It's Spring. It's official.

Ah, spring!  Today, Thursday, March 20th, 2014 is the Spring Equinox or the official first day of spring.  Woo hoo!  

Science speak:  The word equinox is derived from the Latin words meaning "equal night."  Days and nights have approximately equal minutes of daylight and darkness everywhere. The sun rises and sets due east and due west and the tilt of the Earth relative to the Sun is zero.

Short story: Those endless dark nights of winter have shortened up while we were sleeping.  And as we prance through the next few months, the sun raising ever higher from the equator, we here in the northern hemisphere will be adding more minutes to every day, until we are basking in those long sunset evenings of summer.  Those of us living in Seattle can fully treasure this -having the longest days of any place in the whole US.

Right now, this thing called spring is a most welcome change for those of us (everybody!) who have been waiting out what seems like the longest winter in history.  But that's what it feels like every year - that anxious anticipation for the snow to melt, the days to warm up, the trees to bloom and the flowers to blossom.

We can now - officially - get happy with the chicks and the bunnies and the tulips and the daffy-down-dillies.  Hooray!  What are you going to do today to celebrate spring?