Spring in Denver

Spring is weird here in semi-arid dry plain of USDA Hardiness Zone 6a. The last frost is mid-May, but from the end of February, you’ll get these days where you can feel spring. I say ‘feel’ because you can't see it.

In England, snowdrops pop up from the end of January. Poking their delicate creamy petals through the earth in ancient woodlands, parks and litter-filled grass verges. Some don white paper hats and dance through the streets. A true sign of spring. Long dark winter is coming to an end. The world is waking again. The soil stirring after months of hard. We can dream of plunging hands into the dirt. Planting seeds, tending, watering, watching them grow. Of ice cream and swimming and picnics.

In Japan, cherry blossom season starts in March and is ALL about picnics. Ohanami under the trees puffed with pink. Squeezing your plastic tarp into the crowd. Laying out bento, sakura mochi, perhaps a tiny grill of chicken skewers. Again, celebrating the end of the dark. Before the months of wet heat hit. 

But there’s nothing like that here. The days grow slightly longer and warmer - filling you with the spring urge to clean out the plant pots and trim back your shrubs. To wash the windows and sit outside. The air smells different. More ozone? Can a turn of the earth affect how the world smells? All the beige plants put out tiny, hopeful little shoots. An occasional scorcher of a day in early March, where you dig out shorts and flip flops, convinced that this is it. That all the past years were an aberration. That spring is truly here.

And then - a week of wet, heavy snow. Tree limbs sag sadly to the ground as you sigh and pull your coat and boots back on.

I like to think that this stirring, waking, hopeful little feeling we get in spring is because we are of the earth. Our blood and flesh barely different from dark, rich loam. Our bones are branches. Our dreams are blossom.