Spring

Today it’s more spring like – more ‘seasonal’ – go figure. Spring always signaled many changes –for one thing, we could start leaving the cows out during the day, although if it was wet we didn’t want them in the pasture because their hooves would slide and pull up the grass by the roots and that was a bad thing. Getting the machinery ready for plowing, planting, and so on. April is too early for planting, but not for planning. Which field to put the corn in this year, should we switch from hay to corn or the other way around? Hoping for good weather to dry the fields, hoping the hay lasted until the cows could go out and graze full time. My mother would start planning her garden and ordering seeds. We’d have our semi-annual ‘trying on party’, which involved getting the new season clothes out and seeing what still fit, or in my case, if I grew into any of my sister’s hand-me-downs – usually that took several years. And sometimes I hoped it would never happen, she wore ‘girlier’ clothes than I did. I was happy with jeans and shirts, there’s a photo somewhere of me with jeans, a plaid flannel shirt and a piece of rope for a belt, hugging one of my horses. Teasing warm days and then back to cold again. Waiting to hear the ‘peepers’, that’s the first sure sign of spring. I’ve got a lot of branches to pick up, a few downed trees to spend quality chain saw time with. Bulbs to plant, and the seeds I got the other day. But, it’s spring, and for today, we’ll take that.