Ethyl  Surmises:
Spring Awakening
It was chilly today.  Not cold, just a little chilly, just enough to need a light sweater.  I took a short walk outside and looked at the tulip trees.  OK.. so they are technically Japanese Magnolias, but to everyone else around here they are tulip trees.  And daffodils.  All colors and sizes, light and dark yellow, yellow with orange centers, white.  To everyone around here the are buttercups.  Still not correct, I know.  The buttercup is a small yellow flower native to England.  But so what.  As Shakespeare said, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
What impressed me was the way this season makes you feel.  Someone once said in the spring a young man's fancy turns to love. And that brings me to my next question.  Why?  Why do we begin to think with our emotions instead of our heads.  What is it about all this awakening the earth seems to be doing that affects us so dramatically.  And we are affected, no doubt about that.  Is it because the weather is warmer.  Is it because we are happier to at last be outside without needing layers of clothes.  Or is just watching and feeling what it's like for something that has lain dormant all winter suddenly to come to life.  The leaves grow what seems to be an inch every few days.  The grass springs up fresh and sweet.  The flowers open and our allergies go wild.  But never mind that.  We are happy.
There is no doubt about it.  Our emotions are definitely at their highest.  By the time summer has arrived we have already started to complain about the heat and humidity and to take all the planting and growing and watering for granted.  Gardening has, for the most part,  become a chore.  We are enjoying the fruits of our labors in many cases.  Our gardens are producing and our tomatoes are ripening and we are busy, busy, busy.  But the emotional high brought on by the first few springs days is over.  Now it's work, and sweat, and more work, and more sweat.  Having to go outside on a hot summer evening and stand with a water hose for what seems an eternity and water everything just to keep it alive-well, who needs it.  We had all rather be inside watching Wheel of Fortune...
But there is just something about the soil in the spring.  The way it smells when you first turn it over with your tiller or hoe and you watch the little earth worms scramble, then to be followed closely by a robin, gobbling up all the worms that didn't hide in time.
I've always associated spring gardening with growing potatoes and English peas and onions and cabbages.  Those are cool weather crops.  They have to be gotten out early so they can make before the heat sets in.  They will not grow in hot weather.  I remember one time being in Alaska in August and walking past a house with a little garden to the side and seeing potatoes growing.  And that stuck me as quite strange.  To see potatoes growing in August...but then I had forgotten I was in Alaska...
So soon I am going to be turning the soil, hopefully in the next week or so.  And I will be putting tiny little onions sets in the ground, along with pea seeds and seed potatoes.  And then we will wait...for what seems much too long.  Wait until I can run outside my kitchen door early in the morning and snatch some green onions to put in my breakfast omelet.  And another spring will have come and gone.  And much too swiftly, I might add...