My Oldest Joke

Spring has sprung
The grass has riz
I wonder where the flowers is.

That's one of the first funny (OK, everything's relative) things I learned and that little poem has stuck in my brain lo these many years.

Well, spring just may have sprung. I noticed going through Central Park today that there is the faintest plumpness to where the leaves are on the trees, and the forsythia had no yellow but a promise of yellow coming. I think of forsythia and pussy willows -- do they even exist any more? -- as the harbingers of spring.

If I were to photograph Spring comes to New York, I would have photographed bunches of daffodils outside at a deli. I remember picking armloads of them as a young girl, so it sort of sticks in my craw to pay $6 for a skinny bunch... but they're here, and so (maybe) is spring.

We have what the local media love to call "team coverage" of spring. Now, from Washington DC, Mary shows that Spring has sprung in her yard, and she no longer has to wonder where the flowers is.