Spring has sprung!

I’ve been a little leery of saying that so out front and in the open due to a fear that I may jinx the already whimsical weather patterns we’ve been experiencing thus far.

Case in point, that day where we had warm temperatures, severe thunderstorms and then snow all in a 24-hour period.

Yet, despite the best efforts of a rodent in the northeast who has somehow been bestowed the power to determine what seasons look like, it seems like we may be done with winter for the time being.

Of course, now that I say that we’ll undoubtedly have to postpone our Fourth of July picnics for a once in a millennium snowstorm. (I say that in jest, but if that does come to fruition, I apologize in advance.)

Spring is always that season for fresh starts and new beginnings. Attics and garages are being emptied of unwanted items and useless clutter as hand-drawn neon yard sale signs slowly pop all over the place.

Home improvement projects are ramping up. Newly mowed lawns are filling the air with the scent of freshly cut grass. Winter weeds in neglected garden beds are being replaced by bright and colorful flowers.

Warm weather clothes are being to the front end of the wardrobe. Winter beards are being shaved, and long winter locks are being cut into more comfortable hairstyles. Chins that haven’t been seen in six months are being reintroduced to the world.

These chilly yet sunny mornings were always the first indicators as a kid that the school years would soon be coming to close and all of the fun stuff was about to begin.

My favorite part of Spring, though, is getting the chance to see nature do the incredible things that it tends to do.

Back when I was in the latter stages of my tenure at West Side (now renamed Cannon North) Elementary School, a long-employed and quite beloved bus driver named Thomas Earl Davenport passed away.

He was the bus driver that drove me, my brother, several other family members and a few of our classmates home each day. His bus route was considerably smaller than other drivers, at least the one he ran from our school to home was. He also handled field trips, and I’m fairly certain he also drove students from the high school as well.

Thomas Earl was a nice older man, but he didn’t talk a lot. It was always best for us to make our way to the front of the bus before our stop because if you weren’t standing there, he wasn’t stopping.

Granted, this was 20 years ago.

When he passed away, the school had a ceremony to plant a tree in his honor to commemorate his years of service to the Cannon County school system. The students who rode his bus, all boys at that time, took turns helping dig the hole to plant the tree in and then fill it back in.

The tree we planted was fairly young and hadn’t yet grown beyond a singular twig sticking out of the ground. There was a nice plaque placed by the tree in our bus driver’s memory as well. It wasn’t long after that I graduated to the high school.

A few years ago, I found myself back at my old elementary stomping grounds for an event where former students were invited back to walk the halls of the school before it was renamed and rebranded as a result of the county’s school consolidation plan.

It was the first time since I left that I was in another part of the school other than the gym. My mind was almost immediately sparked by curiosity wondering whatever happened to the tree we planted.

I walked out the back doors leading to the playground area and looked in the direction of where it should be but was immediately disheartened.

“Aw man,” I thought. “They replaced the sapling we planted with a fullgrown tree.”

Several minutes passed by before the realization hit me: “Oh, that is the one we planted.”

We experience nature every day yet somehow it still manages to surprise us.

Another instance of this occurred a few years ago when I thought that I was going to experiment with cooking different vegetables and purchased three butternut squash. I cooked one and then never touched the other two again until it was time to throw them out.

I tossed the mushy gourds out in the yard and didn’t give them a second thought. Then suddenly, as the following Spring commenced and the greenery started growing, a vine started growing through the yard.

It sprouted yellow flowers and soon started producing some fruit that was quickly identified as butternut squash. It was as if the squash had concocted an elaborate revenge plot against. “Oh, you didn’t want us? Well, how about 30 of my friends?”

Good homes were found for all of the vegetables, and I learned a valuable lesson about messing with nature.

No matter what we try to do to interfere with it, nature finds a way to do what it was put here to do. So this spring, as your out and about, take a minute to enjoy all of the new pops and appreciate those perennial processes that add such a pop of color to our world.