So it’s taken me all week just to get all the pieces together to post the spring photos. I know there could be much showier photos, but really this is what early spring looks like: bare dirt, stones, and a few crocus.
Now mind you that this photo was taken the end of last week before the Equinox so now, a week of sunshine later, I have a row of daffodils minding the yard. But if I wait to take photos of them and post them…. well, you see how that goes….
But this is really what spring means to me: muddy boots.
Boots muddy from working outside in spring thaw. Which always brings to mind a story from my teen years. As most of you know, I lived on a farm in Marshall County, Kansas. Spring thaw meant muck. Muck in the farmyard, muck in the chicken house, you name it. Muck and mud.
So one early spring morning, I went down to milk. The farmyard was almost boot-high in muck (meaning melting manure). I had to get a particularly stubborn cow in the barn to milk and she wouldn’t come. I chased her across the paddock, my boots sucking out of slop each time I lunged. And then, she zigged and I zagged and I wasn’t fast enough. My boots caught and I flew flat-out face down.
You can imagine how happy I was.
I got up and swore and yelled and, dripping wet and cold, I stomped off to the house. Reaching the sidewalk, I yelled, “MOM!” And Mom, as she always said to a call said, “I’m busy. You come to me.” By that time I was laughing. “Not this time,” I yelled back. “You better come look!”
And she did. And then got the hose and turned it on and washed me down in icy cold well water before she’d let me cross into the porch and strip off my clothes.
I guess that’s the sort of thing that could scar a person for life. And it did, sort of. It certainly became a story embedded in my memory. And became, in the scheme of things, one time when I could outsmart Mom’s “I’m busy. You come to me.”
And there it is. Spring and Mud. Synonymous.
janetsunderland.com 
Thank you helping me recall one of my own mother’s spring flings. My mother was part of a small band of bohemian abstract artists in New York, circa 1960. And her passion was the ocean. Fortunately, living on the south shore of Long Island, we could sit in a solarium, atop the concession stand at Jones Beach State Park. And by mid-March, Mom’s need for the beach led us to walk the 1.5 miles into gale-force winds, laced with salt and tinged with sand. Once inside this greenhouse for humans, we collapsed on wooden lounge chairs with their classic green and white cabana-striped canvas slings. No one thought about skin cancer. We were warm and the sun soothed our winter-weary souls. Mom loved Spring.
Now I long for that sun room. And Mom.
What a sweet story! Thank you. I love the details you put in – gale-force winds, laced with salt and tinged with sand… wonderful wonderful.