Lent Day 13 "March"

March is one of my top 12 favorite months.  In the south where I grew up, it is generally rainy and breezy and cool.  There were occasional snowstorms, but mostly it was warming up by then.  The month started with daffodils, bradford pears, plum trees, crocuses, and forsythia.  It progressed through to tulips, deciduous magnolias, cherry trees, and dogwood.  Everything comes to life in March.  The first shoots of leaves start to emerge on trees, days get longer--the tipping point where there is more light than dark in the day.

March is my birth month.  I love the daffodil, the flower of the month.  I love the aquamarine, the March birthstone.  Normally, I'm not too much in favor of pastels, but that nascent, emerging color of the first leaves and early flowers represents so much potential after the drab and dank sleeping colors of the long winter.  It's as though nature wants to warm you up to the idea of color before showing off the garish irises, crepe myrtles, rhododendrons, and flame azaleas of the later season.

March is also the beginning of Spring Training games in Major League Baseball--the third best sport in the world (behind table tennis and college football).  The grapefruit and cactus leagues get hot and we start to dream about overpriced cheap hotdogs and the smell of peanuts and beer while we yell at umpires.

Yes, there are only 12 months--there is something about every one of them that makes them my favorite for different things.  But March is my favorite of my favorites!