Spring creeping its way up from the Southland

Believe it or not but it’s spring ahead. So says daylight-saving time, so says the calendar, and so says the traveler who witnessed spring in the Southland and promises it is creeping up this way like kudzu vines along the roadside.

Spring – and hippity-hoppity Peter Cottontail – are on their way, just a bit snowed under at the moment.

Why, it seems that just yesterday I was bending over to smell purple irises or to cut sprigs of wisteria clinging to the oak tree down near the creek. The whole world at that time was resplendent with color: bougainvillea covering archways, azaleas in stunning shades of pink, yellow roses and jasmine draping fences, redbud trees bushing out alongside cherry and pear trees.

Spirea bushes as white as the snow falling outside contrasted the early spring green of boxwoods or weeping willows, and the scent of mowed grass was fresher than soap.

Just yesterday or the day before if I can recall, the sand on the beach was as white as the snow falling outside; the water was the color of an opal ring – or aquamarine – although the area itself was dubbed “emerald bay.” It was in Florida, or maybe Louisiana, when I watched two red-winged blackbirds feed near a pond. It definitely was in Florida when I picked up a wet grill cover and found tiny chartreuse-colored frogs stuck in the crevices. But it was in Louisiana that pairs of lime-green parrots conducted mating rites in the tall palm trees, where shiny beads flung during Mardi Gras parades still hung from tree limbs and streetlights. And where the powdered sugar coating hot, fried beignets was as white as the snow falling outside.

It was in Mississippi I marveled at the changing colors of a lizard darting up and down outside the screen porch. Or was awakened before dawn by mockingbirds louder than a baseball game announcer.

It was in the rolling hills of Alabama where the dogwood grew wild, white as the snow falling outside. And azaleas went by prestigious names such as “Pride of Mobile.”

The South in springtime is dyed the color of Easter eggs; nothing quite matches its vibrant beauty in late March and April, long before the summer sun parches the fields and fades the flowers.

By then, Maine will have donned her spring apparel. She will be decked out in purple lilacs and pink apple blossoms, and she’ll wear buttercups in her hair and lady-slippers on her feet.

By then, Maine’s woodlands will be green. And the shadbushes and sugarplum trees will be as white as the snow falling outside.

Believe it or not, it’s spring ahead. I just saw it in full splendor on its slow way Down East. That’s the truth, as pure as the snow falling outside.