This morning I watched as two robins hopped across my lawn.  They turned their heads sideways in a synchronized way, paused, pecked and hauled back simultaneously on fat sluggish worms.

Spring has come.

I saw children ride their bikes to the nearby school bus stop, their gossiping mothers following behind.  Old men leaned against the coffee counter at the corner gas station speaking of weather from long ago springs, spouting statistics and temperatures like young boys who have memorized the backs of their baseball cards.  A Harley-Davidson rumbled by.

At work the horse chestnut buds are sticky.  Lilac and cherry buds swell, pregnant with fragrant blooms.  The crocus clumps flower yellow and purple in loose proximity across the perennial bed like a shawl crotcheted by a beginner.  The winter-hued cedars turn from rust to green.  Shoals of gnats wheel and dance above an aged compost pile; rich, clean and fertile smelling in the late afternoon sun.  Sandhill cranes are nesting.

The conversation around the coffee maker is of roto-tiller maintenance and preferred soil amendments and the likelihood of rain.  Someone wonders aloud if the lawn will need mowing soon.

There is no better place to be in early spring than a nursery.  Before shade trees leaf out, before perennial crowns show life, before the crabapples bloom—a nursery teems with hopeful energy and buzzes with activity. Tractors chug.

Phones ring.  Smiles abound.

Look.

Spring has come.