Spring in Michigan
Sunday, 12 March 2006 02:03![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dr_phil_physicsMonday or Tuesday we had wet snow and Wednesday night we had rather torrential rains here in West Michigan. Puddles and lakes formed in many of the yards around here and the driveway turned to somewhat soft mixture of mud and sand. By Friday, most traces of snow were gone and it was turning into a "Michigan Spring."
Brown
Most people have the notion that Spring is green and flowers. That's "Late Spring" to me. Weeks away. But this brown, soggy ground, windy time of sometimes blue sky and painfully bright sun -- this is Spring to me. There's a smell coming from the mud as it begins to live again. The temperature reaches the 50s, then the 60s. It was 69degF at one point today. There are some shadings of green around, mainly from the expanses of grass, not yet grown enough for anyone to worry about mowing, of course. But the trees are still bare and the flowers are absent.
When we lived in the U.P., Easter season of March and April is still Late Winter. The last snow in our front yard in Laurium MI would melt on Mother's Day. But for Easter each year we would head south to Reedsburg WI for a weekend with family and friends. The Wisconsin Brown Spring would be our first taste that winter would soon be over -- it's the same here on this side of Lake Michigan.
The True Sign of Spring
But it wasn't until 7:30pm Saturday evening when the last piece of the Spring puzzle was set into place, when I opened the bathroom window -- and heard the first peepers from the soggy drainage ditches by the road. If the weather stays warm for another day or two, the noise should become deafening. We'll be able to sleep with the windows open and the white noise machines shut off.
And the world is reborn again for another year.
A Discordant Note
There are reports of a great amphibian die-off going on, perhaps fueled by global climate change, or human development, or some disease. But if it reaches here, I shall miss the little froggers peeping away greedily in the dark. And their role in our lives out here in the country as the last harbingers of spring...
Dr. Phil
Brown
Most people have the notion that Spring is green and flowers. That's "Late Spring" to me. Weeks away. But this brown, soggy ground, windy time of sometimes blue sky and painfully bright sun -- this is Spring to me. There's a smell coming from the mud as it begins to live again. The temperature reaches the 50s, then the 60s. It was 69degF at one point today. There are some shadings of green around, mainly from the expanses of grass, not yet grown enough for anyone to worry about mowing, of course. But the trees are still bare and the flowers are absent.
When we lived in the U.P., Easter season of March and April is still Late Winter. The last snow in our front yard in Laurium MI would melt on Mother's Day. But for Easter each year we would head south to Reedsburg WI for a weekend with family and friends. The Wisconsin Brown Spring would be our first taste that winter would soon be over -- it's the same here on this side of Lake Michigan.
The True Sign of Spring
But it wasn't until 7:30pm Saturday evening when the last piece of the Spring puzzle was set into place, when I opened the bathroom window -- and heard the first peepers from the soggy drainage ditches by the road. If the weather stays warm for another day or two, the noise should become deafening. We'll be able to sleep with the windows open and the white noise machines shut off.
And the world is reborn again for another year.
A Discordant Note
There are reports of a great amphibian die-off going on, perhaps fueled by global climate change, or human development, or some disease. But if it reaches here, I shall miss the little froggers peeping away greedily in the dark. And their role in our lives out here in the country as the last harbingers of spring...
Dr. Phil
