Sproing!!!! Isn’t that the cartoon sound made when something amazing happens? Here in Colorado, Spring is making its traditional one foot forward, two feet back appearance. Yes, we did have an unusually mild winter, with hardly any snow, but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t get cold, or that spring is not going to continue to play peek-a-boo with us as it normally does.
I grew up in South Florida. Spring occurred in March. It’s appearance was determined by school letting out for a week of “Spring Break” and the beaches being crowded with drunken frat boys with farmer tans attempting to make out with anything that stood still for a minute. There wasn’t any real change in the weather.
The first noticeable change in the weather in South Florida comes in late May, when the humidity starts to struggle upward from a nice 50%’ish, to its normal summer range of 80 to 100 percent. This is caused by the summer monsoon rains, which begin to appear in late May or early June. You can usually set your watch by them. At around 3PM, you’ll see dark clouds appear, and between 3:30 and 4:00 pm, accompanied by crashing thunder and lightning, a torrential flood will occur, and continue off and on for an hour or so.
Just as abruptly, it stops, the sun comes out, and if you are outdoors, you get a free sauna bath as the sun burns off a lot of the standing water left puddling around in parking lots and yards. Regular residents have learned that in the summertime, it is best to get any errands or chores completed as early in the morning as possible, and then during the heat of the day, find a shady spot, a nice pitcher of ice tea or lemonade, a book and a breeze.
Air-conditioning works too, but the problem with too much exposure to air-conditioned air is that it is much drier than the air outside. Each time you have to transition between the two, your body has to do this odd adjustment, and if you were glasses, you need to wipe them down because of the sudden condensation. No, while air-conditioning is nice, a good breeze, some shade, and reduced activity work just as well.
Here in Colorado, some of the braver souls have begun to put out plants. The tulips are blooming like mad, the cherry trees and pear trees are standing around wearing their finest, our little apple tree is blooming like it might have more fruit than its little 8 foot self can ever hold, and by mid-afternoon the thermometer actually nudges the 70 degree mark on some days.
I was out on the deck this morning, loading some nice boneless ribs and chicken breasts into our electric smoker, and the profusion of birds chirping away was a glorious symphony. We’ve lived here since the fall of 2007, and only last year did we have a family of birds move into the little bird-house on the pine tree we can see from the sunroom. I checked to see if they had returned yet, but either they are being shy, or it’s still a bit early for them.
Every year we have a bird who is determined to build a nest on the top of the back-porch light. We remove the partially built nest several times, or put something up there to fill the space, and eventually he moves along.
I’m almost sure that while I was out there this morning, I heard a faint, but unmistakable “Sproing!”.