The Coonridge Digest – Celebrate spring!

Greetings from the Ridge.
It may just be a matter of perception that winters seem longer when there’s a presidential election coming up, but for the life of me I can’t remember a winter that lingered like this past season. We’ve been beaten up, rode hard and put away wet from the past winter. If the folks at Disney had set out to create Weather World they couldn’t have topped our four-month spate of incessant rain, black ice, thunder and lightning during snowstorms, wig-flapping winds, and then the real topper as we walked out of Easter services to a sky full of snow. 
Sometimes I think God is showing off.
But – and I purposely use the qualifying “but,” it seems as someone finally woke up Spring and told her to get the heck out here and make an appearance. I tried to fight my way into the store this morning as was nearly bowled over by cart after cart of geraniums and compost streaming toward the parking lot and headed toward their destination in a thousand Midwest yards.
And it got me to thinking – maybe spring has a soul. Maybe she has feelings and we haven’t shown our proper appreciation for her annual appearance. She won’t be the first gal to play hard-to-get. So – let’s celebrate her arrival with something other than planting peonies and trying to find where our spouse left the rake last November.
Celebrate Spring! Go barefoot more often! You’re never too old to kick off the sneakers and relive the exquisite pleasure of grass tickling up between your toes. And if you can still find a patch of turf that says, “Keep off the grass,” that’d be a good place to start.
Who’s gonna arrest a septuagenarian in a housecoat with nothing more incriminating that a pair of bare feet on her record?
Send a check to both Obama and McCain. If you’re lonely this will assure you a daily phone call every day from now until November.
Don’t just visit the Farmer’s Market when it opens, attack it! 
Decimate the local produce! You don’t need two pounds of new potatoes? Buy them anyway. Celebrate any vegetable that wasn’t trucked across country with $4.20-cent diesel fuel. Rejoice in the taste of a locally raised tomato that wasn’t picked green, chemically preserved, then flown to your local “fresh produce” department.
Plant a flower, for no good reason, right smack-dab in the middle of somewhere it seems totally inappropriate, then see how fast your opinion of “appropriate” changes.
And while you’re planting, take a cue from the Global Positioning Satellite photos – notice there are no borders. Continue your little row of petunias right across the neighbor’s yard. Whoever heard of a border war over flowers? Become the neighborhood botanical terrorist.
Be warned… once you start planting random bouquets of foliage around your neighborhood it may become an addiction. So take it one step further: every time you see a cell phone lying around, plant that too. They now come in designer colors and you’ll be bringing a little peace to the earth while you beautify the firmament.
Celebrate Spring! Take vengeance on the buffalo gnats. Nutritionists say the little buggers contain a small amount of protein and they’re cheaper than croutons for your salad. If they’re as thick at your place as on my front porch you can consider it a meal-on-the-go.
Be unfashionable. Wear bright colors. If your shorts and sun hat start scaring the dogs on your morning walk then you’ll truly be celebrating springtime.
Celebrate Spring! Sing! I know a young farmer who sings as he plants corn. In fact, very often his voice will carry further than the sound of his tractor and if you stop near his field during spring planting you’ll be treated to everything from “The Old Rugged Cross” to “All My Ex’es Live in Texas.” 
When our local grocery store closed down, the little lady who ran it took a job with a supermarket in a nearby town. It was always Irene’s habit to sing while she wrapped meat and rung up groceries. Seems like she had a stock song for every item in stock. 
Irene didn’t realize that big-town supermarkets have their own piped in music and didn’t especially appreciate a checker singing “Boil them taters Down, Down!” whenever a sack of spuds would come across the scanner. They asked her to please stop signing. A few of us got together in the fine old Methodist tradition and formed a committee, then presented the store manager with a polite petition for the return of the singing checker. Irene resumed her music.
Celebrate Spring! Word has it, next winter’s to be a doozy.
You ever in Coonridge, stop by. We may not answer the door, but you’ll enjoy the trip.