Spring has sprung . . .

or so my daddy used to say. (He also used to wake us up at an ungodly hour on Saturday mornings by singing a truly horrible song about "it's time to feed the chickens before they raise a dickens.")

"The first day of spring" conjures such lovely images -- delicate blades of newly greened grass, daffodils, forsythia, redbuds, fruit trees blossoming, birds singing, the sun warming everything it touches.

But wait -- this is Oklahoma. Our first day of spring was cold, wet, and stormy. (Okay, I admit that my definition of "cold" may not fit everyone else's -- after all, I wear my trusty jean jacket all summer long -- but a temperature anywhere in the 50s is cold to me.) We're far likelier, it seems, to confuse "the first day of spring" with "the dead of winter." In fact, the peach tree in my front yard is starting to bud out -- a sure sign that a hard freeze is on its way.

Though I'd love to be wrong. Once in ten years we've escaped the freeze and gotten a crop off that old tree that made the best peach jam I've ever tasted. I'd love to taste it again. Rachel8:54 AM