The First Day of Spring has always been my favorite holiday.   Even if the day is not Spring-like, I still celebrate it for the promise of a new season after a dreary winter.   In high school I started sending Happy Spring cards and have faithfully sent them for the last 30 years.   The recipient list has now dwindled to three, but I added my mother this year as she is currently recovering from a broken hip and arm and I wanted to send her as much hope for a new season as I could.   Sometimes I make a card from scratch, using my stash of scrapbooking supplies, but since the first day of Spring falls in the midst of my tax busy season I usually buy a blank note card that symbolizes what Spring means to me.  This year I was so busy that I added to my husband’s To-Do List for his day off “Buy Spring cards  (five).”   He rose to the occasion and brought home two sets, so now I have one set aside for next year.

On the inside if the card I always include a quote about Spring, this year’s was from William Wordsworth, a quote I found at the beginning of Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace.   Then I hand write “HAPPY SPRING!!” with my attempts to draw some flowers.   The very act of creating the cards and sending them fills me with hope that the season will arrive and that the winter will pass.

At my first year at my current job, I requested a personal day for the Vernal Equinox.   My boss had never had that request before, and he has rarely honored it.   I have found that the years I have had to postpone my celebration, Spring has been delayed, more than the groundhog’s predicitions.   It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.

And so I wish you all a Happy Spring and hope that the new season will bring joy and hope.

It’s Groundhog’s Day.   The news this morning has reported various and conflicting groundhog reports.   Punxsutawney Phil has predicted six more weeks of winter while Staten Island Chuck has predicted an early spring.   At my home, however, we have our own groundhog, Wally.    A few months after we moved into our house, my husband Carey said, “I saw a strange animal in the backyard.   I think it’s a beaver.”   As there is no stream or river in our yard, I suspected it wasn’t a beaver, and determined that is was a groundhog, and that it was living under the shed in our yard.   We named him Wally, since it wasn’t “The Beaver.”  Last Spring we noticed that Wally seemed sluggish; Wally had gained weight and was moving slowly and I feared that it was old age.   In early May, however, we saw Wally with two little groundhogs.  Apparently Wally is female; we named the little groundhogs Clarence and Eddie.

We have decided not to pull our groundhogs out from under our shed today but to let them finish their hibernation until Spring arrives.   It’s a cloudy day here so I know they wouldn’t see their shadows anyway.