It might only be the first week of March, but we are convinced spring is here. It’s a coping mechanism. Yes, we could get another cold snap, even snow, and the calendar tells us it’s winter for  several more weeks. But the signs are all around. The signs! We can’t ignore them. Crocuses blooming, daffodils shooting up everywhere. Snowdrops have been out in force for weeks now. Surely that’s conclusive evidence.

But the best way to judge whether spring is here (or surely days away) is Seedy Sunday, the annual meeting of gardeners, farmers, foodies, beekeepers, botanists and random children that happens in the rec centre across the road from our house.

It’s rained the past few Seedy Sundays, but this time it was gorgeous. Which only made it more convincing: at last spring is here. Yes, go crazy buying plants for the garden and birdhouses from the woodworker down the street.

I don’t know about you, but spring releases me from a winter’s worth of lolling about. Which is not what it seems like during winter–then it’s burrowing in or hibernating or staying cozy. I don’t mean only physical lolling. I get inspired in spring, revitalized to try new things in my writing. It’s a new world, after all.  Those seeds start germinating and expanding and I can’t contain them.

And this can be dangerous because I start a new project ambitiously and then summer sets in and those long, warm nights call me outside, away from my computer. Fall, winter, those are my writing seasons. Spring is for inspiration, and summer is for….vacation? There’s something not right there, I know. There’s a lot of summer between the inspiration and the getting-down-to-it of the fall. Maybe it depends on whether I’m working towards my own deadlines or someone else’s…

But for now, I’m enjoying the fading of winter and the trumpeting of spring, even if it means the daffodils will freeze next week. They’re brave to try. And that’ s all any of us can do, isn’t it?

When is your best writing season?

XO

Ria