Spring is sprung, the grass is risin'

It’s a sure sign of encroaching meddle age that instead of plotting to sow wild oats a man goes out to plant grass seed.

Tennyson famously offered “in the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to love.” -- clearly the observation of a father looking for a teenage son to help till the garden. For most guys around my age thoughts of spring turn grudgingly toward yard work.

Yeah, there comes the day our youthful rakish behavior turns to just plain raking. When we stop to smell the flowers it’s because our back hurts and it’s time for a break. And after an afternoon of pruning, trimming and picking up sticks, that move to that condo with the association-funded lawn service takes on a luster barely dimmed by a double dose of ibuprofen and the heavy application of Watkins’ liniment.

Spring, it appears, has finally sprung. The last remnants of our April blizzards have finally melted away, leaving a crunchy layer of street gravel and blacktop scrapings on the corner boulevard. The dandelions have yet to flower and the creeping charlie hasn’t spread to mask the road-salt kill along the curb nor the that spot at the end of the pup’s leash favored for her early morning and late at night relief.

But there are buds on the trees and farmers in the fields. The garden centers have opened and folks are back to playing bumper cars with cartloads of wilting begonias and dehydrated cow poop as they rush to fill precious weekend hours with the kind of tasks their peasant ancestors fled to the city to avoid.

Elsewhere in the ecosystem things are stirring as well. The arrogant brood of rabbits wintering under my porch expressed their dissatisfaction with this year’s oft delayed green up by turning my tulip bed into so-much salad. – giving the first foliage of the season an abruptly squared-off, rather art deco look. Since the early birds arrived well before the worms, the backyard robins are looking a bit peaked and the neighborhood squirrels have left the back lawn shell-holed after the long delayed thaw resulted in an unusually aggressive hunt for their winter stashed walnuts.

It seems like a lot of critters are determined to make up for lost time. The various and sundry  wasps, yellow jackets and other buzzy-stingy things seem to be making a beeline for wherever it is I happen to be in a determined effort to either make me leave of extract some unknowable benefit from my being. Likewise the ground dwelling bitey-bugs have bestirred themselves to feast on belatedly exposed ankles and we stand forewarned that legions of ticks and other disgusting living-bits are lying in wait, fueled with a primordial blood lust sharpened by an overdue springtime. And in the swamps and waterholes, the late-arriving season’s first ‘skeeters are ever-so busy making more. We can hardly wait.

Actually, that is true. It’s been a long, long wait for a day suited to shorts and a t-shirt. There was something rather mournful about encountering a carful of prom-goers, young ladies with up-do’s, lacy, pastel gowns, low cut and strapless with their pimply swains dashing in rental formalwear, bundled in puffy parkas against a frigid April, doomed to dance the night away in slush soaked pumps and patent leather dress shoes. And the long awaited seasonal pleasure of pulling into the drive-in for a frosty mug of fresh-brewed root beer is tempered by a carhop needing to remove mittens to count back your change while the car heater is humming on high in the background.

But the true signs of spring are finally in evidence… mailboxes bedecked  with balloons and crepe paper directing friends and family to their next stop on the potato salad trail marking this season’s graduates’ journey to their future.

Yep, spring is sprung; the grass is risin’ – must be summer there on the horizon…

‘Bout time.