This is about the time of year when I start seeing phantom signs of spring. Temperatures in the 30s make me think a few more weeks will have trees budding and grass poking up green heads for the new year.  Any bird that opens its beak sounds to me like it's heralding the advent of a warmer season.

This morning as I was driving into work I noticed a flock of Canada geese in their familiar V formation winging their way across the road in front of me. That's not odd in itself, although I'm not used to seeing these birds in January. 

But they were flying northeast. 

According to our intern, it's "attack of the killer bees out there!"

It's inevitable, but also a great sign that spring is actually here. I've seen quite a few wasps bobbing through the air and crawling on the concrete. Now if only the trees would start turning green!

Yesterday I saw one of the happiest sights I've seen for a few months. I looked out my kitchen window and there was a fat little robin hopping around on the ground.

You know what that means - Spring is actually on its way! I know we're supposed to get dumped on again this week with snow, and one of these days is supposed to drop down to 10 degrees again, but the robins are back!

Hip hip hooray! Today is the first day of Spring!

According to the calendar, anyway. With any luck mother nature will pay attention this year. I think we can all agree it's time to smell the flowers again.

Some of the things I'm looking forward to doing:

1. Spending more than five minutes outside
2. Tuning up my mountainbike and hitting some trails
3. I might start jogging (or try to)
4. Airing out my apartment (aka opening the windows) 
5. Packing up my winter coats, gloves, and scarves
6. Planning a camping trip

Groundhog day is coming up.

I'm not sure about all of you, but when I was a kid, Feb. 2 was one of the happiest days of my year. Not only is it the perfect kids holiday (what child wouldn't love celebrating a magical season-predicting creature that looks like one of her stuffed animals?), but it also meant the end of the cold and the imminence of blooming flowers and green grass and the return of the songbirds.

That was when I was little, and I lived in an area where flowers really do bloom in mid-February and the grass really never turned brown.

I was going to start putting together my warm-weather playlist, but I guess I jumped the gun. Today’s colder and dreary weather has me feeling glum. It’s certainly not the kind of weather that calls for open car windows and rocking tunes.

Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing. ~Phyllis Diller

De-cluttering your home isn't really as hard as you might think. Before you take the plunge to get started, you first need to create an action plan. Take the time to get a realistic view of your clutter. Try to create a written plan and zoom in on the most cluttered space and start there.

Editor Mathias Baden, freshly returned from a vacation to Florida, came into the office of the Jordan Independent this morning and commented that he hoped this weather stuck around for a while.

Amen to that!

It’s almost March, and you know what that means, don’t you? Of course! We’re almost into one of my favorite parts of the year – the unabbreviated months.

From a newspaper standpoint, there are a few months out of the year that are never abbreviated, no matter what the context. Those months start in March and run through July, and thus make up some of the best months out of any year.

I love spring and summer for a number of reasons, not the least of which is my car.