spring

Vasant means, "The spring season". This is the great spring festival, falling on the fifth day of the month of Magi, the first day of spring.

On this day everyone wears a yellow cloth. It represents the ripening of the spring crops. Even the food is coloured yellow by using saffron. Spiritually, the yellow colour is a sign of prosperity; it is the colour of love.

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It is found that tree pollen can cause symptoms of depression. A psychologist at the Mood and Anxiety Program of the University of Maryland and School of Medicine analyzed surveys of 845 men and women and found that two thirds of the people surveyed reported mood difficulties during the spring season, which is when pollen levels are very high. It is believed that airborne allergens produce inflammation in the respiratory airways and the inflammation causes symptoms of depression in some people.

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Oh my goodness! It is May 19th, and my furnace just kicked on! It is so stinkin' cold, I can't stand it. I can't remember a time when Spring has been this freezing. I am really looking forward warm weather!!! It has been so cold and rainy that my planting efforts have mostly been ruined.

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Well, it happened again. It has happened for three years in a row now, my youngest daughter has had a fever all week. I took her to the doctor and he couldn't find anything wrong with her except the fever.

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This year, it feels like Easter is way too early; it just doesn't feel like it should be time for Easter yet. It feels like we just got finished recovering from the Christmas holiday, and now here we are staring down Easter! The calculations used for determining when the Easter day will fall sounds so complicated, and this year it happens to be on almost the earliest possible day.

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The fruit trees are beginning to blossom here in South West France. The peach and apricot blossom first and, indeed, are beginning now.

The plum is next but, although one of the plum trees in my garden is decked out in its Spring finery, the trees in the commercial orchards that bear the delicious sweet plums used for the World famous Agen prunes have not bloomed yet. When they do it is an amazing sight, each side of some roads all you can see it seems forever are plum trees thick with blossom. Hopefully it will be a better year this year for the plum farmers the cold wet weather last Summer in May, June July and August caused the harvest to be lower than it ought to have been.

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Today is the last day of January and I have to say I am glad to see it go. I have never liked the month of January. It seems like such a long and dreary month. I can't think of anything good or exciting that happens during the month of January.

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There's this strange light stuff that's trying to come through my curtains today. I have no idea what it is, but it seems powerful, as though it's coming from the sky.

Could that be the sun? I've heard of this thing, but, living in central New York, it's such a rare event that it's hard to identify whenever it shows up. Certainly does seem to make things much brighter, reflecting off the snow like that, much brighter than at night, when the lights of the large grocery store whose border I kind of share (there's a swamp in between us) puts off that reflects off both the clouds and the snow (did I happen to mention the snow on the ground "again"?).

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All right, already! We are having yet another day of ice and snow. It is April 11, when are we going to begin to have warmer weather? Everyone is still donning their winter coats, and my kids are looking longingly at their shorts and t-shirts wondering if they will ever get to wear them. Two of my daughters have been rollerblading inside the house. They have yet to have a day nice enough to go out to skate.

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April is finally here! I'm so excited because there are so many fun things to do in April. We'll go on a hike, and go swimming, work in the garden, visit the buffalo ranch, and more. The boys are finally old enough to really start having fun.

I'ts that time of year again. Spring in Wisconsin. I'ts been in the 70s the past couple of days with record setting highs today. We were predicted to get up to 80 but didn't quite make it. We topped out at 79, at leats here in my neck of the woods. I think that I heard the record was 76 in 1906. Trees are budding and the grass is getting green. The horses are going up in the pasture again looking for grass. It's a beautiful day today.

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It is almost spring! I love spring. The warm weather, the flowers, the animals, gardening, everything! And being a Pagan Spring has special meaning to me.

Ostara for Children
For many Pagans Ostara, or the Spring Equinox, is a time of renewal and rebirth. This Sabbat is a time of joy and blessings to be celebrated. It is a time when the sun moves into the sign of Aries, the first sign of the Zodiac, and new begginings bloom all around us.

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Spring is here! Yesterday we found the first few of the tiny wild violets which flower willy nilly in the grass here, they are a beautiful shade mid-way between blue and violet, hard to describe in words. The Birds have been singing all day long really loudly. The birds of prey, eagles, buzzards, and kite have been calling, soon we shall see them making their mating flights. So beautiful like an aerial ballet as,in pairs, they swoop, soar and dive in the sky.

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