So, what's your first sign of Spring?

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hornet driver

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For me it's when these guys show up! Both in Dallas and Atlanta, we might get one more quick cold snap but the winters back is broken! It's a Crane Fly--and how in the world they get into a sealed up house I'll never know. But they manage--there's yur sign!--20170220_212538.jpg
 
For our neighborhood its the robins. First, the more athletic and spry ones show up. Soon after are the rather round (and I mean round like a softball) lives in their moms basement playing way too much COD robins begin to show. The larger robins have a knack for getting out of a moving vehicles way at the last possible millisecond which is impressive considering their bulk. These out of shape robins remind me of orange tennis balls with wings. Not long after that is a wet and 7-up slushy like snow that occurs just to annoy everyone because as the old timers say 'round these parts; "it's gotta snow on the robins at least once."

-Dave
 
In New York City, changing the water in the hot dog carts is the first sign of Spring ...
 
Dog poo that has been hiding under the snow for the winter starts appearing:wink:
Greg
 
Dog poo that has been hiding under the snow for the winter starts appearing:wink:
Greg

We don't get snow (much), so we look at the plants. For me, it's crocuses coming up and the sarcococca aka vanilla bush blooming in front of the house, both happening right now. Sarcococca has an extremely strong vanilla fragrance, but it's hard to see the flowers.
 
For us in God's Waiting Room West, Spring is signaled by the decreasing numbers of out-of-state plates (mostly midwestern in origin) and white heads of hair.
 
The daily thaw-during-the-day / freeze-back-at-night cycle.. where lakes appear in the road, in driveways, on lawns etc.. only to freeze to a barely solid state at night (and catch you off guard when walking a dog or two..) next month, it'll start..

Daylight when I drive home (late, as usual) from work!

When the neighbour & I start shovelling our lawns, removing all the snow we neatly piled up over the winter..

+3 on the dog pooh. (Why don't people feel the need to pick it up in the winter I'll never know..)

Dogs come back muddy from every walk!

Sugaring off! (maple syrup season!!)
https://montreal.about.com/od/seasonalattractions/a/Sugar_shack_all.htm
 
You have to have Winter to have spring. It didn't even freeze this year, so I guess when the black widows start their webs? I saw some cottontail rabbits humping yesterday, could that be it?
 
This year I'll have to go with the Brown Recluse bite that killed one of our dogs. Every thing with more than 4 legs is now dead for 50' in every direction. I love Bifen.
 
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For me the first real sign of Spring is when I finally get a day outside to paint things and don't even have to worry about the weather.
 
This year I'll have to go with the Brown Recluse bite that killed one of our dogs. Every thing with more than 4 legs is now dead for 50' in every direction. I love Bifen.

So sorry to hear that! I have been bitten. The scar looks like I got shot by a .22. It re-festers in about 4 year intervals , so I'm due (dates back to 1980). My understanding is--A second bite for some people can be a really, really bad thing. Basically your body begins to reject the bite areas and turns on itself, your tissue rots. I have a theory, Spiders are not from this planet--they have eight legs and eight eyes on a turret on top of their heads--they can't be from this planet. The Brown Recluse has six eyes, so it's an outcast and just a nasty thing that needs to be destroyed at all cost!
 
So sorry to hear that! I have been bitten. The scar looks like I got shot by a .22. It re-festers in about 4 year intervals , so I'm due (dates back to 1980). My understanding is--A second bite for some people can be a really, really bad thing. Basically your body begins to reject the bite areas and turns on itself, your tissue rots. I have a theory, Spiders are not from this planet--they have eight legs and eight eyes on a turret on top of their heads--they can't be from this planet. The Brown Recluse has six eyes, so it's an outcast and just a nasty thing that needs to be destroyed at all cost!

Thanks, she was old, diabetic, and blind, but she was sweet as could be and absolutely adored our youngest. With almost all spiders I take a live and let live approach (because they kill mosquitos, and there are fewer higher callings than that), but these buggers are something different. Having small kids too I turned loose with 1.5x the scorpion kill dose of Bifen on every outdoor surface, and indoor hiding areas.

Disclaimer: Being a chemist, and having a regular relationship with toxicology data I am very comfortable that what I used in the amount I used is very safe for everything with <5legs, and very unsafe for those with >5 legs. I'm not sure about starfish, but they would have a different problem than my Bifen were they in my yard.
 
The Spring Equinox occurs.

Fun fact (that you probably already knew): The equinox does not have the closest to equally spaced days and nights (in most parts of the world) because of atmospheric lensing— you see the sun before and after you would if there weren't an atmosphere since the atmosphere bends the light. You also see it before and after because atmosphere and without it, you probably die (no seeing.)
 
Thanks, she was old, diabetic, and blind, but she was sweet as could be and absolutely adored our youngest. With almost all spiders I take a live and let live approach (because they kill mosquitos, and there are fewer higher callings than that), but these buggers are something different. Having small kids too I turned loose with 1.5x the scorpion kill dose of Bifen on every outdoor surface, and indoor hiding areas.

Disclaimer: Being a chemist, and having a regular relationship with toxicology data I am very comfortable that what I used in the amount I used is very safe for everything with <5legs, and very unsafe for those with >5 legs. I'm not sure about starfish, but they would have a different problem than my Bifen were they in my yard.

So if I pull four legs off the spider, it'll be unaffected?

Edit: By the Bifen I mean. Sometimes when you remove legs from an organism it has trouble walking for whatever reason and other times the guts come out with it.
 
Didn't freeze here either (though I did have frost a couple times). Best sign for me would be the pear tree next to the driveway blooming. It blooms about 2 weeks before is sprouts leaves.

The other sign would be the weeds starting to look like I need to get the mower out.
 
I grew up in Indiana. My birthday is April 5th, which was always during Spring Break when I was in school. It either rained or snowed on my birthday. Every. Year. That was Spring for me. Now that I've lived on the Gulf Coast for the last 19 years, where we don't really have Winter (thank God), the transition point for me now is the earlier sunrise and later sunset. We're moving right along now!
 
At the risk of being too nerdy... Spring is when the Big Dipper is oriented like a kite in the evening sky.
 
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