You Know It's Spring When ...

No matter what the calendar (or thermometer) says, you know it's really spring when...


you can count two days within a week over 65 degrees



the daffodils dance across the yard like Rockettes





the nepeta smells so good you want to role in it like you're a cat

the weeds are large enough to pull





it's warm enough to roll the car windows down in the evening and hear the frogs singing

the nandina berries fade as the forsythia blooms

the hellebores finally lift their heads out from under the protection of cold-killed leaves

And to celebrate further, enjoy this lesser known (to me) spring poem by 
E.E. Cummings, from the Academy of American Poets website.

Spring is like a perhaps hand

E. E. Cummings, 1894 - 1962

          III

Spring is like a perhaps hand 
(which comes carefully 
out of Nowhere)arranging 
a window,into which people look(while 
people stare
arranging and changing placing 
carefully there a strange 
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps 
Hand in a window 
(carefully to 
and fro moving New and 
Old things,while 
people stare carefully 
moving a perhaps 
fraction of flower here placing 
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.