When I was little, my favorite book involved the repetition of the phrase “It’s spring, said the bunny.” Google is unhelpful in figuring out what book this was. Mom, I know you’ll read this – do you remember? At any rate, it’s the phrase that echoes in my head every year on the first day of spring. And ah, after a long grey snowless boring winter, I am ready. I am ready for songbirds and blooming cherry trees and sunshine. I went for a run with the dog today in shorts and a t-shirt. I bought new cushions for our outdoor chairs, so that we can sit on the back deck and drink our morning coffee.
I also set out a big birdfeeder on said deck, where I can see it from my desk, and the songbirds have been amazing. I was disappointed, the first few days after I set it out, because we had no bird visitors. I thought maybe they would never find it. This weekend, though, I went out of town to visit my grandma. (It was her 89th birthday! We had such a lovely weekend together, chatting and cooking and watching basketball). When I got back into town, I found a flurry of feathered friends had discovered the birdfeeder. Maybe I’m prematurely an old lady, as Josh keeps teasing me, but I so enjoy sitting and watching the birds at the feeder. We have cardinals, bluebirds, wrens, chickadees, finches, tufted titmice, and a squirrel named Robber Baron, because he commands most the birdseed to himself. I call him some other things, too, but at least he entertains the cats. They spend all day staring at him through the sliding glass door, singing songs of love and malice at him as he gorges himself on sunflower and sesame seeds.
It is spring. There are sunlight and songbirds, and at our favorite park, a pear tree has burst into blooms that remind me of popcorn. And that, for today, is happiness enough.
Project Minify 
Margaret Wise Brown Home for a Bunny. It was my favorite of all of her lovely and truly right for children books. The book begins:” Spring said the Bunny. It was spring….”
As i was having dinner, the actual quote came back to me. It is “Spring, spring, spring, said the Bunny. It was spring.” I think Caroline and I both loved that book equally, and I can still remember reading it with her right before bed!
Okay this is getting funnier and funnier, but this is a testimony to memory and how it works. If you are not my age (63), you may not appreciate this but old memories come back to you slowly like a fog creeping in (as Carl Sandburg alluded to in his wonderful poetry). It was the frog who sang “spring.spring,spring.” The groundhog and the robin had something to say about it, but the bunny did not initially. My apologies to Margaret Wise Brown whom I love.
Mom, you remember this book in a LOT of detail. I’m glad to know which book it was :) I think of that passage every spring.