While Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote in his poem “Locksley Hall” that “In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love,” at Bethel Farms everyone’s thoughts turn to growing! Ben Brooks, our farm manager in Newton, Georgia wrote today that “Everything is getting greener, even as I write this to you!”

It seems like it was only yesterday that we had the heat on here in Southwest Florida and today the temperature reached 80°. When did spring begin? It happened at precisely 5:32 p.m. on March 20. Did you notice? It is heralded by the vernal equinox, the specific moment in time when there is a location on the earth’s equator where the center of the sun can be observed to be vertically overhead. An equinox occurs twice a year, the other time being the autumnal equinox, ushering in the season of autumn. The name “equinox” is derived from the Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night), because around the equinox, the night and day are approximately equally long.

Crocuses are a sign that spring has arrived.

The signs of spring are everywhere in nature, from the flurry of nest-building our feathered friends engage in to the flurry of dusting that accompanies our very human tradition of “spring cleaning”. How do you welcome spring?