Spring forward and enjoy the new season

“You make me feel so young, you make me feel like spring is sprung.”

Actually, you don’t. It’s a song. Music by Joseph Myrow, lyrics by

Mack Gordon, 1946, if you care.

But care or not, spring is sprung and that is that. Personally, I

like it. I’m a big fan of the fringe seasons, spring and fall. Fall

wins, but spring is a blast.

It bursts on the scene with all that rebirth-revitalize-

re-energized stuff. The trees and the flowers are what do it. It’s

amazing how fast it happens. We have a big, strapping liquid amber in

our front yard.

One morning, not long ago, it was still bare, gray and shy. The

next, it was rustling in the wind, showing off its thick green crown.

“How do you do that?” I shouted out the window. “I can’t talk,” it

said. “I’m a tree.”

The spring flowers are really a high-energy rush, guaranteed to

make you smile and cure what ails you. Get out there and soak up some

color.

As I’ve told you before, you don’t have to go far to be amazed and

amused. Get on the freeway, doesn’t matter which, and take a

leisurely drive to nowhere. The ramps and hillsides are in full

bloom.

Look at those hills on either side of the San Diego Freeway

between Culver and the El Toro Y, or the Riverside Freeway to Green

River Drive. I don’t know if the hills are alive with the sound of

music (you can’t hear a thing with the windows rolled up) but they

are greener than an Irish country meadow, which is totally green. Try

the Foothill-Eastern Toll Road. It’s wildflowers as far as the eye

can see, all color, all the time.

For the ultimate rush, there are the flower fields in Carlsbad --

less than an hour down the road and worth every minute. Get off the

I-5 at Palomar Airport Road. Easy. It is a 50-acre explosion of color

through which you can walk, run or sniff to your sniffer’s delight.

It’s even wheelchair accessible, which I appreciate at the moment.

Back home, spring planting can be a lot of fun. We don’t do much

of that at our place though. Sharyn keeps the place clipped, snipped

and colorful year-round, and I have never once been accused of having

a green thumb, jeans or anything else. The only thing I can grow is

sweet basil, “basilico” in Italian, which does fine in the Yukon or

the Sahara if you water it once a year, which I can do. Other than

that, I am a human herbicide.

When my wife brings something home from the nursery, she shields

it with one hand, rushes past me and says “Don’t look at it.”

There is, of course, that other authenticating sign of spring, the

one that tiptoed through your bedroom at 2 a.m. today. Not the cat --

the time change. Daylight saving time begins in most states at 2 a.m.

on the first Sunday of April, then reverts to standard time at 2 a.m.

on the last Sunday of October.

And don’t worry, I won’t mention the “Spring forward...” thing

again. If you don’t know it by now, I can do nothing for you. Whose

idea was this anyway?

It was that remarkable genius-scientist-inventor with the really

bad hair -- Dr. Benjamin Franklin -- the cleverest founding father

who ever founded a nation. Dr. Ben’s idea to improve productivity by

taking better advantage of the long spring and summer days took a

while to catch on, but it was in use here and around the world by the

end of World War I.

Hawaii, Arizona, the U.S. territories and a portion of Indiana do

not observe daylight saving time. Hawaii and Arizona are quite

satisfied with their share of daylight, thank you, and I don’t know

what the problem is in Indiana, but I’ll bet it’s complicated.

Interestingly, the Navajo Nation in Arizona does observe daylight

saving time because the Navajo reservation stretches into New Mexico

and Utah. And here’s something you can impress everyone with at the

next dinner party.

Chicken farmers hate daylight saving time and have led several

efforts to over turn it, none successful. Apparently, all the

roosters and chickens out there, who are naturally programmed to

shake a leg and other parts at dawn, are badly dazed, confused and

disoriented by the twice-yearly time change.

As a result, twice a year, productivity drops for weeks until the

puzzled poultry can focus.

Can you find this kind of information anywhere else?

I say you cannot.

So there you have it. If you forgot to set the clock last night,

you’re late. But not to worry.

Check out the flowers and you’ll feel better. I gotta go.

* PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs

Sundays. He may be reached by e-mail at [email protected].