I wasn't surprised by the recent string of beautiful days in my neck of the woods. After all, warm weather always returns at some point every year, right? But after enduring a winter in New England, somehow I'm always...well, not exactly surprised, but...let's say "amazed" by such days.

Believe me, you can be amazed by something, even if you know it's coming. It's all a matter of contrast. I was wearing a hat and gloves until recently. Now, when I'm working outside in the yard, I actually get too hot sometimes.

After months of seeing so little change in the landscape, the changes coming now are almost overwhelming. I can barely keep up with my garden journal, so numerous are the changes in the plants all around me. I feel like telling Mother Nature: "Hey, slow down! There's plenty of time from now till fall to bring everything to fruition. Let's prolong the spring a bit, so we have time to appreciate more fully all the changes it brings."

We lovers of plants and the outdoors who live in northerly climes have some pretty funny ways of taking advantage of the first warm days in spring. Take me, for instance. All winter, I had been squeezing oranges inside for my fresh orange juice (vitamin C to fight colds and all that). But the other day, I took my squeezer, knife and oranges outside, pulled up a camp chair, and did the squeezing outdoors. Besides affording an opportunity to enjoy the warm sun (and to notice the first violets popping up in the lawn, as a bonus), squeezing oranges outside had two distinct advantages:

1. I didn't have to clean up the mess on the kitchen counter afterwards.
2. I didn't have so far to go to dump the leftover orange peels into the compost pile.

How about you? How did you take advantage of the first warm days of the spring? Please relate your stories by using the Comments section below.