A Love/Hate Relationship

We love spring has sprung. . . but we hate the allergies!

Depending on what day the vernal equinox occurs the first day of spring in the U.S. is around the 20th or 21st of March. This is the time when the sun sits directly above the equator and as the Earth revolves around the sun; the top half becomes tilted more toward the sun and brings us the spring. If you look around you will see signs of spring everywhere. The beautiful trees are budding, warmer weather is here and all the animals are coming out of their winter hideaways. Watching all the pretty flowers blooming against the green of the grass is like adding color to a black and white photo. And probably making many of us sneeze when we stop to smell the roses.

Spring is also a transition time for the weather and sometimes brings us extremes. Some of the country’s biggest snows have happened in March and the timeframe between March to May is usually when the south gets thunderstorms. Some of the rougher storms come with hail and sometimes tornadoes. The start of spring is a good time for you to put an emergency plan in place for you and your family of what to do in case of severe weather.

Last but definitely not least is ALL the pollen those beautiful blooms bring. While we all enjoy the beauty of spring and feel the warmer temperatures pulling us outside most of us suffer in some form from allergies relating to the blooms. So if you are in that “most” category you should be aware there are options for relief for allergy sufferers. Be sure and visit our health section’s “Ask Dr. Kent” where Dr. Kent addresses allergies in her online contribution this week, and be sure to submit your question to the doctor as she will pick one reader’s question each week.

Now go try to balance a raw egg on end! Legend has it that on the first day of spring the pull of gravity is more equal on this day because of the location of the sun. The egg legend was started in 1945 when a Life Magazine reporter wrote about a Chinese ritual of standing eggs on end the first day of spring. An article appeared in the New Yorker magazine in 1983 when 100 New Yorkers got together to balance eggs on March 20. The egg legend grew when the following year 5000 New Yorkers gathered on the first day of spring to try it again. Reality is if you can balance an egg on the first day of spring you can balance it any day of the year, spring has nothing to do with it. But be of good cheer there is much more to be enjoyed this most warming time of the year.