This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

It's Here...Spring!

Did you take a walk today?

I sat out for a meditation minute in the sun and that’s a good, warm sun, not wintery at all. The trees are fuzzy, but try as I might, I could not identify the 15- to 20-foot trees covered in yellow, a little less bright than Forsythia and not a shrub. Let me know.

I saw my first honeybee which almost banged into me as it flew sideways. Brand new flyer, I suspect. The deer, who are having a hard time of it from now until April, were fearlessly up on our lower deck last night looking for cat food someone accidentally left there, and when I let Jennie out, they ran up into the woods, clearing the fence with a clack of their hooves on the boards but still in a quite leisurely fashion. They are not scared of Italian greyhounds.

Spring is really here for me when there are two markers of the earth’s temperature. Years ago, the Girl Scouts in Potomac started industriously leaving their mark on the cemetery driveway side of Potomac United Methodist Church. Every year they plant crocus bulbs, every color, sometimes in military rows, sometimes any old way and then wait for the following spring. For little kids, it’s hard work and often the first thing they have ever planted. Several times, in the fall during their planting meeting, it was hot chocolate cold but the whole group of young girls, moms and leaders kept at it. Now there are hundreds of the little bulbs naturalizing under the big pines as you pass the church going into Potomac. The dark purple are my favorite and tiny white ones come up first. Nice legacy to grow up with and someday show their own girls. Something that does not even need words to show that people cared in perpetuity.

Find out what's happening in Potomacwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The other sign is the sound of hidden peepers who only come out of the marshy ground they live in when it is finally warm enough. We stop the truck and sit in the dark like fools, utterly thrilled, listening to amazingly loud wooing cries of tiny frogs buffeted by the soft night breeze that brings that sweet dark scent. We once put on waders and wandered about and tried to find one of them, which proved impossible because of the way they are camouflaged, and because they only begin peeping again if you move 10 feet away in the dark.

We get to comet watch on top of everything else when Pan-STARRS passes by right after sunset in the westerly direction of the sun. The astronomers were vague about that. The crescent moon may even sit on it but no guarantees from them about that either. Just watch 40 minutes after sunset.

Find out what's happening in Potomacwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

What a great month. The pictures I took on Sunday when it was even warmer are only a tiny portion of what is blooming. I will beg all my “buds” to help and send me your pictures as well. Enjoy it while it lasts! Winter may be back when we’re not looking.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?