Soft Breezes of Spring Blow Across Kentucky

By ELEANOR S. MARTIN

  Don't give up on spring. It is here. January, February and March were mostly gray days, so much rain and we had a flood. I looked out my window - a study in monochrome. Spring never looked better to me.

I tend to believe as you grow older the winters seem longer than when you were young and the shadows lengthen but these memories are swept away with the first burst of spring.

Don't put your woolies away too soon for we still have two more winters to go here in Kentucky. They call it "dogwood winter" and "blackberry winter."

We now see patches of blue in the sky as if the clouds have been swept away. Some more signs of spring are the little boys playing marbles, the forsythia blooming in the comer of the yard, and daffodils nodding their golden heads in the breeze. It is a new awakening of the earth that God has made. Let us not forget the tulips so colorful but best of all the birds are back singing in the trees. They start at 5 o'clock in the morning a regular serenade.

I do not have a bird feeder, but I put food on the windowsill. We get a closer look at the birds, as they come in to feed.

In the small country town where I grew up, lived a man, across the street from my uncle, who owned a talking parrot. About this time of year when somedays were warm, he would hang the cage on the front porch. The parrot would entertain the people passing by. They would stop to listen to the bird talk. "Income tax, Income tax, it's that time of year." It's a shame that the parrot couldn't have lived long enough to straighten some of it out.

Now is the time to look through the seed catalogues to dream a little. I am too impatient to ever be a farmer. I plant the seeds one day and expect them to be up the next day. Last year I had onions in my petunia bed, I couldn't figure that out. You have to understand the magnitude of this gift of spring. Get out and enjoy it in all its glory.

Mary Eleanor and an amaryllis bulb she forced to bloom.