Too Much Paradise?

I know, right? Too much paradise? That's almost an oxymoron. After all, how could you get enough? Can you get enough? That's what I'm wondering.

The last couple weekends were the first nice ones we've had in Iowa. The trees are budding, the lawns greening and spring flowers blooming. It's hard not to want to just go outside and bask. I found myself just staring out the window a lot when I couldn't be out there. There's no season as welcome, as awe-inspiring as spring.

And that always makes me wonder about the places in the country, or the world, that really don't have highly differentiated seasons. Oh, some seasons may be rainier. Warmer. But the temps stay relatively balmy all year and it never gets cold. There are actually places, I'm told, where residents don't have to weigh whether wearing a woolen hat is worth the damage it'll do to the hairstyle. Where women don't have to debate fashion vs. warmth when choosing outerwear. (It's a little known fact of aging that the older we get, the more likely we are to chuck fashion in favor of comfort and warmth. Last winter I even started wearing snow boots to school. Sometimes. But the day I ever don one of those plastic rain bonnets is the day you have permission to put me away for good!)

On days like last weekend I frequently wonder if people in sunny warmer climes can feel the same sort of joy at spring's advent as do those who have suffered through a hellish winter in snowy frigid areas of the country. If every day is mild, with plenty of blue skies and sun, can you really have that same arms-wide-open-face-tipped-to-the-sun-happy-feet reaction to the first nice day in spring? As a midwesterner my entire life, I'm asking here.

I marveled on the way to church yesterday at the complete absence of cars in the streets. There was no traffic. Streets were nearly deserted. The church was half full. And I knew, I just knew, that most of those missing people could be found in their yards. Because there's even a sort of joy working on those first nice days in spring. Being outside in the beautiful weather becomes a sort of spiritual experience of its own.

If you're a sun bird, living in one of the more temperate states, how do you herald spring's approach? Is it much different from winter? And for those who suffer with me through winter (and what has surely been the longest last two winters in my life) do you have anything special you like to do once spring arrives in your neck of the woods?