What signs of the changing season are you tracking?

[petra]

We may be mostly inside, but the world outside keeps turning. How are you keeping tabs on the season as it changes?

Comments

[desireearmfeldt]

I am fortunate to have an apartment with many windows, and my neighborhood is densely settled but full of trees and little scraps of front/backyard gardens. (I have never lived in a real suburb, but also never in a real middle-of-the-city neighborhood. Also, apparently my city has more trees than some.)

So I spend a lot of time looking out windows, watching first the crocuses and daffs and the magnolia (?) next door flowering, now the maples moving from bud to flower (sniffle!) -- the world is yellow-green this week! The lilac in front of my house that the downstairs neighbors put in a couple of years ago is budding (though the one thing I can't see without going outside is my own front 'yard'). In my balcony pot garden, the strawberries and oregano are leafing like nobody's business, the other herbs are tentatively budding leaves, and my spouse's beloved but horribly fecund and invasive hyssop is going strong, despite the fact that I plowed it under and carelessly transplanted a few random sprouts into a smaller pot.

Meanwhile, April is determined to go out like a cold, wet lion around these parts. Wind and rain lashing the house lately, though the sun's making a tentative appearance today. Longer daylight even when it's cloudy, which is definitely a spirit lifter.

[petra]

One subspecies of magnolia -- large, white/offwhite blooms are standard in my area.

The maples flowering are always a sign of my needing to start taking allergy medication for a while, I agree. April can't figure out how it wants to end here -- for a few days we get nice weather, and then it goes back to being bitterly cold and raining.

[desireearmfeldt]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the things I think of as magnolias actually are -- it just always seems so implausible, because I associate them so strongly with the US South, what are they doing way up here on the North?