h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm waiting for Spring. Does it show?

Yesterday I saw potted tulips in Whole Foods.

Current temp: 69F, humidity 84% and sunny.... yep, Spring like. It could still freeze by April.

I just got off the phone with my father. He turns 99 years old today.
He's no Spring chicken, but he knows there's still snow on the ground in Western Massachusetts.

To a happy Birthday!

My family will get together to celebrate birthdays this coming Sunday.

There is a local newspaper columnist, Smiley Anders, that collects stories and jokes. He also does birthday, anniversary wishes. If someone sends a 'I'd like to thank this person for changing the tire last night on my way home, or even to the person who did this nice thing, but I don't have their name ', they get listed in his column.

Today is the second day of my Spring journal.

Today I saw pots of daffodils and hyacinths for sale at Whole Foods.

[Nota bene: I smelled them before I saw them. This is as it should be. ]

This is the third day of this journal.

I will have to be inventive to come up with something Spring-related.

I will not talk about the five inches of snow that are forecast for tonight. Even though I think I just did.

Let's talk about the Easter Bunny. or *an* Easter bunny. Or a bunny anyway. Every morning when I go out on my front porch, I see a rabbit snuggled down against the garden fence, basking in the sun. This is, of course, the exact opposite of what the garden fence was supposed to do. It was supposed to keep rabbits out, not in. But it doesn't matter now, as there is no garden planted there anyway,.

are nice. In particular with a paprika cream sauce

I am looking forward to Easter. Some weeks ago, a buddy stopped at our local butcher shop to find a nice hunk'o'ham for his wife and him at Easter. The smallest they had was about 15 pounds.

He stopped here on his way home and handed over a hunk of about 7.5 lb - with a fine joint bone still in.

I forecast a really fine split pea soup in our future.

By all indications, spring itself is still well off for us.

Snow pack on Mt. San Gorgonio looking more awesome by the day, though not extending much below 4000 0f somewhat more than 10,000 feet.

Wildflowers still proliferating on the desert floor, climax still some ways off, cowslips, desert marigold, purple lupines, purple desert verbenia, encelia, a sprinkling of the local desert pygmy California poppy, typically about 4 inches with quarter inch blossoms, more to come.

Much flash flooding, a major section of Indian Ave. in Palm Springs washed out.

I look out the window and see a few more inches of snow on the ground. I'm not giving up on Spring, though I'll have to visit it in memory.

When I was growing up, the first wildflowers of the Spring were the marsh marigolds that bloomed along the edges of a large brook down the hill from us.

http://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=capa5

They bloomed so early that there was often still snow on the ground near the brook.

When our first daffodils came out at the end of January, last summer's flowers were still blooming, as we didn't have any winter this year. The daffs are now in full bloom, but the flowers from last summer have finally withered.

So far we have to make do with the white snowdrops and yellow aconites, but we're getting there

I don't see our daffodils poking their heads above the ground yet, but I'm excited about the nifty new plants that I put into the ground last Summer. They should be among the earliest things to bloom, and they're in my front yard where they'll be highly visible.

I have grape hyacinths and daffodils next to my front porch.

Monarch butterflies swarming as of yesterday.

Snow levels down to 400 feet above sea level in Yucca Valley.

Lowland flooding and highlands snow pack verging on disaster area.