First Signs of Spring

It's the first week of March and I am on the lookout for the first signs of Spring. I am richly rewarded. As I looked out my office window across Rte 1 to the salt march beyond I see Pappa John and his faithful pooch drive by in his vintage open-air Good Humor Ice Cream truck. It's been put away all winter long. If Pappa John's taken the truck out, it surely must be Spring! (never mind what the calendar says ...)

Looking for a first sign of Spring is a happy habit I started when I was a freshman at the University. On a side street that ran between the academic buildings in the center of campus I could count on the first crocusses to bloom in the first few days of March, right up by the sidewalk in front of a house that still stood on that road. Once I discovered them I looked for them every year.

At home in CT it was the first Forsythia blooms that heralded Spring ... that is, until I planted crocusses. Faithful little flowers are they.

So, now in Madison, I look for Pappa John and the ice cream truck. Spring is here. It is. It is.