My Celebration of Spring

Fall has always been my favorite season. The smells, the crunchy sounds and texture of the leaves. Halloween. It has always appealed to the part of me that wears a lot of black... But as I have gotten older I've come to be more optimistic. I like the sun and the outside more than I used to. Maybe it's a falling-in-love-with-the-right-person-finally thing (though I'm still getting married in my beloved Fall) and because I just feel better about life. Maybe it's because I've gotten more into gardening and I'm really into watching things grow. Maybe it's because I hate winter so fucking much. But anyway, Spring is now a close second to Fall, and I've been really, really enjoying it this year.

I write a newspaper column for my local paper, the Forest Park Review, which I will link to on the blog when I think it is of interest to a wider audience and this week I think it is because I'm talking about the coming of spring. So I hope you will check it out here. Please note that if I could have titled I probably would have called it "Fuck Winter, Bring on the Sunshine!" But um... it is a newspaper column.... Not swearing in my newspaper column and my school presentations are the hardest parts of my writing career sometimes....

Anyway, I also sadly couldn't provide photos to illustrate the newspaper column, but on my blog I can. So here is the photo companion to my article! You can click on the photos to make them bigger.

My sons enjoy the sun (L to R: Kaspar, Lars, and Sid at the bottom):  

Sid and Lars pose for their close up:

My goth tulips out front (note trash that has blown into them. Argh. My perpetual battle.):

My side garden, the big bushy plant in the top right corner is the mysterious thing that turned out to be celery:
Other side garden:
Close up on the goth tulip:
Baby geese in the North Riverside Mall Parking Lot:
So that's what spring looks like in my neighborhood. What about yours?