Welcome Spring - Who Cares if it's The Real Thing?

It seems most of the country is experiencing an early spring, or a false summer, or some kind of weather aberration that would be quite enjoyable if everyone wasn't so worried about what's causing it. The pleasant weather has been so overanalyzed, concerned citizens feel obligated to request a moratorium on the word "unseasonable."    The news and weather experts can't stop speculating about the cause of this alarming development and predicting some kind of associated doom.

Can't we just enjoy the warmth and sunshine without having to imagine or make up or demand answers for its existence? Do we need to analyze this pleasant turn of events and try to discover dangerous trends in the offing? Or can we analyze this pleasant turn of events and discover normal fluctuations in the offing? (Click on the purple words to see what other non-experts think.)

For heaven's sake - I got a sunburn this weekend! A brief reprieve from my terminal winter pastiness! Instead of shoveling the driveway, I was pulling weeds. Around here, gardening normally kicks off Mother's Day weekend - here's last year's blog from that day, showing my hunky yard boy planting a new garden for me. The concept of cleaning out the flower beds and putting down mulch in March is thrilling for me. Some year in the not-so-distant future, when it's too cold to consider going to a St. Patrick's Day parade, I'll be thinking nostalgically of that one surprising winter when we had blue skies and green grass in mid-March.


So I'm not going to waste time worrying about the reason why we had a mild winter and questioning if spring is here to stay.  If it snows next week, so be it. Will my worrying stop snow? 


Birds start singing by 5:30am and we've had ground fog hovering over the growing grass these last few mornings.  Thanks to Daylight Saving Time, kids can still play outside after dinner. Instead of the typical overcast nights of late winter, we've been able to enjoy the planetary conjunction of Jupiter and Venus under crystal-clear skies. The sights and sounds of spring have come early, and that just means more time to enjoy them.

Being a "man-made global warming" skeptic, I'd normally love to get involved in a lively debate about the Greenland glacial expansion, the jet stream, new ice core analysis, the El Nino effect, the record cold European winter, longer growing seasons, the need for summer blend gasoline and the alarmist, speculative "journalism" on Weather.com.


I would, but I'm going to be busy soaking up some rays.


And here's my view from the lawn chair:

Happy first day of spring!