Arise sweet spring for signs of you have sprung
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned I get to enjoy the sight of Venus in the late-winter, early spring mornings on my walk to the train station for work. It the very first sign of spring for me, but there are others.
The landscapers for The Commons around my job arrived last week. Gone are the winter evergreens, and the first shoots of the annual tulips are breaking through the ground. In another week or so the area will be awash in the reds, oranges, and yellows of tulips in the garden beds. With the addition of daffodils and lillies, the white blossoms of the dogwoods and always the pinks of the cherry blossoms the next few weeks will be awash springs bright colors. I will love it as I always do, but surprisingly, or not, for all the visual beauty that is the coming spring, it is not my favorite part.
My favorite part is aural.
The blocks I walk are tree-lined and have begun to bud in their own markers of spring, but it’s their occupants that hold sway for me. I step out my building, cross the street and there it is, a sweet trilling; the first calls of the day. Birdsong. For the next couple of week, my walk to the train station will time with the waking of the local flocks of pigeons and quarrels of sparrows. And as the mornings become brighter, if I’m lucky,I am also treated to flashes of robin and cardinal reds or the less frequently seen blue of a jay.
And yes, even the occasional caws of murdering crows and the conspiracy of ravens have greeted my mornings.
Oh, I am in no way, shape or form, an ornithologist. It is the decades of living in different NYC neighborhoods, and my penchant to look up, that have made me observant of more than just the people and pets that share the sidewalks with me.
The chirping of birds in my mornings is also a harbinger of the coming winter when their waking and my walking will again align, but we shan’t speak of such ill things right now. No. No. No.
This is the time for the most vernal of thoughts and I am here for it.
Let’s see how others are slicing it out this first Tuesday of April…
Slice of Life Tuesdays
Writing Challenge
Two Writing Teachers
Raivenne-lations 
Ravienne, I love the sounds you describe and the visual signs of spring. My sister in law and I spent the day at Gibbs Gardens in Ball Ground, Georgia after seeing all the bloom updates on their website. It was positively jawdropping seeing all of those tulips and daffodils in full bloom. This walk that you take, hearing the birds, is calm and serene. I love these words of peace and change that you have shared today.
Thank you, Kim.
I’ve had a complicated relationship with spring. However, today my walk started crisper than I had anticipated so I snapped my jacket closed and tied my hoodie. The sun diffused the clouds so I was able to reverse the snapping and tying. Thanks for celebrating spring today.
Thanks!
Spring is a feast for the senses. The colors brighten the landscape. The sounds assault the ears.
The smells are unmistakable. Where we live you can tell when the farmers clean out the barns. Maybe our senses are more heightened because of winter hibernation, but spring is wonderous and loud.
“wonderous and loud.” is true. Thanks,
I have my favorite harbingers of spring, too. For me, the holdover from my childhood is cold-and-snowy upstate, forsythia in bloom was the final promise of spring coming. I see that brilliant yellow, and my heart lifts. I’ve seen the starts of spring as I pass Greewood, saw a sweep of daffodils outside my mom’s house when I was in Maryland over the weekend. Spring. Happy sigh!