Ahhhh, smell those lilac blossoms!  Look at all the colours of the leaves on the trees.  Such variety!  Deep green and subtle purple and bright yellow and crimson red.  A dragon fly just whizzed by my head.  Little butterflies floating around too.  Seems like they were gone for a few years and now they have all come back to welcome spring.  I see birds flying in couples, building their nests.  What is there NOT to like about spring?

Ok, some may say that the rainy days of spring are a downer, but once you see all the growth and beauty around you, how can you not love the arrival of spring?  This is especially true of anyone living in Canada.  After months of cold and shoveling piles of snow, the arrival of spring finally means we can open our windows and we can wear sandals and we can wear shorts.  Yes!  As soon as it hits 10 degrees celcius (50 on the fahrenheit scale) we are out there showing off our mighty whitey legs.  Pasty?  Oh yeah, nothing like pasty white legs to repel the sunlight.

Spring really is about renewal.  There are so many sounds that have returned, that were gone for so long.  The morning chirping birds…those wake me up now because of their cacaphony every morning.  But I love hearing them chatter with each other.  The sound of lawnmowers is a daily constant in the neighbourhood.  Then there are the new sights and smells.  We can actually wake up to sunlight instead of that eternal darkness we seemed to have experienced for months.  The clouds seem whiter and brighter.  The smell of grilled fare on the BBQ wafts through the air.  Critters have come out of hibernation.  The squirrels are out and about and playing Russian roulette in traffic.  The skunks have reappeared too.  I haven’t seen them, but my nose tells me they’re back.  (Pepe le Pew for sure!)

Spring, even though it’s a noun for this season of the year, I find the verb quite appropos as well. It’s synoynous with leaping, skipping, bounding, hopping.  Yes, that’s how I feel about this time of year.  I see the smiles on peoples’ faces and believe they agree with me too.

So, don’t be surprised if you see a lot of white-legged, hopping, jumping skippers out there.  It’s SPRINGTIME after all!