Gee, you know, there are some things about spring that I love. There’s the reappearance of green grass, the magic and fun of finding things you forgot you left outside way back in October, the warmer nights and longer days…

And then there are the peepers. There my reaction tends to be less love, more “how and why exactly are these things sustaining such an irritating noise for such a long time, and what can I do to stop it?”

Bitterness over noisy frogs aside, springtime is just plain neat. The transitional periods in a climate with four seasons have got to be the most interesting times of the year, both in the

Wow, things are pretty and cool,” and “Last week, it was 70 degrees and now snow is falling out the sky MAKE UP YOUR MIND” senses of the word.

Even with the bonus unpredictability, spring still seems more appealing than fall. Fall means everything is quieting down, dying and ending and going to sleep. Spring – well, spring is clearly about growth and renewal, but in more ways than one.

Just like flowers emerging from snow-buried bulbs or toys and tools being found from under the snow, it’s a time to dig up things left dormant over winter or seize the new opportunities warmer weather and longer sunlight hours provide.

It’s also, if you’re a student, a time to balance panic over various impending tests and deadlines with the anticipation for summer vacation. Not to mention the strange mix of feeling both grownup and left-behind at the ending school year. But I digress.

Winter ended early this year, which means the dragged-out spring we’re experiencing now is particularly indecisive. The same hopeful flowers and noisy frogs that popped up as soon as the temperature allowed haven’t been allowed to go undisturbed for long, what with the fluctuations between bright days and just-above April showers. There are more than a few daffodils and crocuses that haven’t been able to lift their frost-heavy heads days after an overnight freeze. Still, every freeze has been followed by more sunlight, and soon enough, there should be enough of the latter that the former will retreat and let spring keep turning into summer. The only way to go, now as always, is forward – and there’s such a lot of that forward to look forward to.

Though the peepers are still irritatingly loud.

— Nina Collay is a junior at Thornton Academy who can frequently be found listening to music, reading, wrestling with a heavy cello case, or poking at the keyboard of an uncooperative laptop.

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