I enjoy not less what may be called the
negative side of spring,-- those dark, dank, dissolving days,
yellow sposh and mud and water everywhere,--yet who can stay long
indoors? The humidity is soft and satisfying to the smell, and to
the face and hands, and, for the first time for months, there is
the fresh odor of the earth. The air is full of the notes and calls
of the first birds. The domestic fowls refuse their accustomed food
and wander far from the barn. Is it something winter has left, or
spring has dropped, that they pick up? And what is it that holds me
so long standing in the yard or in the fields? Something besides
the ice and snow melts and runs away with the spring floods.
The little sparrows and purple finches are so punctual in
announcing spring, that some seasons one wonders how they know
without looking in the almanac, for surely there are no signs of
spring out of doors. Yet they will strike up as cheerily amid the
driving snow as if they had just been told that to-morrow is the
first day of March. About the same time I notice the potatoes in
the cellar show signs of sprouting. They, too, find out so quickly
when spring is near. Spring comes by two routes,--in the air and
underground, and often gets here by the latter course first. She
undermines Winter when outwardly his front is nearly as bold as
ever. I have known the trees to bud long before, by outward
appearances, one would expect them to. The frost was gone from the
ground before the snow was gone from the surface.
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