Ah...the Sweet Smell of Spring...on Venus!

In keeping with my monthly suggestion of a Montgomery Advertiser online theme (last month was "...Nature's Little...") - I read Liberty4USA's blog and she suggested others post their Spring memories...so I decided to go for it and do a Spring blog myself.

While Liberty let slide she's a closet pyromaniac...and heaven knows I've done my fair share of "setting things on fire for the 'sake' of science"...I won't divulge what horrors befell the unlucky specimens who got the hot end of the deal. Plus...I really don't want PETA putting my childhood photo on signs with a circle and red line through it. So, I'll just confess she's not the only one who found out that you can indeed set things on fire with a magnifying glass...altho I'll admit my infatuation with it stopped LONG ago. ;)



But...back to Spring.

Spring always conjures up imagery in my head of getting a brand spanking new matching pastel outfit to wear to church on Easter Sunday. This included "the works": hat, dress, a flimsy coat, and "shiny as a just minted penny" shoes. Photos were obligatory; gloves were optional...but as I grew up in the 1960s, they were still in vogue and I had to have them. I don't remember ever wearing the outfit more than once...but it was always an event - and fond memories are made of such events.

Spring, growing up in New Jersey...was a transitional thing. My son even remarked to me the other day, upon seeing the outside temperature while in the climate controlled atmosphere of my car, that Spring lasted about one day...and what was up with it going from freezing cold to blazing hot literally overnight.

It is true...I remember in Jersey how the flowers would herald the changing seasons. First the crocus would poke its clever blooms up and out thru the snow...then the narcissus and daffodils...giving way to the luxurious scent of lilac. If you've never smelled a real live, honest-to-goodness lilac bush...you really don't know what you're missing. Forget those Glade air fresheners...even Yankee Candle can't come close. A real Yankee knows lilacs don't reek of things like patchouli and cotton...or whatever combo they use to try to recreate the "lilac" experience. Real lilac hangs on the air as delicately as those lace-like structures etched on a dragonfly's wings...and darts off in the wind as effortlessly and quickly as well. It's there for a moment...and when you think you can hone in on it...it eludes you yet again.

Grabbing handfuls of the lovely blossoms and deeply burying my nose in them...ah...the thing that Spring memories again are made of - but are probably only as sweet as the remembrances of youth. I'm sure the flowers don't emit the same odour they once had. Time has a way of altering the senses and perceptions...and turning the most lovely memories into the mundane when you stray down that road again in another time. Some things are best left to memories...so perhaps it's a good thing I've never seen a lilac bush here in Alabama...and those waxy "effigies" the companies make - well, can't hold a candle to them.

But I'm waxing nostalgic (yes, that clearly was intentional)...

Spring in Alabama - what does it mean to me now?

Mosquitoes? Yeah, okay but they seem to find me year-round...so not that "Spring-like" really. Think, think, think...what do I remember most about this place in the Spring?

I know!

Primordial soup.

We have a swimming pool...or as they call it here in the South, a "cement pond". (Oh, c'mon...that was a joke.) Each year, instead of letting it run (via the pump)...we just let nature run its course...and then just drain it in the Spring, clean out the sludge which accumulated...and fill it back up again. Voila! Yankee ingenuity at its best. (Again...I'm jesting.)

But...in between the time we stop swimming and the time we start swimming...there is this interim period...a "Spring" of sorts if you will...which happens, coincidentally, between Winter and Summer. And in that time period - all kinds of things take up residence in my pool.

There are bugs...water bugs. I don't know how they find my pool...but they do. It's not like there's a little river which leads into my pool...but the water bugs find it anyway. Then the frogs and toads come. This is about the same time that the algae decides to go into hyperdrive. It begins to look like the scum on top of a soup...the stuff that you scoop off when it's simmering. Seriously...this stuff looks like it's just about to boil. There's some anaerobic activity going on I'm certain. Then...that's when "it" happens. Out of this bubbling cold cauldron - "things" begin to grow in this massive soup mixture.

Primordial things.

Primordial things begin to grow...and grow and grow. It's like a full-scale science experiment - my own little planet of life brewing...right in my backyard. We had these one-celled creatures you could SEE with the naked eye. You aren't supposed to SEE one-celled creatures like amoebas. But these were giant amoebas! I kid you not. I had giant microbial mutant life in my pool...and I will probably have it again. The abject lack of a transitional Springtime is probably to blame...certainly not due in any part with our lackadaisical approach to proper pool maintenance.

So while SETI and NASA are out there with their mass spectrometers, telescopes and space stations...searching the far distant skies for extraterrestrial life on other planets, I have intraterrestrial life in my pool each year. Life that I let slip down some drain.

On some grand cosmic scale this is probably terribly sad or terribly ironic...which it is I'm not really sure.

But it sure wouldn't be Spring in Alabama to me...without it.