Jenn McKinlay: April is always a big month for me for two very good reasons. First, it is my wedding anniversary (27 years this year) and second, spring has finally taken root. Ha! See what I did there? Spring? Root? Very punny, I know. Julia covered the melancholy that comes with the arrival of April, and I do get it, but I tend to see it as more of a month of surprises.
The wedding anniversary is a big deal because quite honestly, I spent most of my life not planning to marry. Not that I have anything against marriage. It just wasn't part of my agenda. I blame my brother. We're Irish twins and since he was only 11 months older than me, I just did whatever he did. I mean, really, why play house when you can play pirates?This attitude pretty much shaped my formative years. My poor mother used to put me in a dress every day and then as soon as her car pulled out of the driveway, she was a high school librarian, I ran back upstairs and changed into my play clothes (jeans and T-shirt) and then went to school. This went on until my second grade teacher sent home a note ratting me out because she was concerned that I was wearing the same clothes to school every day and, yeah, I kind of smelled.
Suffice to say, my mother got shorted on the daughter front. She did not get a mani-pedi buddy in her little girl, no instead she got a pre-adolescent who announced that she was going to travel the world and have four children but never marry. Yes, I did! I think it is a testament to her Connecticut Yankee constitution that she didn't stroke out but just smiled and nodded and said, "We'll see."
Fast forward a few years and a few boyfriends later and there I was married to the other half of our whole. Mom was quite relieved. So April is always a favorite month for me because it really does make me believe in the unexpected. Sort of like gardening in central Arizona, I am always delighted when my peach and pomegranate trees bloom and later fruit. Spring always amazes! As does life!
So, Reds and Readers, what is your favorite thing about spring?
The flowers are my favorite thing about spring . . . all those daffodils make my heart smile . . . .
ReplyDeleteDaffies are the best.
DeleteSeeing everything come alive again after winter. I missed that after moving to SoCal and tried to find warmer weather bulbs, but without much luck. Then I moved to a neighborhood of jacarandas and enjoyed having spring-flowering trees again.
ReplyDeleteLove jacarandas!
DeleteIt's true. Spring flowers fill me with joy. My daffodils are still in full bloom. The flowering trees are just starting to blossom here in the center of Connecticut. It is a lovely time of year.
ReplyDeleteHappy Anniversary, Jenn!
Thank you! CT has a beautiful spring season.
DeleteDitto to spring flowers - so much cheerful yellow! And the birds singing and returning. My yard is full of cardinals and bluebirds and wrens and finches and song sparrows and robins, all singing their little hearts out.
ReplyDeleteHappy 27, Jenn. You seem to have found a keeper!
The weather man on tv just announced that the hummingbirds have been spotted around NY so are on their way to New England
DeleteThank you, Edith!
DeleteEverything greening up and flowers blooming. Sunshine and warmer temperatures. Not such a dramatic change here in central Florida as it was in Minnesota but there is still a noticeable difference.
ReplyDeleteSubtle seasons are lovely, too.
DeleteRight now it’s been perfect weather (low to md-70s) with gentle breezes. We redid our backyard last year and now have a nice patio. I have been enjoying the birds flying around, singing so joyously. They look like they’re having fun, dipping down into the rosemary and flitting back to the fence. Butterflies are also starting to visit the flowers. It’s so peaceful.
ReplyDeleteHappy anniversary to you and your husband, Jenn! — Pat S
Thank you, Pat!
DeleteHappy anniversary Jenn! We are coming up on 34 in May, can hardly believe it!
ReplyDeleteHappy anniversary, Lucy!
DeleteHappy Anniversary, Lucy! You and John are couple goals :)
DeleteHappy anniversary, Jenn. Ours is next month. Forty-three years. Yes, I married when I was 12. JK.
ReplyDeleteI love spring. I love warmth without summer's humidity. I love the burst of fresh green as it takes over the monotone shades of winter. I love being serenaded by birds in the early morning hours. I love the trill of spring peepers at dusk.
Happy Anniversary. I am realizing that I am coming up on more than half my life spent with the Hub. Weird. Awesome but weird.
DeleteHappy Anniversary Jenn! Girls weren't allowed to wear pants to school until 6th grade (I remember the change very fondly) unless it was really cold. Then we could wear pants under our dresses, but had to remove the pants when we got to school.
ReplyDeleteI love the colors, the blossoms, the lush green of the grass and the trees leafing out. And coyote and eagle babies!
I had the same experience of being allowed to wear only dresses to school until 6th grade. I remember the student council putting on a fashion show for the school administration to show how nice we could look in pants to sell the idea. What a trip down memory lane!
DeleteFor me it was NO pants until college!
DeleteSame here! Dresses all through high school. College for me was the beginning of the hippy movement, women's rights, bell bottom jeans,and backpacks.
DeleteThere was a court decision when I was in elementary school that ruledcschools could not require girls to wear dresses. I was in jeans and cords for the rest of my school days.
DeleteNo pants? I would have died. Seriously.
DeleteAs a winter lover, I have mixed feelings about spring. Naturally I love seeing the green return to our yard and I have a few great flower gardens that I enjoy caring for, I just dread the oncoming hot weather that summer brings. It means being stuck indoors for the majority of the day and that is just no fun for me. This year I am going to try to mentally channel the Mediterranean mindset of taking a siesta in the mid-afternoon. It will be much like my wintery afternoons of reading and doing my art work. I don’t know why this hasn’t occurred to me before now but it is helping me. It dread summer and enjoy spring more! Bring on summer siestas! And summer rainstorms… last year we had a drought here in Maine and that freaked me out a lot! Happy anniversary Jenn. That is something to celebrate!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Stacia! I am dreading summer as well.
DeleteJenn, I love your stories. Happy Anniversary! I love spring! Yesterday I went out for a walk and saw many beautiful flowers in different colors from red to purplish blue to yellow!
ReplyDeleteYour Mom sounds very wise. My Mom was the opposite. She wanted me to wear comfortable clothes as a baby so she usually dressed me in pants instead of dresses. When my grandmother gave me a dress, I grabbed it! I always loved pretty dresses, even though I was not that interested in fashion. I thought that most of the clothes in the 1970s were ugly. I think that was very smart of you to NOT wear dresses to school. We girls in class quickly learned to stop wearing dresses to school because the boys would look under the girls' dresses. We started wearing jeans or pants instead! The boys did that to our teacher who was wearing a mini dress despite being 8 months pregnant.
For me, it was more a matter of how could I run or hang upside down or play basketball in a frigging dress. Made no sense to me at all. LOL.
DeleteThis week, in amongst the mud, are the cute little shots of purple and yellow as the crocuses begin to bloom. It is nothing - and then pop – there is a bloom. Now can anyone explain to me how one little bulb travelled to the middle of the lawn, far away from the rest of the bulbs and just blooms there and smirks?
ReplyDeleteAs for the birds – we are enjoying either a purple or a house finch stopping by to the feeder at about lunch time – he does not stay long enough to get the camera and a photo. There is also a mob of gulls, fighting the ravens that are fighting the crows for the morning tidbits. The gulls were interesting – one turned up one morning, saw that feeding was going on, apparently blabbed to all their friends and now every morning there is a mob. Apparently, they have no interest in cleaning up the left-over squash…
Oh, and the hibiscus is blooming its bright red blooms in the living room – doubt that it has anything to do with spring, but I will take it anyway.
Waving a hand: your little traveling bulb? Squirrels.
DeleteWell that would be a little more practical than fairies - but....
DeleteThe fairies told the squirrels where to plant them, obviously. ;-)
DeleteLOL - there's always that one bulb.
DeleteI'm not a big fan of winter, so I have always loved spring as it signals the end of winter. I would say it is the lengthening days that I love the most. But since midlife I have developed increasingly strong spring allergies, so that has taken a bit of the charm away. I am currently using antihistamine eye drops and pills and nasal spray at the highest dose allowed and still barely suppressing the symptoms. Once the beautiful spring trees turn from blossoms to plain old green leaves, I will feel much better.
ReplyDeleteI had horrible allergies in February and my doc gave me a cortisone steroid to reduce the inflamed sinuses and I've been much better ever since.
DeleteI'm in Ohio, so I love the flowers, leaves, and everything turning green after the long winter. My anniversary with my husband is also in April, and we often take a trip to celebrate. It's nice because when we come home, there are new flowers and leaves that weren't there when we left.
ReplyDeleteApril is the best month to marry, IMHO. Happy Anniversary!
DeleteHappy LIBRARIANS' DAY...to Jenn, your mom, and to all the wonderful librarians.
ReplyDeleteApril is our 48th wedding anniversary!
Happy Anniversary! And thank you for the happy librarian's day!!! I should have posted about that!
DeleteHappy anniversary, Jenn! May you have many more happy and healthy years together.
ReplyDeleteThe thousands of daffodils are done, the mayapples under the beech tree have peaked, the dogwoods are putting on the show the redbuds just vacated, the fruit trees are setting fruit, and now my many iris are beginning to bloom, including a big patch of Immortality, a pale, almost white, blue rebloomer that may or may not bloom again in the fall. The giant alliums are shooting up, and they will put on a show for weeks of big, purple pompons. The native amsonia has umbels of star-shaped blue flowers, and the cultivar is also getting ready to bloom. The peonies are joining the bleeding hearts in their spectacular bloom, probably next week. Still to come: lots more perennials.
So that's my favorite thing about spring, that the kaleidoscope of color and form changes by the hour, and there is always something beautiful to see.
It sounds beautiful Karen. Could you include pictures too?
DeleteGorgeous, Karen, and I love, love, love peonies.
DeleteHappy 27th, Jenn! I love spring! It’s my favourite season. More daylight! Daffodils, hyacinths, lilac buds, day lilies growing so fast you can see them shoot up!(seems like it anyway) All the bird songs! Anticipation!
ReplyDeleteI love spring, too! The hummingbirds have been especially active this year.
DeleteHappy Anniversary Jenn!!!
ReplyDeleteThank you!
DeleteHappy Anniversary! In Cincinnati it's the blooming sequence of snowdrops, daffodils, flowering pear and crabapple trees, and the zoo tulip festival. The lilacs are in full bloom two weeks ahead of schedule, with an early, scorching summer a strong possibility.
ReplyDeleteI am very wary about a potential scorching summer!
DeleteHappy Anniversary and love the story about changing from a dress to jeans and you were only in second grade! How adventurous!
ReplyDeleteI was a punk, but thank you!
DeleteHappy anniversary! And as for spring, I’m always astonished, when it finally comes, how quickly it happens! Two days ago, the trees had no green on them, and the tulips did not have showing buds. Today, the trees are instantly green, and I can see what color of the tulips are going to be. How did that happen overnight?
ReplyDeleteIt does appear with vigor, doesn't it?
DeleteMorning All ~ Happy anniversary, Jenn ~ I love the fun surprises that happen from one age to another. Spring is short in the desert, tho this year it’s a bit of a yoyo for temperature. Last year we planted a chaste Bush/tree ~ as close as we can get for my highly missed Lilac trees of the NorthWest. Oh but I truly do miss them the most. Once I found a candle that smelled exactly like a Lilac but the store closed and I haven’t found a replacement that really smells “correct” for a lilac. The birds here, Mockingbirds, wrens and love birds are singing at the top of their lungs all day. And the funny big Grackles. What a hoot they are and very loud. Lots of green here and flowering trees. And bushes. Spring is short but very very good.
ReplyDeleteIt really is a mood elevator!
DeleteThe one draw back to living in a climate which doesn't have distinct seasons (like here in southern California) is spring doesn't have the same dramatic change from a harsh, bleak winter.
ReplyDeleteIn our area, we have May Gray and June Gloom - I call it our "winter" months. Then late Aug/Sept/Oct have been our hottest months with hot desert Santa Ana winds that mean we don't have much of a fall season. As I recall Nov tends to be rainy but it is a toss up. Not always but often Jan/Feb/March can be nice - cool but sunny skies.
I live in the Bay Area, we have a glorious Spring that starts in late January with the first flowering trees. At the end of February we went right to summer with temps in the 90’s and 100’s for several weeks. March is usually nice, seventies and low eighties. We have settled into normal April weather, low eighties and the most glorious bloom fest natural and native that I have ever seen.
DeleteWe have two seasons wet and dry. Summer is now from May through the end of November. In September it can be excess of 110, all month. October is nineties. November is now still seventies and eighties. November used to be much cooler.
My favorite season is Spring, the hills are green and the wildflowers are bursting.
We usually have two Springs. Early Spring, a little more rain and another Spring before the long hot summer.
I grew up in New England and still miss dramatic seasons.
DeleteHappy anniversary, Jenn! We are also a spring anniversary--32 years next month. How did that even happen? Like you, I never dreamed about getting married. In fact, in my mid-twenties, living on my own, I wondered if I ever wanted to be married. But then I ended up married not once, but twice. Life is full of surprises.
ReplyDeleteAs for spring, it is so glorious here that it makes me downright giddy. I wish I could be outside all day, every day, just to enjoy all the green and blooming and buzzing. (Minus the pecan pollen...) And I keep reminding myself that it's time to put out the humming bird feeder!
I just finished rubbing my eyes - oh! the sting. I feel ya on the pollen.
DeleteI love all the flowering shrubs and plants, etc. I especially love late spring when I don’t need to wear a sweater or jacket in order to go outside.I like being able to keep windows open. I’m looking forward to planting pots of flowers on my deck, as well as tomato plants.
ReplyDeleteDebRo
I love potted plants - especially for stuff like mint that is a borderline invasive weed.
DeleteHappy Anniversary to all the spring couples!
ReplyDeleteDebRo
Happy Anniversary, Jenn! I love the seasons in general, all four of them, because I didn't experience them growing up in San Juan, PR. My first genuine falls, winters, springs, and summers were in Vancouver, BC, where we moved after San Juan. As for spring, I love it because the little lilac tree and the wisteria vine on my balcony bloom (the wisteria is covered with purple flower clusters now; the lilac tree is full of buds). It's also when I plant the many pots and nine window boxes on my balcony with geraniums, blue salvia, and sweet alyssum. That is one of my favorite activities of the year. When I was 30 years younger, I used to get most of that planting done in a day. Now I spread out the work of turning my winter/spring balcony into my summer balcony over four days. Those days are marked with stars in my calendar! By the way, I don't usually plant before May 15, the day of the last Ice Saint. If you want to know about these four saints, see https://kimhaysbern.com/2022/05/23/the-end-of-the-ice-saints/
ReplyDeleteKim, your essay about the Ice Saints is SO interesting! All our gardening fans should read it.
DeleteHow interesting thanks Kim!!
DeleteOh, htat's fascinating.
DeleteWise mothers know enough to shut up and smile when their teens or early-twenties kids announce anything in absolute terms. I was ABSOLUTELY going to be an actress. My oldest Victoria ABSOLUTELY wasn't going to have children. (Yes, she's the one who made me a grandmother last year.) If the kid changes their mind, you can just keep smiling and nodding, and if they don't, you get kudos for being such an accepting, affirming mom.
ReplyDeleteWell said Julia!!
DeleteSo true!
DeleteHeh, Jenn - The Girl was much like you. "I'm never going to get married." That's why I thought her ex-boyfriend was perfect for her because he didn't want to get married either. I just smiled and said, "Okay." Now at 26, she broke up with him because he wouldn't make a firm commitment to her. She doesn't want "another 6-year boyfriend." She wants someone to settle down and get married. If that happens, we'll see if she sticks to the "I'm never going to have kids" declaration.
ReplyDeleteI love watching everything "green up" in spring. All the trees have new leaves and it's gorgeous!
Oh, interesting! Let us know!
DeleteI think my favorite thing about Spring is just watching everything bloom and come alive again. I especially enjoy the dogwood tree out front. Congratulations on your anniversary, Jenn. Philip and I will have our 50th on Oct. 23rd, and I cannot believe how fast that has seemed to get here.
ReplyDelete50 years! Congratulations!!
Delete50!!! Congratulations, Kathy!
Delete