Spring is loaded with anticipation. Last week brought out the robins and peepers luxuriating in the rampant rebirth, the former searching for earthworms, the latter for mates. Gardening libidos were also at an all-time high, with many folks out recharging their green thumbs and reconnecting with gardens.

I was one of them. Nothing fancy, just dragging brush to the fire, raking out garden beds and bending to pick up numerous bits of branches covering the ground. When it comes to the physical toll, April is certainly "the cruelest month." The body, having grown soft over the winter, must rise to the occasion.

Photo; The velveteen bud of a magnolia signals all systems go

My rallying 'round the yard may sound perfunctory, but it's actually a much-relished yearly ritual. And with it, this oft-repeated theme (my first was April 1999), when I extol spring and all the pleasures it delivers. With accustomed seasonal urgency, I was on a mission, an impossible one to accomplish in a single day.

Spring marks the most miraculous of seasons, when sleepy earth comes back to life and all the renewal gives us a sense of hope. Displays of nature's rebirth come with each day, as new shoots of daylilies, iris and a host of other perennials begin to emerge alongside the snowdrop and crocus. I noticed something different out in the back garden as I busied myself, cutting tall, brittle grass stalks: the surprising number of crocuses. Originally, they were just little splotches tracing a path. The path no longer exists, but the flowers have naturalized and form impressive drifts of purple and white.

The first tips of perennials are just beginning to punctuate the garden bed, dimpling the harsh brown soil, and all at once the garden's pulse is throbbing. Tiny bulbs such as scilla and pushkinia are advancing among the green lady's mantle and bleeding heart, which increase in size daily. I grabbed the opportunity to rake the beds before their fragile blossoms burst open.

These simple tasks, combined with simple observations, are the way to a gardener's heart.

Farther down the garden in our little orchard (one that produces more flowers than fruit), I delighted in the dancing catkins, moved by the breeze, dressing up the bare branches of hazelnut trees. The sun warmed the scene and robins kept me close company, while a woodpecker made himself heard in a neighbor's tree. During this activity my eyes survey the landscape, my mind writing ever more work lists to take me into summer

Whatever we didn't achieve in the previous garden year, we now have the chance to make good on.

Back in my classroom, one that happily looks out at trees in bud, it's poetry time. I asked my freshmen to write their impressions of a magnolia bud that I'd photographed, encouraging them to use metaphors. One student, Kevin Medeiros, likened it to a baby. "It is the start of something new and needs to be raised by a caring force, a mother ... Mother Nature." Cody Roderiques wrote: "It makes me think of the wonders of the first spring day, of flowers getting ready for their debut."

Spring is here in all its urgency, bidding us to indulge in its sensuality — softest of buds, birds trilling, gentle breezes and vibrant regreening of earth's covers. Spring is all about basking in these moments. No matter how many times I observe the return of spring, it stirs something deep in me that whispers: "carpe diem.".