I managed to make it to the gym last night. I convinced myself that if I didn’t go last night, I’d probably let another month’s worth of membership slide away. Even though I forgot all my gym clothes, even sneakers (thank you Target), I went. What should have been a mass of aches and pains was a baptism of endorphins. Even after a half hour of running and another twenty on the bike I felt beyond wonderful. The one great advantage to exercising indoors versus outdoors: magazines. Second great advantage: climate control.

Speaking of climate control, we’re getting what is hopefully the last dying breath of an old man called Winter. Something oddly unsettling about seeing crocus flowers getting blanketed by snow. Unsettling, yet hopeful, too.

My dad always calls the last snow of the season the onion snow. Supposed to be that you’ll get a good crop of onions if you get the bulbs in before the last snow. It sets the bulbs, or so I’ve been told. I wonder what this snow will do to the onions I overwintered in the garden? I’ll be ticked if they keel over now.

I always wondered why we don’t celebrate the equinoxes better. I mean really, January is no month to start a New Year in. Bleak skies, stick figure trees, snow, and all but the hardiest of creatures roaming about. February is just as spiritually inhospitable, often more so. Brilliant idea to stick Valentine’s Day in a month where everything is as dead and lifeless as Edwards run for President. Jumpers should be falling from the bridges like paint flakes.

But March starts looking up. Flower bulbs long forgotten poke their emerald lances upward. Buds start to stretch and leaf out. Almost without notice, the robin (Merula migratoria) suddenly reappears, head twisted slightly to one side, listening for a fresh crop of earthworms to move. Canada geese, those magnificent crapping machines, blare out their return in staggered V formation. Sure, the occasional snowstorm might roll through in March, but you know it’s not going to last. All right, we did have a doozy of a storm last year around this time, but that was either a fluke or the start of global warming changes (I’ll go with the first choice, but keep tabs on the storm we’re having now). Spring is the one time where change is inevitable and no one is fighting that fate. You damn near root for it.

We could simply start with a few spring themed drinks (the Sunflower Highball, the Snake in the Grass, the Spring Fever) and go from there. Happy Equinox everyone!