONG Alan Bell

Early one evening as I strode along,
I heard a girl singing an old country song
To welcome the new days, the coming of spring,
The bleak winter over, new life to begin

CHORUS:
Love is a pleasure and love is a pain
Love is desire to share yet again
The sweetness of caring, the joy and the tears
Love everlasting, enduring the years

She sang it so sweetly, she sang it so fine
I thought of my own life and all that was mine
For having and holding are better than dreams
And lucky in love means, more than it seems

A time comes for living, a time comes for love
And spring is a good time to give all you have
For seasons will come and, so quickly roll on
As spring brings that young girl, to sing the old song


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKWcJ_MEGYQ

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Mar 16 - 02:35 PM

This year's had the shortest I've known in my lifetime up to now.

The vernal equinox occurred last Sunday, 20th March, heralding the start of Spring but in the early hours of Easter Sunday morning,27th March, British Summer Time starts.

So Spring's only 7 days long!

I blame the cutbacks!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Joe_F
Date: 22 Mar 16 - 04:03 PM

Spring is coming.
He is?
Not *he* is, *it* is.
It is what?
It is coming.
What is coming?
Spring is coming.
He is?

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 23 Mar 16 - 12:22 PM

It's not waiting till April for April showers here, in fact with the storms rolling through, March may go out unlike a lamb. At least it's not freezing cold now.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Joe_F
Date: 23 Mar 16 - 06:08 PM

In 1996 (IIRC), in Boston, MA, US, there was almost no snow all winter, until on April Fools' Day, with exquisite appropriateness, we woke up to about a foot of it.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 23 Mar 16 - 07:13 PM

....and the Mudcat forum finally sprung forward to Daylight Savings time.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 23 Mar 16 - 08:43 PM

In stands of trees an 1/8th of a mile deep,
the red buds are so thick you see through them.
The cherry trees and magnolias are in full force.
The trees with a wash of fairly green started today to barely bud.
The fragrance of hyacinth comes through my open window.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: GUEST,#
Date: 24 Mar 16 - 02:20 AM

Smell? Swell.

(. . . with apologies to Robert Zend.)

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Janie
Date: 24 Mar 16 - 08:41 PM

We have had some gorgeous days here on the northeast Piedmont of North Carolina.

Driving to and from my mother's this weekend, up and across the mountains then down into the Kanawha Valley that I call home was a delight. Redbuds blooming all along the edge of the woods, down low, and the larger trees all different fuzzy shades of green, yellow, orange and pink as the leaf buds start to color up and unfurl.

Daffodils growing out in the middle of old fields or light woods, the only remaining trace of what were once old homesteads and houses.

In my yard, all but the latest jonquils and daffodils are faded. Tulips are at their prime, flowering almond and an old, very early spirea in full bloom, earliest azaleas approaching full bloom, and Quaker's Ladies are all over the front yard. Vinca minor blooming on the shady bank and my few hellebores putting on a good show.

Field garlic has infested several flowerbeds and is standing tall.

The juncos and most of the white-throated sparrows left early in the week. Most birds still in courting mode, but have a pair of red-bellied woodpeckers tending a nest of eggs that I don't think have hatched yet. Several pregnant squirrels, aka tree rats, building birthing nests up in the oak trees.

And it is NCAA Basketball tournament time! Go Tarheels!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Mar 16 - 09:21 PM

What plant are you calling field garlic?

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Fossil
Date: 24 Mar 16 - 10:35 PM

Spring is not here, it's autumn. Mind you, it's still 25 Centigrade outside, so quite nice. (What that is in obsolete USdegrees I have no idea, shorts 'n T-shirt weather anyway).

Mind you, also - I live in the Southern Hemisphere. Like the rest of you, we have just had the equinox, but the days are getting shorter and the overnight temperatures are going down. At least my woodpile is full, in readiness for when it actually starts getting cold!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: GUEST,#
Date: 25 Mar 16 - 03:28 PM

That's 77 degrees Fahrenheit.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 25 Mar 16 - 03:44 PM

HORTUS IV says ; better than chives from bulb unless a dog has wizzed on it.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 25 Mar 16 - 05:26 PM

Mud, mud, glo-ri-ous mud....'tis the season. (southern New England)

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 25 Mar 16 - 05:47 PM

Spring has sprung
The grass has ris
I wonder where
The birdies is?

Some say the bird is on the wing
But that's absurd
Everyone knows
The wing is on the bird.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: GUEST,#
Date: 25 Mar 16 - 10:30 PM

Money's short and times are hard,
So here's your fu#kin' Easter card.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Janie
Date: 26 Mar 16 - 12:54 AM

Fossil, always enjoy posts regarding not only the season, but also about the seasonal flora and fauna south of the equator, around the globe, and especially that part of the globe that occupies two hemispheres different from the two my body happens to reside within.

Steve Shaw - Allium vineale is the species of field/wild garlic to which I refer. Occasionally will run across wild onion (Allium canadense) on walks, but field garlic is by far the predominate species here, and judging by taste and smell, the only winter/early spring wild allium growing in my garden beds or yard.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Mar 16 - 05:27 PM

Ah, that one. The one which, when consumed by dairy cattle, makes milk and cheese taste garlicky! We have a lot of three-cornered garlic in Cornwall, Allium triquetrum, which some people use in cookery. The nicest one, very abundant in these parts, is Allium ursinum, which we call ramsons or just wild garlic. Adds a nice mild garlicky touch to any dish you like.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: gnu
Date: 27 Mar 16 - 05:35 AM

GLORIOUS weather in SE New Brunswick, Canada. In like a lamb, out like a lamb this year. I am LOVIN IT! I hope we have a long spring and a moderate summer like we had last year. Of course, with the snow cover we have (WAY down from last year), well, we shall see.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 27 Mar 16 - 05:49 PM

I have 60 hyacinths by the front door.

You can cut the aroma with a knife.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Mar 16 - 05:56 PM

I had a pot of hyacinths in the house. I swooned every time I went into the room, so moved it into the porch. Then I swooned every time I came home, so I moved it outside. Walking through one of those department stores where the ladies' perfumery department occupies the whole of the shop just inside the entrance has the same effect on me. I have to hold my breath and proceed with great speed to get through it. I don't want to die.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 28 Mar 16 - 02:32 PM

....nothing quite like it for cool-ing the blood....

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Rapparee
Date: 29 Mar 16 - 09:01 AM

It didn't snow last night, so maybe it is.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 29 Mar 16 - 10:05 AM

It snowed here in Yorkshire today! But only for a few minutes. Tail end of winter storm Katie I suspect. Lovely outside now.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: gnu
Date: 29 Mar 16 - 04:00 PM

Nasty March squalls today. Got Mum about 300' from the house in the "Iron Overcoat"* and she said, "I don't want to go." I turned the car around and took her home. Sigh.

* CW Gary Owens short story 1987

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 30 Mar 16 - 10:02 AM

Sex everywhere you look
Strewn on the ground and
covering windshields
Spring is here
and its messy.

The forest is now opaque with buds and leaves of fairy green

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 30 Mar 16 - 05:43 PM

Forecast warms of a storm system which will bring high winds, rain, and thunder. So much for going out like a lamb.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Rapparee
Date: 30 Mar 16 - 08:19 PM

Snow on the ground yesterday morning and this morning, but it melted off without problem both times. Now the weather is supposed to clear up and the first sign of Spring will be Friday or Saturday: the yard gets cleaned up from it winter debris.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Janie
Date: 30 Mar 16 - 10:16 PM

Confess I can not abide more than the slightest hint of the scent of hyacinths. When my sister died many years ago, in the midst of winter, some one sent a lovely planter of forced hyacinths that flooded the house with their aroma for days. They are quite overpowering indoors. Carries me back to too much sadness.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Ed T
Date: 31 Mar 16 - 09:16 AM

End of winter 

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Llanfair
Date: 31 Mar 16 - 01:30 PM

Frost this morning in Wales, warm and sunny all day, the weeping willow is a haze of light green, well grown lambs in the valley fields, younger ones up here in the hills.
Wild garlic, mint, rhubarb, lemon balm and quince all early and growing well. Fruit trees showing green buds, as is the giant sycamore.
Hopefully now the solar panels can start earning their keep.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Joe_F
Date: 31 Mar 16 - 05:25 PM

At any rate, spring is here, even in London N.1, and they can't stop you enjoying it. This is a satisfying reflection. How many a time have I stood watching the toads mating, or a pair of hares having a boxing match in the young corn, and thought of all the important persons who would stop me enjoying this if they could. But luckily they can't. So long as you are not actually ill, hungry, frightened or immured in a prison or a holiday camp, spring is still spring. The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.
-- George Orwell, "Some Thoughts on the Common Toad" (April 1946)

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Mar 16 - 06:26 PM

Mrs Steve and I went to the RHS garden at Rosemoor, Torrington, Devon, this afternoon. Blue sky and mild weather made for a great day out. They have some magnificent trees there, the best ones being Himalayan birch with its paper white bark, English oak and tulip tree. We were a bit early for the magnolias and camellias. They have great swathes of narcissi growing in grass. My favourites are Narcissus bulbocodium, the hoop-petticoat (which we saw growing wild in the Picos de Europa in Spain years ago) and N. cyclamineus, cyclamen-flowered daffodil. There's a beautiful little lake there with a backdrop that changes dramatically through the seasons. So much promise.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Rapparee
Date: 31 Mar 16 - 07:51 PM

We have daffodils flowering. And yes indeed, Spring is here! This morning I saw a robin frozen to the ground.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: gnu
Date: 01 Apr 16 - 06:54 AM

16C today!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 01 Apr 16 - 04:20 PM

Weekend forecast still going on about snow. Enough already.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 04 Apr 16 - 03:19 PM

Snow today, mud tomorrow?

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Joe_F
Date: 04 Apr 16 - 09:35 PM

Made it to the supermarket & back; fell only once. Could be worse.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 04 Apr 16 - 10:09 PM

Spring is here? Where? I thought I'd found it, but it fled.

Ouch, Joe F.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 07 Apr 16 - 01:12 PM

Spring is around here somewhere. Rain instead of the snow that fell a few days ago, and the snow is melting. The nights have been very cold though for April.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 08 Apr 16 - 02:27 PM

Blue sky AND black clouds at the same time.
Direct sunshine AND pouring rain at the same time.
I looked for a rainbow. But the sun seemed to be straight overhead and rainbows are hard to see when the sun is not at an angle.
Heck of a wind blowing as well.

The trees don't quite know when to do what they know how to do. They're sort of standing around, bare, and expectant....like "Mother, may I?"

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 08 Apr 16 - 08:36 PM

A possibility of snow tomorrow. Noooo! However, it may pass south of me. If you are south of me, I hope it passes south of you, too! (I figure "south of me" covers a lot of territory--say, all the way down to the equator. Although I may make an exception for those states to which some RIers have fled to avoid snow.)

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 08 Apr 16 - 08:53 PM

The sun's always "at an angle" unless you live somewhere between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn where the sun will be overhead on just one or two days of the year. At present, the sun will be overhead a few degrees north of the equator, in which case your trees would be in the condition you describe only if you lived many thousands of feet up a mountain, somewhere at the bottom end of Central America or thereabouts. Alternatively, you could be looking in the wrong direction for your rainbows.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 12 Apr 16 - 11:49 AM

No rainbows today, only rain. The wind has quieted down at least, so the weather isn't totally changing every thirty minutes, like last week.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Stringsinger
Date: 12 Apr 16 - 01:27 PM

Spring has sprung, the pollen has ris,
Wonder where the birdies is?

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 15 Apr 16 - 03:15 PM

You watch the birdies. I'm watching the trees.

Bare trees, they are. For the first time, buds are visibly swelling. The trees are still behaving like, Mother, may I? Really? You sure about that?

The tulips, I will allow, have got their green leaves pushed out and flopping over in the wind.

And that clear blue sky overhead. Maybe, just maybe, there will be no more Ess-word for a while.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 16 Apr 16 - 01:44 PM

Warm weather for the Patriot's Day weekend and marathon, even warmer than seasonal by the day of the race. The poor runners, in truth, will find it positively hot in the sunshine.

The trees will go for it now. I just looked at the flowering trees in the public library parking lot, and their buds are ready to POP. No turning back now.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Apr 16 - 02:48 PM

Satin flowers peeping from the hedge banks like little stars as you swoosh by in your car. Two weeks to the annual bluebell walk. Real bluebells, not those Spanish interlopers.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 19 Apr 16 - 02:43 PM

Still waiting for the trees to bud. Stringsinger, the birdies are about. Geese flying in formation. And at dawn, the songbirds sound different. I never did study songbird calls, but sounds like some of the seasonal birds are back. And then there are the nonbird calls -- those peeping frogs have been going gangbusters in the marshlands.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Apr 16 - 08:49 PM

Wheatears are back but not in numbers. Chiffchaffs and sand martins. No sedge warblers as yet, the tone-deaf of the bird world. Confounded bloody blue tit going like the clappers outside the window way too early this morning, started up at sparrow's-fart, as we say. grr. Horrid Spanish bluebells everywhere.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Janie
Date: 19 Apr 16 - 10:54 PM

Redbuds setting their edible pods. Grab 'em quick while small or they will be too tough. Later azaleas in full bloom, and dogwoods just starting to fade. Fringe trees and lilacs starting to offer up their heady scents on the breeze. Birds courting and nesting all over the place. Roadside and garden spring flowers profuse and lovely. Roses will be blooming soon.

Andlotsandlotsoftreepollenpollen. Did I mention tree pollen?

Allergies the worst they have been in several years. I rarely use over-the-counter stuff - usually just tough it out. But this year better living through chemistry is probably keeping me out of the hospital and off of antibiotics. This year, the generic equivalents of Zyrtec and Mucinex DM are my friends.

Prefer the pollen to all the April Snow in the Rockies and the flooding in Houston. Guess it always pays to count blessings, eh?

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Apr 16 - 07:08 AM

If I go outside for five minutes with any bit of me unprotected, I get bitten to pieces by mozzies or their detestable allies. For some reason it's very bad this year. I've tried everything but only 50% deet works for me. Those so-called non-drowsy antihistamine tablets work well but leave me in zombie mode. I'd much rather have the summer cleggies. They drain me of my lifeblood but their bites don't make me itch, oddly.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 20 Apr 16 - 01:36 PM

DANDELIONS!!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Joe_F
Date: 20 Apr 16 - 06:00 PM

Yes, dandelions! I just picked three of them & put them in my window.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Apr 16 - 06:23 PM

It's traditional to make dandelion wine on St George's Day, April 23, but I've always found that dandelion flowers are far more abundant a week or two later. Remove the hollow stalks but don't bother taking off the green bracts under the yellow bits. Dandelion wine is one of the best home wines, along with rose hip.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 20 Apr 16 - 06:49 PM

Steve, did you ever find out what bit you in March, and required you to get extra sleep? And is the critter still out there biting?

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Apr 16 - 09:10 PM

I didn't, though Will's suggestion was valid. My being unwell the next day could well have been a case of post hoc ergo propter hoc, though, if it was, it was an odd coincidence. The weather was dry and windy today with low humidity so I braved the outside world with no deet protection. I did get two bites close to sunset which I think were by mozzies. On the whole you're never going to catch anything to worry about from insects in the UK. We went to Italy twice in 2013, almost to the same area (Amalfi coast and Bay of Naples),just three weeks apart, and I got no bites in September but was horribly afflicted three weeks later. I'm pretty sure it was mozzies. I still have a huge scar on one leg. Oddly, I can be bitten to pieces by horseflies in summer with no ill effects.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 19 Mar 17 - 04:05 PM

First day of spring shortly. Looking back at this thread is nostalgic in more ways than one. It was just before GUESTs were banned in the BS threads.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Senoufou
Date: 19 Mar 17 - 04:55 PM

Oilseed rape fields are just beginning to come into flower here in Norfolk. The pollen absolutely slays my poor husband, and his eyes and nose are streaming already. It looks as if all the farmers round about have chose rape this year for their main crop. Oh Lord!

Talking of clegs, Norfolk has a rather unusual type that is browner than the normal ones, and their bites make huge lumps the size of ping pong balls come up on my legs. They weep for days, itch like mad and go crusty. I avoid visiting water gardens and anywhere marshy. A colleague years ago was very badly bitten all over her legs, and she was wearing stout denim jeans. It didn't stop the little monsters from getting through the thick material. She had to go to the doctor, as the bites all went septic.
I saw two red admiral butterflies this morning on my tubs of hyacinths. And the field up the road has some darling little lambs.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Elmore
Date: 19 Mar 17 - 08:35 PM

Here in the mountains of North Georgia the first couple of weeks in March were colder than the rest of winter. Things are improving though.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Amos
Date: 19 Mar 17 - 11:07 PM

Our blue and white phlox are burgeoning. It is something. The redbud tree was blooming but went sullen when the freeze hit; I expect it will come out of it. The rolling hills of North Carolina are just raring to bust out with green and color, given half a chance.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Senoufou
Date: 20 Mar 17 - 05:03 AM

You're right Steve, nothing here in UK that bites one will do much harm to health (except perhaps an adder!) In W Africa, I've been bitten to death by mosquitoes, in spite of Deet and anything else I could get my hands on. I was told they particularly love white skin, although scientific experiments have shown they're actually drawn to black surfaces, and respond to carbon dioxide exhaled by warm-blooded mammals. Thank the Lord I took Malarone (anti-malarials) unlike some stupid idiots who don't bother, and risk their lives out in the Tropics.
My feet are badly scarred from numerous African mozzy bites. I always wear long skirts out there, but one's feet are exposed in sandals and they have a feast, especially in the evenings.

Speaking of adders, we have quite a few of those in Norfolk, in heathland habitats, and at this time of year they lie rather comatose on paths through the bracken. People tread on them without noticing their presence. But they aren't deadly, and very few bites are reported. No deaths for twenty years. I have no fear of snakes, quite like them actually.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: gnu
Date: 20 Mar 17 - 06:16 AM

Eight more minutes!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Mar 17 - 07:01 AM

Heard a chiffchaff yesterday but I think it was an overwintering one (quite a new phenomenon), not a migrant as they don't usually arrive until well into April. The great tits are going nuts. We've had hardly any sun for over a week. Damp and rotten and it's getting colder. There are bumble bees around and the scurvy grass is out.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Mar 17 - 07:29 AM

"Darling lambs"

I looked up the interpretation of Sonnet 18 the other day, the one in which Shakespeare refers to the darling buds of May. Interestingly, the word "darling" probably refers to the changing of the flower buds from green to coloured as they open. Despite the affectionate context in which we use the word today, when applied to people it may originally have meant a pubescent girl blooming into young womanhood. I like that. I'll remember that the next time the checkout girl at the supermarket calls me "darling!"

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Senoufou
Date: 20 Mar 17 - 07:31 AM

I worry about the bees and also the butterflies; it's far too cold and wet for them to find anything to eat in the way of nectar or pollen.

Those great tits are a blasted scourge (I know I'm in the RSPB but really!) on and on and on and on.... and we have a rather raucous blackbird who sits on our roof warbling (we use the term loosely) at dawn. More like a corncrake. Perhaps he has a sore throat. Our neighbours' one has a lovely fluid song.

Soon I suppose the Mad Swans will start walking down our village street right in the middle of the road with their poor cygnets struggling along behind exhausted. Why oh why do they do this every year? I've been in tears trying to slow down huge lorries in the hope of preventing a horrific squashing.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Senoufou
Date: 20 Mar 17 - 07:41 AM

Ah Steve, here in Norfolk the word is used instead of 'delightful' or even just 'nice'. One could say, "I met that darling old bwoy in the Pussed Orfice this mornin'." Or, "That darling little owd bairby hev grown since oi larst saw 'im!"

However, I hope the checkout lady was being totally sincere :)

By the way, my rather more savvy friend has informed me that one shouldn't say 'dear' any more, as it's patronising. I often say, "Thank you dear" in shops etc. But apparently it's now the height of dreadful, so I suppose I must stop.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Mar 17 - 08:36 AM

That could have been Cameron's fault with his "Calm down, dear!"

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Senoufou
Date: 20 Mar 17 - 09:34 AM

Or Michael Winner.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Janie
Date: 20 Mar 17 - 11:36 AM

After a ridiculously mild winter that was like a very long, early spring, March has thus far been very wintery. Fooled plants that respond more to temps than to day length are thoroughly ruined for this year.

The birds don't care though - Rampant courting everywhere I look. And mosquitos - did I mention mosquitos?

Must be Spring!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 20 Mar 17 - 05:35 PM

T. S. Eliot wrote that April is the cruelest month.

Judging from the forecast, though, cruel weather could not wait for April.
A day or two, including today, will be well above freezing, with sunny skies, and much melting.
Then, later this week, temperatures will plunge: it will be at or sub-freezing DAY AND NIGHT with a bitter winter wind adding that wind-chill factor. That for several days straight.
Then the temperature wobbles upward somewhat for the weekend maybe.

Not sure how March is going to "go out" but right now the extremes are being worked in a pendulum swing.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 21 Mar 17 - 09:28 AM

It is a silent Spring here. All the hatched singing/chirping frogs were all killed off due to the mild February followed by a hard freeze.
Perhaps they may return with time.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Janie
Date: 21 Mar 17 - 12:59 PM

Not to worry about the frogs, Donuel. They just go back into hybernation.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 21 Mar 17 - 04:34 PM

A minute ago I could not recall the name spring peepers.
I hate when that happens.

on another note I am thinking Jupiter has an oblong liquid hydrogen metal core that creates internal gravitational turbulence http://www.space.com/34457-jupiter-stripes-go-deep-juno-probe-reveals.html

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: EBarnacle
Date: 22 Mar 17 - 12:29 AM

100. Beautiful, spring day today, cold tomorrow.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 22 Mar 17 - 03:13 PM

Mad Swans! Good grief! I've only ever observed swans on the water from a distance.

What I hear about swans on this side of the ocean, is how intolerant they are towards geese. Now, Mad Geese, those I'm used to. They are a suburban annoyance, swaggering around parking lots and leaving "greetings" on sidewalks.

Though Spring be here officially, today Spring is bundled up against a thoroughly wintry wind. New England reminds me of the Four Corners on such days: sun, no clouds, bone dry, and that wind blowing. We still have snow on the grass as well.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 29 Mar 17 - 12:28 PM

...and now that the snow on the grass is almost gone, here is another snowstorm forecast for the first weekend of April. April Fool indeed.
As a Swiss-Germanspeaking Dominican nun wrote to me:

Im April
thut das Wetter
was es will.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 01 Apr 17 - 05:20 PM

spring is around here somewhere....must rummage around for it...

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 02 Apr 17 - 01:27 PM

Hey, THERE it is. About time Spring showed up. It's safe for the peeper frogs to come back out. If any survived to hatch, that is.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Joe_F
Date: 02 Apr 17 - 06:12 PM

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is on an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.

-- Robert Frost, "Two Tramps in Mud Time"

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 08 Apr 17 - 06:57 PM

The moths ought to be back any time now, battering against windows and doors.

It's nice to be in spring. However I have not missed the moths. Not the tiniest bit.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 09 Apr 17 - 01:55 PM

The trees here are entirely bare. Not a bud, not a leaf.
Not yet, anyway. Now that it is well above freezing,
the trees will spring to visible life in no time.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 09 Apr 17 - 08:34 PM

Last week the most delicate yellow fairy green buds burst into infant leaves. Now every day looks more lush than the last.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: ranger1
Date: 09 Apr 17 - 10:51 PM

Spring is finally here on the coast of Maine. I have woodcocks in the field behind the cottage, the osprey has returned to Googins Island at the park, and today, I found a hazelnut starting to flower. The red maples have been in bloom for a bit, but they're tougher than the rest. And there's a pair of redwing blackbirds singing in the swampy spot in the neighbor's field.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Joe_F
Date: 10 Apr 17 - 06:27 PM

The beginning of spring, for me, for tonsorial purposes, is determined by the following algorithm: When, for two successive days, the predicted *and achieved* high is at least 70 degrees F, it is time to get a haircut. That is almost certain to happen tomorrow. Fuzz day!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: ced2
Date: 11 Apr 17 - 11:50 AM

Yippee,
The peanuts have been well soaked in prussic acid and loaded into the pigeon feeder, the squirrel bait loaded into the attractive (to squirrels that is) trap and the laboratory prepared. Off to the park we go!!!!!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 11 Apr 17 - 07:47 PM

Sounds like Tom Lehrer, "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" !

I'm with gnu, who is growsing on another BS thread that he wants spring back and wants summer to go away. Me too.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 12 Apr 17 - 01:44 PM

And with the spring comes the rain. That's better. Rain is cool (in this temperate zone it is, at any rate).

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 16 Apr 17 - 11:39 AM

Spring is SUPPOSED to be here on Easter Sunday.

Feels more like...summer. But it's supposed to cool down.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Apr 17 - 01:03 PM

We've had a quarter of an inch of rain in April so far and there's none forecast. I started keeping rainfall records for my garden 24 years ago. The driest month so far has been August 1995 with just under half an inch. Competition on!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 11:29 AM

You know Spring has arrived in Boston when they run the Patriot's Day Marathon.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: gnu
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 03:29 PM

I was looking out my kitchen window just now.

At this time of year, when it snows, it's really pretty... because the little bastards melt and die when they hit the ground.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 17 Apr 17 - 03:36 PM

Laughing along with you, gnu! Don't mind if it snows, when the temperature is borderline freezing anyhow. Just as long as we don't get ICE.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 19 Apr 17 - 06:34 PM

The trees are still trying to catch up. The winter got icy and bitter late in its time, and the trees are slow to bud or leaf.

However the forsythia are yellow, loud, and proud.

And the surviving peepers are just plain loud.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 21 Apr 17 - 03:12 PM

Spring is here, and so is the rain. Good thing too.
After a harsh, icy winter, all the growing things are making up for lost time.
The bare trees finally have buds on the branches.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 22 Apr 17 - 05:20 PM

And BOOM! Stuff on the branches of the trees! Already the sightlines are different, no more bare trees for MONTHS AND MONTHS.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 23 Apr 17 - 05:00 PM

Darned if it isn't summer weather again....knock it off, upstairs!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 24 Apr 17 - 01:08 PM

And now we are due for nearly one solid week of rain,
according to the forecast.
Sounds like spring to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 24 Apr 17 - 03:56 PM

Spring is here,
and now, so are the dandelions and the azaleas.
The magnolia buds are swelling as well.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 25 Apr 17 - 05:10 PM

EARTHWORMS! earthworms!
The rain is falling, the sidewalks are wet and warm,
and the earthworms are out on the concrete!

I can't find the silly poem I read in my childhood.
The one that started,
Rain, Wind and Rain!

In which the young (?) earthworms wanted to get above ground
and wiggle around in the rain,
and the old earthworms warned them about getting squashed.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 14 May 17 - 01:12 PM

I like Joe F's algorithm.

Our USA Mother's Day this year is as usual in May, but it feels more like a rainy April day.

The forecast, however, says that during the coming weekdays, we are due for very warm weather.

I couldn't wait, and got my hair trimmed anyway.
And now I don't think they trimmed enough. But I guess that's better than too much. If they don't trim enough, you can always ask to have more taken off.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 15 May 17 - 12:29 PM

This is one of my happy springtime memories:

growing up in a small town, where the countryside was given over to quarries (limestone), farms, and the last remains of the forest before the Anglos showed up.

Sunday driving, there was a country route that took your car past a farm during lambing season. Now, this sounds like a creepy thing to do, and if is, then we were a carload of creeps:

We would drive down the country road that went by the pasture. Pull off the road onto the shoulder, turn the engine off, and roll down the windows. Stay in the car and just listen.

That way we could hear the lambs and the grown sheep talking to each other, and watch the lambs gamboling on the other side of the fence. When we were ready, we rolled up the windows, turned on the ignition, and headed for home.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Joe_F
Date: 15 May 17 - 06:10 PM

Another (later) spring ritual for me is switching from cooked vegetables to salad at dinner. That doesn't have a formal algorithm, but it looks like happening the day after tomorrow, when it seems we shall be thru with bloody highs in the bloody 50s (F).

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 16 May 17 - 12:13 PM

Mowing the grass lawns!

All that rain has had the grass growing like mad.
Today the lawnmowers are out and growling away.

The smell of freshly cut grass is a fond childhood memory.
And one that I missed during my adult years
in the
(north of the border) state of New Mexico.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 18 May 17 - 08:30 PM

Still spring, regardless.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 19 May 17 - 07:17 AM

Spooky bright green light until 8:20 last night/ A solid Layer of clouds over 30,000 ft reflected light long after sunset. When night finally came it was heat lightning all night long. The diaspora of toads migrating last night was a noisy affair.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: leeneia
Date: 19 May 17 - 07:39 PM

Thank you for your poem in the Original Post, Donuel. I like it.

Weather here in the heartland showed that spring is not always gentle. We were under a tornado watch for several hours yesterday, but no tornado appeared. Oklahoma saw 5 tornadoes yesterday, but little property damages and no injuries. The tornadoes were crossing empty land, mostly.

We did get a lot of rain. There were flash floods and leaky roofs.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 20 May 17 - 02:15 PM

We have croaking beasties in the evening as well. Loud!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Senoufou
Date: 21 May 17 - 04:11 AM

The Mad Swans are at it one again, dragging themselves and their seven (this year) cygnets all the way to the lake every day and all the way back again. But - some good news! The powers-that-be have erected two big triangular signs at each entrance to the village, with a lovely silhouette of the swans/cygnets, warning drivers to slow down.

It remains to be seen if the blessed drivers will do so. We've already put up another Slow Down sign warning of children and horse riders, but the lorry drivers take no notice whatsoever and hurtle through the village like bats out of hell. I pray it will never happen, but we're all terrified of finding squashed swans, children or horses on the road one of these days. Why do people whizz about like this so irresponsibly?

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 21 May 17 - 04:28 PM

About the Mad Swans, Eliza:

does your village also have ducks and geese?
And how do they get on with the swans?

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Senoufou
Date: 21 May 17 - 05:39 PM

Yes, we have ducks and geese of many kinds, and they all seem to get on well together on the river and the string of lakes keberoxu.

At Wroxham Broad, there are absolutely masses of all types of water fowl, scrounging bread and chips etc off the tourists!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Senoufou
Date: 22 May 17 - 03:39 AM

Actually it's quite funny to watch at Wroxham. There are those wooden picnic tables arranged down by the river and the Broad. Unsuspecting tourists from 'oop North' sit there munching on their takeaway food, and suddenly a big swan's head on a huge long neck pops up right beside them, followed by another and another, until they're surrounded by them. They stretch out and help themselves to the food on the table, while the tourists sit frozen in terror!

Meanwhile, under the table are various ducks and Canada geese etc.,idly trying to chew their trousers and shoes, while overhead, dozens of seagulls drop large dollops of wet poo.

It's a laugh a minute down there, as other tourists have rented a boat for an hour, and from the same spot one can watch queues of them heading under the low bridge, where the archway is very narrow. They either bump their heads or crunch the boat. Every few minutes there's a cry of "Ouch!" or "Oh no!"

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 22 May 17 - 06:13 PM

That tourist scene sounds as though you could charge admission just to watch.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Senoufou
Date: 23 May 17 - 03:55 AM

I've often had the same thought! We like leaning against the bridge parapet and you can see it all from up there. It's very funny.

The swans really are enormous when up close and personal. When you're seated at the picnic table, their heads are level with your eyes. And they have a glassy stare, right in your face, most intimidating.

They also glide up to all the holiday cabin-cruiser boats moored along the river, begging for food. I've even seen them poke their long necks through open windows of the cabins, cheeky things. You can hear the people inside crying out in surprise.

I absolutely love Wroxham. It's about thirty minutes from our village by car, but we go there often.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 23 May 17 - 03:54 PM

Everything everywhere is green. Seemingly.

Only six weeks ago the trees were bare.

It's overwhelming in full sunshine.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 27 Mar 18 - 03:20 PM

After logging of the public computer last evening, and saying goodnight to Mudcat,
I walked out of the library to the parked car in the lot.
The parking lot, a spacious one, is near a ditch and a patch of woods, in an low-lying region where there are marshes and wetlands nearby.

Thus, the little things that make noise in the evening.
Any time now there will be spring peepers.
But last night there were no peepers yet.
Just one very quizzical-sounding bird call, couldn't place the bird;
but the pitch of the bird call goes "up?" .
Sounded in a way like the bird was calling
"anybody out there?"
"anybody out there?"

Soon enough the peepers will be peeping so loudly
that the quizzical bird call will be drowned out altogether.

It's been a long harsh winter,
and this is our first proper thaw.
Bare trees, and great heaps of frozen dirty snow.
How quickly all of that can change.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 27 Mar 18 - 10:34 PM

Spring is sublime and slime
of the blind
to intertwine.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 28 Mar 18 - 11:31 AM

Last year, Easter Sunday arrived so late in the calendar year
that it fell the day before
the Patriot's Day Marathon in Boston, Massachusetts --
which is the day immortalizing Paul Revere's Ride,
and about as late as Easter can possibly be.

This year,
Easter Sunday coincides with April Fool's Day.
...which makes me wonder if the weather will get up to no good.
The forecast for Easter Sunday
does threaten to be chilly, not much above freezing.

And talking of slime,
the spring peepers are out, bless them.
Night before last, no peepers, only a puzzled-sounding bird call.
But LAST night,
there were a mere handful of spring peepers.
Their voices did not roar, which is how it sounds
-- a very high-pitched roar --
when all the peepers go at it "en masse" and make this dense wall of noise.
No, last night was loud and clear, but just a small cluster of peepers, in the ditch near the public parking lot.

That will probably change in a matter of hours!
Though our trees be bare,
spring is impatient to spring forth from the ice and the frozen snow.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 30 Mar 18 - 06:32 PM

The spring peepers are making up for lost time --
they roar in BROAD DAYLIGHT now.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 08:38 AM

Now, when it snows, it slushes. About time, too.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 03 Apr 18 - 04:42 PM

...and with the spring comes the wind. A whole new and different gusty wind.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 04 Apr 18 - 10:28 AM

Rain, wind and rain! so begins a children's poem about
the earthworms coming out.
It's umbrella time.
In some parts of the northeastern US
this would be called mud season.
having said that,
some of those places are still getting snow this year.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 04 Apr 18 - 09:17 PM

kb you make good copy for a typical local channel 7 weatherman.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 06 Apr 18 - 09:42 PM

I actually hope that
the coolth/cold stays for a little while --
not freezing nor subfreezing, you understand.

Just that a gradual thaw is less likely
to result in floods.
Finally, after these months of snowstorms,
I can see the water level of the flooded rivers and wetlands
gradually lowering. It was getting a little too close
to the road surfaces,
we've had floods that closed roads before.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 08 Apr 18 - 03:42 PM

... spring, anyone?

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 08 Apr 18 - 03:43 PM

Eliza/Senoufou,
is it time for the Mad Swans to start their progress? Or too early yet?

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 10 Apr 18 - 01:01 PM

I'll look more favorably towards thinking it is Spring if we can just go a full week without it snowing. Temperature rising above 45F, too, would be a nice touch. I still have mounds of blackened snow next to the deck (foot of the driveway) and at the head of the driveway, but it's no longer blocking my view of the road.

Maple sugaring is well under way, but it's not TRULY Spring, of course, until I see the first snowy egret...yard sale...dog, ears flapping, hanging out of a car or pickup truck window...bare knees on letter carriers. Bare knees on joggers have been sighted, but they never really went away. (Joggers are..."different".)

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 10 Apr 18 - 01:06 PM

You are right, Bat Goddess, about the joggers
They went bare-kneed weeks ago hereabouts.

I have now seen ducks by one pond
and geese in one parking lot.
Of course the robins are hopping around as if they own the place.

And don't forget the PEEPERS.
Joe Offer and I were exchanging posts about them
on a thread about German songs;
the peepers are peeping as though their species depends on it.
In broad daylight too.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 11 Apr 18 - 04:20 PM

I saw the first firefly of the year night before last, and heard the first Chuck-Will's-Widow last night.

(Chuck-Will's-Widow is a close cousin of the Whippoorwill, but he doesn't get mentioned in song lyrics.)

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 11 Apr 18 - 10:14 PM

....and the Boston Marathon is forecast to be rained on.
At least it won't be ... gulp ... snow.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: beardedbruce
Date: 12 Apr 18 - 09:26 AM

Mentioned, but not given in it's entirety ( From Tom Lehrer):

I'd like to take you now on wings of song, as it were, and try and help you forget perhaps for a while your drab, wretched lives.

Here's a song all about spring-time in general, and in particular
one of the many delightful pastimes the coming of spring affords us all.

Spring is here, a-suh-puh-ring is here.
Life is skittles and life is beer.
I think the loveliest time of the year is the spring.
I do, don't you? 'course you do.
But there's one thing that makes spring complete for me,
And makes ev'ry sunday a treat for me.

All the world seems in tune
On a spring afternoon,
When we're poisoning pigeons in the park.
Ev'ry sunday you'll see
My sweetheart and me,
As we poison the pigeons in the park.

When they see us coming, the birdies all try an' hide,
But they still go for peanuts when coated with cyanide.
The sun's shining bright,
Ev'rything seems all right,
When we're poisoning pigeons in the park.

Lalaalaalalaladoodiedieedoodoodoo

We've gained notoriety,
And caused much anxiety
In the Audubon society
With our games.
They call it impiety,
And lack of propriety,
And quite a variety
Of unpleasant names.
But it's not against any religion
To want to dispose of a pigeon.

So if sunday you're free,
Why don't you come with me,
And we'll poison the pigeons in the park.
And maybe we'll do
In a squirrel or two,
While we're poisoning pigeons in the park.

We'll murder them all amid laughter and merriment.
Except for the few we take home to experiment.
My pulse will be quickenin'
With each drop of strychnine
We feed to a pigeon.
It just takes a smidgin!
To poison a pigeon in the park.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Senoufou
Date: 12 Apr 18 - 10:54 AM

Sorry keberoxu, I've just seen your question about the Mad Swans.
No, it's a bit early as yet. Their cygnets start walking around mid-May. But Wroxham (we were there yesterday) is absolutely thronged with swans. More than I've ever seen. There were quite a few coach tours (from oop North) having their packed lunches at the picnic tables, and the inevitable mugging by aggressive and hungry swans was in full swing. Really funny!

In our village, the fields are completely under water and look like lakes. The real lakes have joined up, so all the water birds are having a great time. The farmers, not so much...

I've noticed lots of fields that aren't flooded being prepared for potatoes. (deep furrows) Good choice, as spuds love rain.

Our pair of wood pigeons that seem to get fatter and fatter (husband loves them and is always feeding them) have started their very loud "doo, doo, doo-doo DOOOO!" at dawn. He's not quite so keen on them now!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 13 Apr 18 - 02:51 PM

Only a little ice still visible in one of the smaller local ponds. Ice out at Mendum's was about a month ago and Swain's a week or so ago.

Yesterday I saw turtles on "Turtle Rock" in the little pond across the road from Mendum's. And I had a summer tanager fly across the road in front of the car.

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Senoufou
Date: 13 Apr 18 - 03:11 PM

The weather lady on BBC TV has promised us at least 22 degrees C on Sunday and most of next week. I'm getting my bikini ready... heh heh!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 14 Apr 18 - 06:31 PM

For the first time,
bare trees in my area
have buds with tiny green bits and pieces of things busting out.

Not a minute before time either.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 16 Apr 18 - 04:20 PM

The spring rain is certainly here -- coming down in buckets.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Apr 18 - 06:04 PM

"I'm getting my bikini ready..."

Me too. :-(

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 18 Apr 18 - 12:21 PM

After a 3 inch rainfall the trees went from transparent bare branches to an opaque tree line of fairy green in one day

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 18 Apr 18 - 12:44 PM

It is not well and truly Spring until we can go seven full days without snow or flakes in the air.

Spring was again reset on Monday, April 16th (or, as I suspect it might be, January 107th).

My snowdrops, crocuses, and little blue things are not happy. My daffodil buds remain tightly closed.

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 19 Apr 18 - 07:02 PM

Behind my apartment building is a bed of tulip bulbs.
The big flukey green leaves are up,
but this morning there was sleet,
and now the flukey leaves are sprawled in the dirt every which way.
Maybe the tulip stems and buds downstairs
are having second thoughts about poking themselves above ground.

In the meanwhile, the peepers are peeping frantically,
the bird calls can't be told apart because
all the birdies are hollering and trumpeting at the same time,
especially on a rainy sleety morning.

The trees are stealthily opening buds of green.
And some of the marshlands are still dangerously near flood stage.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 20 Apr 18 - 02:43 AM

The swallows finally arrived yesterday, about a week later than usual.

Robin

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 21 Apr 18 - 01:30 PM

Bright yellow forsythia blossoms, for the first time.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 23 Apr 18 - 12:50 PM

Another first:

First time that, when parking in an exposed parking lot at lunchtime,
I opened the windows a crack before locking up and leaving the car.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Apr 18 - 11:42 AM

The warmer weather has been here for a few weeks (off and on). The daffodils finally bloomed and the iris are now way off-peak, and yesterday an unidentified variety of pollen buildup hit me right between the eyes. Something is blooming and is going to require a neti pot and drugs to clear out the reaction in my poor sinuses.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Senoufou
Date: 25 Apr 18 - 03:20 PM

Ah yes, hay fever. My poor husband has started to sneeze constantly, feels blocked up and can hardly breathe. The medications make him drowsy and dopey, and he has to drive to work and handle heavy cleaning machinery.
There are numerous fields of oilseed rape around our house and also, sadly, around the school where my husband works. The yellow flowers are now in full bloom, and it's this pollen particularly which makes him so poorly. That and the May blossom in the hedgerows.
We've been trying local honey from our village beekeeper, which we thought might desensitise him, but it doesn't seem to have worked. :(

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 26 Apr 18 - 08:50 PM

Finally, a spring storm instead of a blizzard.
The proof!

the EARTHWORMS were wriggling on the pavement.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 18 May 18 - 07:54 PM

Spring having sprung,
there is so much green
that some areas are unrecognizeable from a month ago.

Tomorrow our area is due for more rain,
so the green growing things
will be as aggressive as ever.
The hedge bushes look twice as big,
the deciduous ones anyway,
and one on a local sidewalk
is starting to crowd the walk itself. Wants trimming.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Senoufou
Date: 19 May 18 - 03:00 AM

I reckon I was too gloomy too soon about husband's hay fever. He suddenly stopped sneezing and has been fine for a week or two. The oilseed rape is still in full flower, and I've never seen so much May blossom - the hedges around all the fields are thick with it. But he now hasn't even a sniffle! Perhaps that local honey has done its job after all.
Cuckoo going mad this morning at dawn, tooting away in the wood behind us. Very poignant sound.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 19 May 18 - 07:16 PM

And more, more, more rain.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 21 May 18 - 12:42 PM

Just reflect, fellow spring-watchers,
that two months hence,
summer will be in full force, and we will be thinking:
I miss those nights in spring when you didn't need refrigerated air . . .

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 27 May 18 - 11:20 AM

And now that it's the last weekend in May,
we're getting April showers with April temperatures to match.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Senoufou
Date: 27 May 18 - 03:02 PM

Those blooming swans are at it again this year. Saw them yesterday down by the village shop, painfully hobbling along with six tiny goslings, who are far too young to be trying to walk a mile behind their parents.
It's heartbreaking,it really is.

Kindly villagers were watching over their progress, and keeping an eye out for oncoming traffic, but they can't be there every morning and every evening throughout Spring.

I just can't figure out why they do this. It's obviously a struggle.
My husband said yet again he'd like to help them and get them into our car (!) to give them a lift to the lake. I keep having to tell him the pen and the cob would attack him - adult swans are very dangerous, especially when they have cygnets. But he's like me, a bit 'sorft'!!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Senoufou
Date: 27 May 18 - 04:58 PM

Ha! They haven't got 'six tiny goslings'!!! (silly old lady) They are of course CYGNETS!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Gurney
Date: 30 May 18 - 02:23 AM

Spring may be there, but Winter is here, next Friday.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 25 Mar 19 - 05:41 PM

... and at long last,
the spring peepers have decided that it is warm enough
to come out and shriek, I mean, peep.
They are going at it hammer and tongs
in the ditch
next to the railroad tracks
behind the public library.
There's a parking lot next to said ditch,
and you can't walk to your parked car
without hearing this din.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 28 Mar 19 - 03:24 PM

refresh

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Mar 19 - 07:50 PM

Seeing a post from Senafou is like spring sunshine but alas her soul was poisoned by a mean boy whose posts are often November wind gusts on their way to the dead of winter. Its best to remember his September.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Peter the Squeezer
Date: 29 Mar 19 - 03:49 PM

All the world seems in tune on a spring afternoon
when we're poisoning pigeons in the park.



Thanks to Tom Lehrer

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Ebbie
Date: 01 Apr 19 - 03:27 AM

I keep a running account of matters year 'round. Here is what I wrote when this month began: "March 1, 2019: 8 o'clock AM, 28 degrees. Forecast: 36. Sunny and calm."

Very much like today, the last day of the month. Neither lamb nor lion.

It isn't quite Spring yet in southeastern Alaska, the ground is still frozen and snow (!!) is forecast for this coming Thursday and Friday but bushes and trees are budding and I saw that the day lily spikes are up a good inch and a half on the sunny side of the house.

I was thinking metaphorically of political things when I wrote this to a friend- but it works here:
"A loud bellow, rough and creaking from long disuse: HOPE!
And Spring answered. Hurrying from the mountains, rushing through the valleys, slipping under thatch and brush, in a tinkling, tiny voice growing ever stronger, Spring answered, I am coming!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Apr 19 - 06:20 AM

Peak cherry Blossom day at the Jefferson Memorial is today.
It is a nice backdrop for the Washington Monument to have sex with the Viet Nam memorial

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 02 Apr 19 - 11:55 AM

The big parking lots in the retail shopping districts
hereabouts
have still got what I call
"parking-lot icebergs" in them.

The difference is that,
a month or two ago,
these things dominated parking lots great and small,
and they were towering things, high above the roofs of parked cars.

Now they have dwindled to a much lower height,
there are fewer of them,
and they are covered in dirt.
And there are more open parking spaces
than there are blocked-by-snow-and-ice parking spaces.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Apr 19 - 06:27 PM

One year Boston had their snow reemoval piles still around in August

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: JennieG
Date: 03 Apr 19 - 01:34 AM

Meanwhile, down south in the Land of Oz it is finally autumn! We had some very welcome rain at the weekend, and now summer's heat seems to have finally departed......although the forecast is for slightly above average April temps.

Some towns and villages not far from here had their first frost of the season on Monday. We had scarcely any frost last winter; the lack of rain and subsequent dryness meant there was no moisture in the ground to freeze.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 03 Apr 19 - 02:08 PM

Apropos "Sing of Spring," the Ira/George Gershwin song
from the movie Damsels in Distress,
the disagreement continues apace:

what is that dodgy line in the middle?
Is it

"jug a jug a jug"

or is it

"chuck a chuck a chow" ?

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 05 Apr 19 - 04:47 PM

... and here, at last, comes the rain.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 06 Apr 19 - 12:42 PM

More green in the grass than in the trees at this point.

The trees are still like,
Really? You sure about that?
If we put out buds, the buds won't freeze?

But the green grass is pushing through the dried brown/yellow growth.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Apr 19 - 04:23 PM

"Seeing a post from Senafou is like spring sunshine but alas her soul was poisoned by a mean boy whose posts are often November wind gusts on their way to the dead of winter. Its best to remember his September."

And you're an arsehole. Get yourself another hobby, please.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Apr 19 - 08:43 AM

Some days the breath of Spring is the bad breath of sour mulch that smells like vomit and rages into that good night.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 08 Apr 19 - 12:38 PM

Yes, the spring peepers are significant to me every year,
but it is
another life form that clenches it for me, spring-wise:

the earthworm.

Today, after a night and a morning of rain,
the earthworms are out of the soil
and positively cluttering the concrete pavement.
I'm darned if I know
what an earthworm is trying to accomplish
on concrete pavement, but there it is.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Mrrzy
Date: 08 Apr 19 - 04:33 PM

Windows open!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Apr 19 - 04:43 PM

keb, its trying not to drown

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Charmion
Date: 09 Apr 19 - 09:25 AM

Here in Stratford, Ontario, Spring has most definitely sprung. The municipal swans are on the river, the robins are bobbing around everybody's lawn, and the red-wing blackbirds are buzzing unwary walkers who get too close to THIS IS MY TREE -- PISS OFF! I spotted the first band of intrepid Asian tourists downtown last week, and the actors (members of the Stratford Theatre Festival company) have returned, like the swallows to Capistrano.

This being the heart of hog country, the unmistakable pong of pig poop is in the air most days, so the pork producers are hosing out their barns.

In this halcyon period between the disappearance of snow and the arrival of the first car-trippers, there is still parking for locals within hailing distance of the nice restaurants and coffee shops. We enjoy it while it lasts.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 10 Apr 19 - 06:30 PM

See the Varmints thread for
an expert opinion on
what worms need when
they come out in the rain.
Donuel is on the right track -- oxygen --
but it's more complicated than "not drowning".

Thanks for the Stratford, Ontario update.
I didn't know you were surrounded by hog farms. We live and learn.

A thought for the Mad Swans
and their cygnets in Senoufou's town not far from the river.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 11 Apr 19 - 09:37 AM

The trees have now turned green and you can no longer see through the forests.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Charmion
Date: 11 Apr 19 - 10:01 AM

Yes, Keb, Stratford is a hub of hog husbandry.

Tourists drawn to our little gem of a town generally think that Stratford is about Art in general, and Theatre in particular. Live here for any length of time, and one quickly learns that Stratford is actually about Farming in general (and Pork in particular), with a sideline of light industry and rather a lot of hockey and church on the side. The theatre festival is merely the top dressing on this fertile mix, bringing substantial numbers of cash-heavy customers to the downtown businesses that, in other towns, died of starvation when the malls arrived. Stratford has a Wal-Mart and a big-box Canadian Tire, but Downie Street -- the main commercial drag -- still boasts a genuine old-fashioned independent department store.

Every now and then, when the wind is in the wrong quarter, the reek of hog manure seeps inescapably through town, vigorously reminding us of the true foundation of local prosperity.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 11 Apr 19 - 10:34 PM

I finally spotted several daffodils! They were in a churchyard across from the library in a nearby town.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Charmion
Date: 12 Apr 19 - 08:31 AM

Flowers can be misleading. I saw lots of those little blue things — scylla? — two days ago, and even some daffs, and yesterday we woke up with flipping SNOW.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 14 Apr 19 - 11:57 AM

For the first time in months,
the parked car in the sun
was TOO hot
and the refrigerated air was turned on.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Joe_F
Date: 14 Apr 19 - 08:56 PM

A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And fronts the wind to unruffle a plume,
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake, and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum.
Except in color he isn't blue,
But he wouldn't advise a thing to blossom.       -- Robert Frost

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 15 Apr 19 - 11:11 AM

The swan boats went into service
at the Boston Public Gardens.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Mrrzy
Date: 15 Apr 19 - 11:36 AM

Outdoor concerts!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 16 Apr 19 - 01:49 PM

Flowers in April hereabouts have mixed messages.
I am as happy as everyone else when bulbs and seeds and trees
send up blossoms where they grow.

I have mixed emotions when a barren piece of ground,
in one day's time,
suddenly has DAFFODILS!!, about a dozen of them,
screaming yellow, white, and green at me as I drive the car past.
Somebody put them there ... should I not be pleased?
For some reason it sets my teeth on edge.
Never mind, I'll get used to them.


What I love is the blooms on the magnolia trees!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 17 Apr 19 - 05:50 PM

Bright yellow forsythia fully in bloom,
a lovely sight
against newly green grass lawns and hedges.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 19 Apr 19 - 11:31 AM

Green on the TREES, at last -- took long enough.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 20 Apr 19 - 01:23 PM

A swallow arrived yesterday on the 19th. It looks like they have reset their clocks to be the same as last year, a week later than they used to arrive.

Robin

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 22 Apr 19 - 02:21 PM

rain ... rain ... rain ...

hope the earthworms
have got enough oxygen somewhere ...

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 22 Apr 19 - 04:24 PM

Azaleas are arriving in every color but blue
Daffodils are now all gone

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 23 Apr 19 - 02:29 PM

Blue sky for a change -- a bonus.
After all that rain
the trees and grass are loud with green,
and you ought to hear
the twilight choruses hereabouts.
There's more than
bellowing spring peepers now,
there are whistling bird calls in the mix
(grackles? blackbirds?).

I removed the combination snow brush / ice scraper
from the back seat of my sedan,
to put it in seasonal retirement in
the closet in the spare room.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 23 Apr 19 - 08:05 PM

I woke up the lawn mower after a winter of hibernation.

charge...clear...charge...clear pa dum pa dum padumdumdumdum brouwwwmmmm

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 24 Apr 19 - 09:31 AM

It's Spring
and this lovesick lunatic
woke up this morning groaning and laughing
Breakfast tastes better I'm light as a feather
and my brain is as fresh as the rain.
Sure my calf is torn my head lightly aches
but my mind's delightfully awake.
I'm not fine but I sure am dandy
Each fragrant breath feels like peach brandy
Because it's Spring.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 24 Apr 19 - 10:13 PM

Whereas I think I'm already rediscovering seasonal allergies!
Cough--sputter--sneeze--wheeze.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 11:30 AM

:^/
I am allergic to Boston in the Spring. Red oak pollen seals my eyes shut. No red oak here.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Joe_F
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 06:01 PM

April brings the sweet spring showers,
On and on for hours and hours.             -- Michael Flanders

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 29 Apr 19 - 02:15 PM

I dearly miss Senoufou / Eliza
and her updates on
The Mad Swans and their cygnets,
waddling down the town road.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 01 May 19 - 05:19 PM

Heard from Senoufou/Eliza recently
who advised me
that the Mad Swans have yet to put in an appearance ...
wonder what happened.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 04 May 19 - 11:40 AM

its still bloody cold.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 04 May 19 - 12:01 PM

May the 4th be with you

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 13 May 19 - 02:59 PM

The 4th has been and gone,
and so has Cinco de Mayo,
and even Mother's Day is just past.

So what happens in eastern Massachusetts?
The better part of this coming week
is going to be more March -- the "like a lion" part --
than May.

Okay, no blizzards, but nights below freezing,
and the landlord has turned the heat off
in my apartment building. At least I think the manager has.

Fine, I'll break out the warm nightgown, the bed socks,
and pile on top of the bed
every blanket and coverlet I own ...

happens twice a year anyway, the night-without-heat transition.
I'll survive.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 13 May 19 - 08:56 PM

I have an electric mattress pad and an electric blanket.
The one time I went to the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival in New Hampshire, which is always the last weekend of September, I came downstairs after the first night and told the desk clerk that I'd kept turning up the heat but the room never got warmer. He said the heat hadn't been turned on for the winter yet! Of course the next night was cold, too, but I brought up a blanket I keep in my car. A friend has since told me she always travels with an electric blanket, which sounds like a good idea.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 19 May 19 - 01:40 PM

And spring honestly is here.
There is more than enough steady, soaking rain.
The trees are a blinding new-leaved green:
in German they would say 'zartes Grün," tender green.

And the temperature is mild, with little wind.
Not summer
-- and positively NOT winter.

It won't last long, it never does in this day and age,
but spring is here none the less.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 24 May 19 - 09:52 PM

This morning I asked myself
why the wind sounds so different now.

But the answer on this windy day is plain to see.

I've been hearing a winter wind for months
driving its way through bare branches of bare trees.
That was more or less true six weeks ago.

But now it is the end of May,
and the maple trees outside the window are fully leaved,
and what a difference it makes
to the sound of the wind!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 28 May 19 - 05:53 PM

it's the end of May,
and it's raining like the middle of April,
simply soaking.

Just ordered an umbrella.
My last umbrella was a cash-and-carry deal,
and did not age very well;
this umbrella is supposed to be better made. We'll see.
Anyway I'll have to get through the rain without it at the moment.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 30 May 19 - 03:06 PM

The new umbrella was delivered today. Lifetime guarantee,
not that I have ever had experience with that before,
not in an umbrella. We will see.

No rain has fallen today
even though the clouds overhead
totally look like rain.
The air doesn't have that sharp note of approaching rain in its odor;
it just feels and smells steamy humid.   


Outside the public library,
those tiny little purple flowers have opened up
which the bumblebees go crazy for.
The flowers are very new -- many buds have not fully opened.
Today, one single solitary bumblebee
was zooming around the flower plants in rapid circles
in between humping the blossoms.

But where there is one bumblebee,
there will be many many more.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 25 Apr 20 - 09:10 PM

Well, the wind still whistles through
trees with branches that are more or less bare.
But the wind, of late, has been a warmer, softer one;
and those branches
have little buds with tiny green leaves bursting out of them.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 26 Apr 20 - 01:50 PM

Im April
thut das Wetter,
was es will ...

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 28 Apr 20 - 12:39 PM

Sunshine in between rainstorms is a comforting thing.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Senoufou
Date: 28 Apr 20 - 12:45 PM

April has been exceptionally warm and sunny, but the land became terribly dry. Our village farmers were forced to irrigate their crops this week.
But today, it's been raining all day - wonderful! I can almost hear our garden heaving a sigh of relief.
Makes me think of that song by Ladysmith Black Mambaso, 'Beautiful Rain'!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 28 Apr 20 - 11:07 PM

Spring is here,
and the squirrels are beside themselves.

Where I sit before a big picture window
at a computer station,
I see these flowering bush things;
they are skinny trunks that blossom high at the top,
and the trunks grow in bunches,
and have a lot of bare branches.
Two squirrels chasing each other IN these skinny things.
And getting distracted by the blossoms.
And it is just too funny to watch --
they keep practically falling out of the flower bushes.
If they only knew how utterly silly they look ...

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 30 Apr 20 - 11:10 AM

The big trees here are still quite bare,
but the smaller shrubby scrubby trees,
and the large bushes and shrubs,
are leafing and blossoming their little hearts out.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Mrrzy
Date: 30 Apr 20 - 04:05 PM

Fall is also here, or rather, there, for the Down Under folk.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 16 Apr 21 - 08:18 PM

That umbrella I bought two springs ago,
still works nicely.
I had to scrape the wet spongy snow
off the windscreen of the parked car this morning.
At the same time,
the day warmed up enough
that I saw my first
EARTHWORMS on the wet pavement,
the first since everything froze last autumn.   

I always try not to step on the earthworms or squash them.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 17 Apr 21 - 08:13 AM

As Earths axis tilts into the sun, in our Northern hemisphere,
The darkness starts to decrease, and much lighter days are here.
The weather starts to warm, although some snow may hit the ground,
Whilst snowdrops, crocuses and daffodils, are blooming all around.
Hence how this lovely season, earned its’ name, we call it Spring,
Because of new and regrowth, that this beauteous time can bring.
The trees, plants, bushes and flowers, fill our lands with varied hue,
And birds collect their twigs and straw to line their nests anew.
For people, plants and animals, a refreshing time of year,
Gardeners and farmers both enjoy, a time of simple cheer.
With grazing good, the cows produce a milk so fresh and fine,
And crops grow in abundance, all so green within their prime.
Humans, flora and fauna, seem to sense the seasons coming,
Birds all sing their happy songs, and bees can be heard humming.
The fields begin to fill again, with happy gambolling lambs,
Newly imported beavers, start to build their useful dams.
The air seems so much fresher, from new oxygen provided,
As the lovely flora does its’ job, but it isn’t just one sided.
When we take breath, we breathe it in, and breathe out CO2,
Which the flora need to stay alive, so we help feed them too.
With symbiosis in our land, which we cannot live without,
Our wondrous world, such great design, of that there is no doubt.
I think of this uncertain world, that fills some folk with fear,
Here we are, It’s Spring again. What a lovely year.

Michael J Hill © February 2020.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 18 Apr 21 - 11:09 AM

Rhododendrons in bloom (purple-blue-violet).

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Ebbie
Date: 18 Apr 21 - 04:52 PM

This year we leapt straight from winter into summer. A week ago we were still spitting snow and the winds were icy.

Yesterday at the airport it his 70 degrees and 66 downtown (about 7 miles apart- Juneau is strange that way). In my and my dog's first walk this morning it was 61 degrees. Ah, well. Our blood will get used to it.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Apr 21 - 06:10 PM

We've had less then half an inch of rain in the last five weeks, after an extremely soggy winter. We've had a fifth of an inch in the last three weeks. It's sunny but it's never warm. We're lucky if we get 13C (55F) and we're getting a frost most nights.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Joe_F
Date: 18 Apr 21 - 06:25 PM

So long as you are not actually ill, hungry, frightened or immured in a prison or a holiday camp, spring is still spring. The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it. -- George Orwell, 12 April 1946

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Malcolm Storey
Date: 18 Apr 21 - 08:49 PM

Spring is here, Spring is here

First line of the Tom Lehrer classic "poisoning pigeons in the park£".

Perhaps the Orwell quote is more apt.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 19 Apr 21 - 06:23 AM

Shade temperatures may not have reached much above 10C for the past couple of weeks (we had a warmer week before that) but we (North Norfolk UK) have had some sunny days that have felt quite warm, at least if you stay in the sunshine. Mum has spent a couple of afternoons sitting outside on the (south facing and getting full sun) bench in the field.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Apr 21 - 09:25 AM

My first sighting of a male orange-tip butterfly this morning.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: leeneia
Date: 20 Apr 21 - 12:26 AM

It's been warm and lovely, we are in-between tulips and irises, the birds are singing, but tomorrow, snow is predicted.

April may not be the cruelest month, but it's the most irritating.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Malcolm Storey
Date: 20 Apr 21 - 06:22 PM

We had our first housefly of the year - bloody nuisance.
Couple of goldfinch chased off by one of our resident sparrows!
Lovely day 18C and Spring is definitely here - for the moment.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 20 Apr 21 - 07:05 PM

Spring is here, but we have a frost forecast overnight, so I can wait one more day to put some of the stuff in the new garden.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 22 Apr 21 - 11:04 PM

Spring ought to be back in about twelve to twenty-four hours.

This was our second day of snowstorms and high winds,
and it is going down to freezing tonight.

the crucial thing is
to avoid working up a sweat and
THEN catching a chill ...

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 25 Apr 21 - 01:55 PM

A condition of moderate drought is asserted
for the northeastern piece of the continental US,
so this rainy weekend is good news for the farmers.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: JHW
Date: 26 Apr 21 - 06:07 AM

Been wearing shorts all week, lots of flowers and warm in the day. Will summer be too hot or will it rain?

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 26 Apr 21 - 10:33 PM

Another sign that spring has arrived:

road crews repairing potholes on streets, driveways,
access ramps etc absolutely everywhere.
It's like a sea of orange out there
with all the orange cones and orange barrels on the roads.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Apr 21 - 10:31 AM

"Will summer be too hot...?"

Not for me it won't. It may get a bit too humid at times, but never too hot. I've spent a few August weeks in inland Andalucía (quite near Tabernas Desert) when the temperature is routinely in the range 35 to 40C, similarly in Granada and Córdoba, with humidity in the teens or single numbers. I can take that any time with the proviso that my balding head and my forehead mustn't be allowed to burn. On the other hand, we were at Lake Como one June in temperatures of 35 to 37C in high humidity. Foolishly, we decided to do the steep uphill hike to Chiesa San Martino, a tiny church perched high on the mountainside above the lake. We thought it would be OK because much of the hike was in the shade of woodland. We forgot that the trees also cancelled out the breeze completely. Fortunately for us, we were the only eejits daft enough to try the climb that day and we were able to eat lunch disrobed with clothes spread out to dry on the rocks. What a view though (of the lake and mountains, not us). A terrific overnight thunderstorm cleared the air. Next morning the mountains were draped in wisps of cloud with the peaks standing proud in the sunshine.

So I don't agree with the Bard when he writes that "Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines," but I'm with him when he says that "...summer's lease hath all too short a date."

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 27 Apr 21 - 12:45 PM

That was then, this is now. Its 80 F. here today.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: robomatic
Date: 27 Apr 21 - 03:03 PM

Mid 50s here in the heat of the day. I'm working outside in shorts and boots. The sidewalks are fully clear of snow but there are some street piles and there are major hills piled up by the roadclearing crews which will be visible through May. But it is glorious.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 27 Apr 21 - 07:41 PM

Something just happened called a Super Pink Full Moon,
so why do I feel so blue . . .

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 29 Apr 21 - 12:51 PM

April Showers,
whereat the local farmers rejoice mightily.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 30 Apr 21 - 10:49 AM

Yesterday it was the rain,
today it is the wind,
with the clouds RACING across the sky outside the window.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 05 May 21 - 05:45 AM

First swallow of the year today. 3 weeks late!

Robin

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 05 May 21 - 01:10 PM

The Azales are fading and the baby bamboo shoots are growing 2 feet a day. The giant ciccada killers in the the tens of thousands are still small and starting their burrows that look like little pyramids. The ciccadas themselves are still burrowing up through newly softened soil toward a new life of light and flight.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 11 Apr 22 - 12:21 PM

You will be happy to know that the rampant-squirrel thread is no more.
I'm not happy, since I started it, but the rest of you will be.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 14 Apr 22 - 09:39 PM

The spring peepers are in full cry.
Lots of marshes and wetlands and ditches and all,
where I am staying, in a small country town.
And good Lord, the commotion.
As ever, the peepers are peeping as though
the future of their species depends on it ...
which i suppose it does.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 18 Apr 22 - 10:24 AM

Magnolia trees in blossom here.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 18 Apr 22 - 11:47 AM

Alas the bumble bees are back.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 19 Apr 22 - 02:57 PM

As the azaleas emerge.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 19 Apr 22 - 03:40 PM

Our wysteria is suddenly a-bloom, though it's a bit lopsided this year after a professional pruning. In other news, I've been opening windows for the bumblebees which haven't yet cottoned on that there's a house in their flight paths.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 24 Apr 22 - 05:37 PM

We have leaves on the trees! They've been a long time coming out!

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Senoufou
Date: 25 Apr 22 - 03:31 AM

When oh when will we have some rain? The land is bone dry, I'm sick and tired of hosing my garden and the poor wildlife is very thirsty.
The river in our village is very low. A lovely big black cloud drifted overhead this morning at 6am (I'm an early riser, so I saw it) but it shed not a drop, and now the sun is shining brightly.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Apr 22 - 05:47 AM

There's little rain forecast in the short to medium term. It's been so dry that my grass has stopped growing. Next thing will be blazes on Dartmoor...

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Senoufou
Date: 25 Apr 22 - 06:30 AM

As I'm on a water meter, I can't run my hose for too long. And my rainwater barrel has been empty for ages. Like yours, Steve, my lawns have stopped growing and are going yellow.
Don't even mention heath fires! Some idiot will no doubt fling a cigarette away or leave a bonfire burning and set the countryside alight.
This is very like 1976, the year of the Great Drought.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 25 Apr 22 - 09:09 AM

It's showering in London.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 25 Apr 22 - 09:12 AM

I reseeded some bare patches on our front dandelion patch yesterday as rain was due today. If it doesn't arrive I will use the hose.

In other news, spring must have arrived coz my long sleeve shirts and thick pullies have gone ito storage to be replaced by short sleeved shirts :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Apr 22 - 08:02 PM

It's been an odd year so far for rainfall, talking about here in Bude in Cornwall. In January we had just about two inches, the bulk of it by the 10th. The average is just short of four inches. February was just short of the average of three inches, the only typical month so far. March delivered just under three inches, half an inch below average, which doesn't sound remarkable until it's pointed out that the month was virtually bone-dry after the 13th with a spell of unusually warm weather. The average for April is just over two inches, but so far we've had a smidgeon over an inch and it looks like not raining again at all here this month. We've had just a quarter of an inch since the 8th and my grass has stopped growing. Two years ago we had an incredibly sunny spring (March to May 2020) which outshone almost every summer (June to August) on record. I'll be dusting off the barbie as soon as I've cleared all my beds of a mild winter's-worth of rather lush weeds.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 26 Apr 22 - 06:15 AM

The Azaleas are in full glory.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 23 Apr 23 - 10:30 AM

Rain is falling steadily in Berkshire County, western Massachusetts.
It isn't too cold either.
We could have earthworms sprawling on the sidewalks,
but they are not out yet.
THe flowering trees are flowering,
and many other trees have tiny pale green leaves.
And the geese are coming back North.
And the peepers have been peeping.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 27 Apr 23 - 06:49 PM

We're supposed to be due for a week of rain, rain, rain.
Which will bother the sun-lovers amongst us,
but the green growing things will be very happy.
(And the earthworms.)

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 28 Apr 23 - 04:32 AM

Point of order: I read once that earthworms surface to avoid drowning in their burrows. The ones who are happy in our garden are Mr and Mrs Thrush.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 28 Apr 23 - 09:48 AM

Well, I do confess to a tendency to romanticize.
I like to think of the earthworms coming out to wriggle on the pavements
as wriggling for joy that it's warm and wet enough to be spring.
Anyway, it's dangerous for them, it turns out,
to be in a spot where the sun can dry them out:
I once read, in my turn, that earthworms have to be good and damp
in order to take in oxygen.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Apr 23 - 06:40 PM

The flora sharks of Spring are the parasitic vines on the trees and bushes. I have been cutting and killing vines that during this time of year expose them. OMG some were half as thick as my wrist. Its time to plant the iris bulbs.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 29 Apr 23 - 09:59 AM

Sadly our local robin, who'd been serenading Herself recently, cheeked the cat once too often, and that were that. There'll probably be another robin along soon, but it's a temporary hole in our soundscape.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 29 Apr 23 - 10:55 AM

. . . score one for the cat . . .

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 29 Apr 23 - 03:49 PM

> . . . score one for the cat . . .

He was In Disgrace for the rest of the day, which really confused him. Usually he gets praised when he brings us tribute; it's often at half past yesterday, and he won't shut up his meowling till someone has got out of bed, gone downstairs and admired his kill. (We're not sure whether he's trying to train us to hunt, or to tell us "*this* is what dinner is supposed to taste of".)

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 29 Apr 23 - 04:31 PM

Well Billy Connolly once queried why it was that there was no such product as mouse-flavour cat food...

Unfortunately, our cat also had a robin last week. She rarely catches birds so that was disappointing. But I'm still nowhere near ready to join the Bill Oddie/Chris Packham school of cat-haters.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 30 Apr 23 - 12:15 AM

> Well Billy Connolly once queried why it was that there was no such
> product as mouse-flavour cat food...

Possibly because the cat-food manufacturers use human taste-testers (who ensure it doesn't taste of nothing), and they don't know what mouse tastes of.

Generally, though, the individual death is a tragedy, but it helps keep the population bounded. You'd be surprised how few generations of (eg) starlings it would take, in the absence of starvation, sudden death by cat etc, for the offspring to entirely fill a sphere the diameter of the solar system with starlings. In the particular case of robins, they're vicious little offenders with a correspondingly shortened life expectancy.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 01 May 23 - 12:50 PM

Putting in more of the garden this week. It's still too cool for some things, but tomatoes and peppers will be fine now.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 17 May 23 - 01:08 PM

Good News: our replacement robin showed himself today. Hopefully this one won't cheek the cat.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: Donuel
Date: 17 May 23 - 09:05 PM

The mouse crunch is hard to reproduce. Organic mice you keep in the fridge is distasteful to some and a surprise for the kids.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 20 May 23 - 05:20 PM

... and it's raining, a good soaking rain here.
We need it: all the green growing things are fully leafed out now, and they are thirsty.
Still moderately cool for May;
we will look back, in August, with longing for cool days like these.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 21 May 23 - 08:17 AM

I believe the peepers have finished peeping,
but they were certainly really loud for a while there.

Subject: RE: BS: Spring is here
From: keberoxu
Date: 27 May 23 - 07:05 PM

Sadly, around the Hudson River Valley area,
the apple orchard suffered a terrible blow
when a late frost happened this month --
the trees were already blooming.

The newspaper said that 75% of this year's crop may have been lost.