How to Tell that Spring has Arrived : a Tutorial

You may not realize it but spring has arrived.  You might still be dealing with snow storms...and this is as we approach the end of April!  They tell us that we might get a little snow tonight and it is April 23rd.

We often hear about global warming, maybe under it's more popular alias,  climate change. So how do you know spring has arrived in this time of climate change?   Well, I'll tell you here in my short tutorial...

One of the first signs of spring is that lawn mowers start to appear and you can hear them circulating through the yards in the neighborhood.  I've already had mine going. It's self propelled so it drags me around the yard at a pretty good clip. I have a small yard so the whole thing takes 25 minutes if I dilly-dally around with it. I also have a gas powered weed whacker that uses plastic twine to decapitate weeds and anything else that gets in the way. The weed whacker is noisy and vibrates enough that I'm a little bit deaf and have tremors for a few minutes after each session. Both the lawn mower and the weed whacker will take out flowers and small shrubs if you let them get away with it. Stay vigilant.

This brings me to a second sign of spring...sneezing. I'm actually allergic to grass so I have the added pleasure of a stuffed up head and random sneezing after every attempt to gain control of the yard. I don't have too many other allergies to pollen like so many other people but occasionally get a sinus headache and runny eyes for no reason so there is something out there that doesn't like mt besides the grass.  Some people have a difficult time due to pollen but they medicate themselves and then have to avoid using heavy machinery.


My third sign of the arrival of spring is bugs and bug bites.  We have a few drowsy house flies trying to get in and I saw a mayfly a couple days ago. I've seen one butterfly.  I have already been bitten by something behind my left knee. The little creature climbed up my pant leg and bit me for no reason. I have a cat and some cats will chase and eat bugs but mine is a Buddhist and just watches them  as they go by. The exception is that he will go after house centipedes....those weird multi-legged things that scurry  up the wall or across the ceiling. He watches them until they get down on the floor and then he pounces and they fly apart into about six or eight pieces too small to eat. I have mixed feelings about it since house centipedes do eat spiders and I'm beginning to think that that's what bit me behind the knee.

Bird poop all over the car is yet another sign of spring. Where I live now I don't use the garage in the alley because it is too crammed with the lawnmower and weed whacker and other stuff. I park on the street and there are overhead wires where the birds sit and tweet while crapping on my car. There is no way to avoid it so I drive around with white blotches on the windshield. Later in the year there will be berries ripening so the blotches will be red or purple.

Another sign of spring is the annual junk pick up that the city schedules in April. Big bulky things start to appear on the road side and then there are piles of things. These usually end up blocking the sidewalk or spilling into the street. Scavengers (AKA your neighbors) will come and peer at the stuff you labored to drag  out to the curb. They don't offer to help drag it out but once it is there they will occasionally befriend something that you are getting rid of and casually make off with it. Finally the city sends out the crews to pick up the stuff and it all goes away to the landfill or, maybe, someones basement.

There are springtime events, like the Kentucky Derby or the Boston Marathon, that serve to reassure us that spring is here even though we are shoveling snow.  The Boston Marathon was the target of a double bomb attack this year with three killed and 100+ injured. Two brothers carried out the bombing because they were disgruntled about or by their religion. Good reason to blow up people.

I guess crazy people are around all the time but they are more active in the spring. The Oklahoma bombing, Waco Branch Davidian siege, the Boston Marathon bombing, Columbine school shooting and lots of other strange events seem to all happen in mid-April.

Probably writing pointless tutorials would be another sign of spring....being shut up too long in one's house may cause this behavior.