March 20, 2013
Can you feel it? Smell it? See it? Spring officially arrives tomorrow, March 21st, at 7:02 a.m. ET. Here’s an excerpt from a book that I wrote about the arrival of spring:
Spring in America means heavy rains and late snows. It means birds flying north, trees and grasses pushing out new green leaves, wildflowers bursting into bloom and the sound of spring peepers. Spring is a season of beginnings, a signal of a renewal of life across America.
Spring is the season to look for skunk cabbage shoots poking through the snow, to hear the early morning songs of robins and the late afternoon cackle of red-winged blackbirds, to feel the soft catkins of a pussy willow, to taste the first berries that ripen, and to smell the wet earth after a rain. Springtime is the sounds and sights of nature reawakening across America after the white sleep of winter snows.
- from SPRING ACROSS AMERICA, Hyperion Books, 1996, by Seymour Simon
Today, for Writing Wednesday, we would like you to write about the signs of Spring where you live. Even if there is snow on the ground in New England, hail falling from the skies in the southeast, heavy rains on the west coast, or a frigid wind blowing across the northern plains, you can still find signs of spring when you step outside your door.
Take a few minutes and tell us what you see, what you smell, what you hear, what you feel. Use all your senses, and write about how you know that Spring is finally coming to your neighborhood. I am driving up to my lake house on the edge of the Berkshire mountains this afternoon, and I will write and tell you what I find.
You can click on the yellow "Comments" link at the bottom of this email to post your writing for your friends and family to read.
Happy Spring, everyone!
Photo: Liz Nealon
Posted by: Seymour Simon
