Lisa Sussman, NNN’s Natural Mom, celebrates the arrival of a new season … or at least the promise of one.

This past week, it was finally sunny and warm. All of a sudden, THINGS ARE HAPPENING! Buds are budding! Blooms are blooming! Rhododendrons are rhododendroning! Weeping cherries are weeping. Daffodils are acting daffy. Spring is here!

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Look - the first fern of the season.

Wait, here’s another one. And another and another. They are waking from their winter slumber and still look a bit disheveled. But in a few days, their sleep caps will have unfurled and they will stretch to catch the morning rays. These are among the most primitive beings on the planet. Like no other plant, ferns signal the continuity of life. Among the first land plants to evolve, they have remained not only abundant but virtually unchanged for millions of years. My children love the fact that dinosaurs once grazed on their luxuriant foliage.

Here’s a tulip that the squirrels overlooked. Tulip bulbs are squirrel candy. I’ve tried laying down wire mesh (they dug it up and refashioned it into a banquet table), pepper flakes (they brought beer and had a fiesta), soap flakes (which worked until it rained) and mothballs (which kept the moths and cats at bay, but not the squirrels). Since I draw the line at tinkling on my tulips (as suggested by a gardening friend – was she pulling my leg?), I have finally given up and now plant mostly daffodils, which the squirrels seem to treat with the same disdain that my kids give to zucchini.

The garden seems to have blossomed overnight. Every morning I wake to find the world a bit greener than the day before.

And have you noticed that there is a change and a charge in the air? Spring is a time of great upheaval. All winter, we’re resigned; we live day to day, careful to make no sudden moves or rash decisions. We bundle up and move slowly. But in spring, we’re subject to sudden flights of fancy. The world turns Technicolor and anything seems probable. It’s as if all of nature has lost her mind and released the boundaries of convention, being as loud and tacky as possible.

This time of year seems to make anarchists of us all. So it seems oxymoronic to set tax day smack dab in the middle of April. And actually, the idea for a tax on income was ratified in the dead of winter. Initially the due date was March 1, and then March 15. It was moved to April 15 only 50 years ago, seemingly for the sole purpose of dampening our spring fever.
And yet…this is the season when people get giddy and fall in love all over again, make poor life choices, get bad haircuts and let their children get away with murder. After all, when a tiny seedling can – against all odds – sprout through a heavy layer of leaves and other winter debris, when the sky turns the sort of blue that makes you think of ice-cold drinks with tiny paper umbrellas, when the sound of your neighbor’s lawnmower wakes you at 5 a.m., it’s hard to come up with a reason why you shouldn’t quit your job and go live on a houseboat in Hawaii.

Suddenly the world is full of birds. The chickadees’ machine-gun-like chicka-a-dee-dee-dee call, the blue jays’ belligerent shriek, the cardinals’ Gregorian chanting, the mourning doves’ sad soulful coo. The woodpeckers have formed a community drumming circle and beat on trees, street signs, gutter downspouts, metal flashings and hard, hollow tree stubs. They are trying to get signed by PPAC for a show later this month.

Many of the songbirds don’t have a mate. So nature gives the males a coat of bright colors to attract a female’s favor. Our trees and lawn are a fashion show of reds, yellows, purples and blues as these dandified boys strut around, showing off their stuff. Eyeing my husband’s closet with its limp washed-out tees and faded jeans, I think that perhaps humans could learn a thing or two about presentation from our fine-feathered friends.

The robins have also returned. Like my children, they get up early in the morning and go to bed just after dark. And like my children (OK, it was on a dare), they eat worms. We watched the other morning as a male cocked his head this way and that until he picked up the vibration of an earthworm drilling underground. The bird darted his beak in and what followed was a life-and-death game of tug-of-war. The robin won. I eye my daughter, worried that her tender heart would mourn the violent death. “Food chain,” she says, nodding wisely.

At night, we hear the frogs singing their mating call. Foremost in this marvelous spring chorus are the wood frogs, sounding like a clutch of clucking chickens. The spring peepers make up for their tiny size by emitting a high-pitched, loud, piercing call like the jingle of sleigh bells. The bullfrogs call across to their brothers and sisters in nearby ponds, catching up on the gossip after a winter asleep at the bottom of the pool.

Along the banks of the stream, the skunk cabbage are lining up like Roman soldiers. Young and hopeful, they still smell sweet and earthy. They don’t earn their name until later in the season when the older, wilting, dying flowers and bruised, damaged or crushed stems create a stench that even a skunk would spurn. I recently read that Native Americans folded their gargantuan leaves into cups, containers, and baskets and heated the plants to treat rheumatic joints, wounds, and inflammations. Dinnerware and medicine in one!

The holes popping up all over the yard tell that the chipmunks are awake and turning the garden into a large subdivision with multiple front and back doors.

These all seem sure signs that spring really has burst upon us.

But I am not going to be fooled. When I first moved to Rhode Island, this April shower of warmth sent me into frenzied action. I moved my seedlings outside, put away the winter clothes and broke out the shorts and removed the insulation from the windows. Then came May with its cold shivery rains and grey skies. The warmth didn’t return until June.

So now I know better. These are not signs that spring is here – rather, that it is coming. In New England, we have the beauty of the change of seasons. The transformation. Here we get to see spring arrive.

Spring. Hurry up!