It's seasonable

There is an "up" side and a "down" side to having 4 seasons. With 4 seasons you get spring and fall color, some warm for summer and mowing the grass, and some cold for winter and maybe shoveling snow. Maybe. If you don't like heat, you try to live where summers are short. If you don't like snow, you live where it doesn't snow. But, moving from 4 seasons to 2, or 2 seasons to 4 can be a shock to the system.

I spent much of my life in the south. Spring could become summer very quickly, and fall was slow to arrive. Winter was usually cold, windy, maybe wet. In California, we had hot and mild seasons, wet and dry. But I missed all the spring and fall color. The true markers of changing seasons.

Oregon? Four seasons, and summer is the shortest. Great, since heat is not well tolerated any more. Fall rolls into winter and then into spring...all wet seasons. The chill of winter bookmarked by the changing of leaves in the fall to the blooming of azaleas, rhoddies, redbuds, dogwoods, tulips, primrose, well you get the idea...spring! Fall color starts with subtle changes in August and over 2 months of color until all the leaves are gone with November wind and rain. Spring starts in March as things begin to bud and in April flowering trees take off.

I considered illustrating with a number of photos...but spring is different everywhere. So I am reverting to something old...imagination. We all have images that we conjure up when any of the seasons is mentioned. We remember favorite places or see places we knew as children...and we all favor different seasons.

So, after a warm weekend and lots of sun, color is really making an entrance. And even though today is cloudy and cool, we can feel more warm, sunny days ahead. And more things will bloom, and the weather will get warmer, and the grass will need mowing again. Stop a minute and remember. What's your favorite season?