This is where I want to be. Sitting on my porch looking out at the possibilities. The trees are still bare and the lawn has patches of brown, but the sun is out and it’s a balmy 73 degrees. This is the day that my husband designates as “gardening” day. The seeds are pulled out of a drawer as I silently protest that it’s “too soon” to plant. There will be another frost, but he pushes forward anyway. Our hands are side by side as we pull weeds from the planter and toss them recklessly over our shoulder. I tell him I have plans at 3:00 and I don’t want to take a 3rd shower, but he lets me know that I am talking like a “city” girl and to “get to it”. I don’t really mind. The birds are out and the breeze moves the chimes in the familiar Spring song. We talk about the vegetables that we are going to plant. The staples, I like to call them. We will plant tomatoes, potatoes, green beans and peas. We should have corn and spinach along with a few squash plants. My dad always planted Swisschard. I feel this is an old vegetable, under-rated but delicious. Yes, this is my favorite day of the year.

When I was 10 years old, that first warm day was spent at the old abandoned school house in the canyon I grew up in. My friend and I pulled out an ancient mattress from one of the rooms and spent the afternoon practicing gymnastics in the front yard.

During my teenage years, that first day was spent driving to Roosevelt with my friend, her sisters and a couple of other girls for a church dance. We were all dressed up with the windows down, and I can remember flinging my hand outside the window just to feel the wind push back against my fingers. I was completely free.

At eighteen I had my first apartment, a baby and responsibilities, but that first warm day came, and I opened all the windows, lay flat on my back with my arms flung wide across my floral comforter, and thought of nothing but the warmth of the sun.

All these years later I’m still in love with that first warm day. The birds are in fine form, calling to each other with a whistle. I see the white tip of a tail through the edge of the woods as the deer make their way along the trail to the back side of the property. Every creature seems to know that Spring is around the corner.

When I was a kid, my father made a rule that we were not allowed to go swimming in the river until the first of June. Nevertheless, we would sneak down a few weeks shy of the deadline and dip our toes into the still freezing water. It would take quite some time before you finally sat down in the shallow part of the river, freezing your arms and legs, but still you sat because it was almost summer and this was the Spring ritual.

I am still that kid, but now I sit on my porch after washing the dirt from underneath my fingernails and sit with a glass of wine. This is my favorite day of the year.