Blink, and Spring is Over

It may not look like it to my friends from Arizona and California, but it has been a early spring in Minnesota, as seen in these photos of my yard, taken just moments ago. With daffodils already largely faded and tulips in full bloom, this represents is a pretty advanced state of affairs for an April 26 in Minneapolis.

To appreciate a Minnesota spring, you have to keep your eyes open practically to the point of foregoing sleep, as it arrives and is over in just about a blink of an eye.You can quite literally go to sleep one night with mere buds on the trees, and wake up the next morning to open leaves.

 I sometimes say to outsiders that a Minnesota spring, while beautiful, is about ten days long. This is only a slight exaggeration, as we indeed have had years where the temperatures shift from below zero to the mid 80s in the space of 10 days (It happened one year in the mid 1980s).

As evidence of this, I offer three shots of the same front yard—although taken in different years, they represent the same yard on an April 15, an April 25, and an April 30.

Only today I hung my winter coats in the spare closet upstairs. Tomorrow, I'll be firing up the air-conditioner.

Happy spring, Geezers.