Sure Signs that Spring is Right Around the Corner
My absolute favorite has to be the “dogs head out of the car window or moon roof” catching the fresh clean breezes of Spring at varying speeds on roadways. It is especially comical at the higher rates of speed as the canine’s face becomes a distorted combination of a smile at their good fortune of having their head out the window, and the rippling effect that speed has on facial features, much like an astronaut at liftoff. There must be something about all those smells available to the canine nose while dangling head, tongue and ears out and above windows that is universal to all breeds, shapes and sizes as I have never met a dog yet that doesn’t jump at this fresh air and sunshine gold mine.
Now along with your pooch being able to now take in all these new scents after a long, cold gray winter inside, is another sure sign that “Spring has Sprung”, and that is the backyard full of all that “doggie waste” that also has accumulated over the long, cold, winter inside as well. This first order of business of Sp[ring, no matter how many years you have owned a dog, is usually not remembered until you have, without thought of course, taken to the yard for something else and found yourself trapped in a mine filed of “doggie doo”. The next step of course is to yell to someone, anyone, in the house to fetch you a 40 gallon trash bag, and your trusty “pooper scooper” so that you may dig you way out . The only saving grace of this less than envious task is the fact that if you have caught this early enough in Spring, in other words before the rains have hit, the “presents” are usually still frozen and much easier to scoop up than they will be in a few months when summer heat bakes them into something soft and gooey.
From a husbands perspective, how much fun are discussions about colors of mulch for your flower beds this season? I know, you must look forward to those trips to area garden centers where you get to pull around that ridiculous wagon behind you filled with potted plants all the while feigning enthusiasm for the endeavor in the first place. Tell me this, how soon after the first thaw does your first “honey-do” outside job list appear on the refrigerator held firmly in place by your last vacation’s refrigerator magnet? Mine was up by the nd of January this year, so my wife didn’t even wait for a thaw, she sent notice early that Spring break this year meant something other than The Cleveland Indians home opener.
All kidding aside men, isn’t it nice that despite the fact that the yard needs branches gathered, flowers planted, fertilizer spread and last fall’s remaining leaves sucked up that warm, fresher air has returned that also means somewhere down the line an outdoor afternoon nap may be had? Ladies, tell me that the prospect of an afternoon trip with girlfriends to garage sales, craft shows or even home tours isn’t worth the effort that “Spring cleaning your home inside and out has become? Keep in mind, these suggestions are not “gender specific”, and you’ll notice I didn’t include baseball, as both my wife and I are huge Cleveland Indians fans, and actually she makes the games fun to watch because she is a fan for all the right reasons.
So my advice to men and women this spring is this. Instead of looking at Spring chores and traditional tasks the same way and dreading them, try finding common ground on one thing outside that normal way of doing things that you can share together, and you might just find that scooping the yard, cleaning all the windows and prepping the yard for family and neighbors helpful suggestions isn’t so bad. You might just enjoy that fresh, clean air in a whole new way.
