My top 10 signs spring is here

Spring is like an emotional rollercoaster. One day brings us the promise of things to come with warm temperatures and sunny skies. Everyone is smiling and life is good. The next day is dull and gray, the temperature has plunged and there is ice on your windshield.

Its 22 degrees in Niagara today, I think its SPRING, here are the 10 ways I can tell:


10. Bulbs are popping their heads out of the ground.

9. Bye-bye to the extra blanket on my bed until next winter.

8. I can smell that the skunks are out of hibernation. . . but not moving quite fast enough to cross the roads without incident. (this is an odd new smell, there are no skunks in Newfoundland)

7. Bathing suits and open toes sandels on display everywhere.

6. Strange but good-looking young men wandering around my yard, leaving what my daughter calls little poops everywhere (irrigating the grass)

5. Re-emergence of birds: a grey dove sits on the telephone wires tanuting me with its coooo coooo coooo (its song is nice today, but by the end of summer I will be cursing it)

4. Putting algae prevention chemicals into my swimming pool.

3. The wonderfully fresh smell that lingers in the house after the windows have been opened all day.

2. Suprise food being left on my door step: during the winter, I travel along my street shovelling the driveways of my older neighbors, deliver pea soup and dough balls whenever I get the craving for some home food (my husband does not like it, and there is only so much I can eat) yesterday was a chocolate-carmel covered candy apple, today was eaaster bread from the mennonite couple.

AND, my top sign of the coming spring…

1. Its still light out when I get home. Which means I don't FEEL as tired, and I can sit in the backyard and read!