Do You Hear What I Hear?

When the toddlers woke from their naps, we went for a walk around the block. We did not wear jackets, except for DaycareKid who cried for his coat. He was bundled up completely, zippered and snapped into his heavy coat. But the sun shone brightly, the sky was the exact shade of the Crayola sky-blue crayon and the air was filled with the humming of lawn mowers. We passed a gray-haired man sitting near a flowerbed, digging in the dirt. He called out "Spring fever!" A few houses down, a woman was hacking at random weeds which had sprouted through her rocks. Her yard used to be filled with gnomes, but suddenly, it's gnome-free. Babygirl stood at the edge of the yard and said, "Oh no! It's all gone!" Then she stole a rock.

After two laps, we returned home, had a snack and then went into the back yard. Babygirl and DaycareKid played while I snipped old shasta daisy stalks and cut ivy and dug dandelions out of the cold soil. I filled our four-feet tall yard waste bucket with compostable debris. I tried to stop TwinBoyB from smashing three crocuses, but he strode through the flowerbed without noticing my stuttered "Hey, hey, hey!" The kids really have no horticultural respect.

Then, he said, "Hey, I smell gasoline," and perhaps that's the surest sign of spring--fuel for lawn mowers mingled with the odor of decaying leaves and wet dirt. Add the unidentified flying bugs that insisted on hovering over Babygirl's blond head and the slick, shiny slug-tracks and you have spring in the Pacific Northwest.