Spring Equinox in Atlanta | Travel Journal at Chadzilla.com

Despite a cold snap earlier this week, it’s finally springtime in Atlanta. This is my favorite time of year. The days grow longer, and the weather warms up. Trees are pushing out new leaves and spring flowers are blooming, adding splashes of color everywhere after the dullness of the winter. For my walking commute to work, I no longer need to wear my winter layers of clothes in the morning, but it’s not yet the height of summer weather that leaves me overheated and dripping with sweat as I walk home in the afternoon.

The park across the street from my office is full of flowers

The birds are waking up earlier, sometimes a little too early, tweeting at 4:30 am. We’re seeing lots of fat robins flitting from tree to tree and hopping around the yard. Each spring, we typically get a nest somewhere in the yard with three or four eggs. Our little pond provides a resource for all kinds of birds throughout the year, and we’re continuing to see activity as birds take advantage of this water feature to have a drink of water or take a bath.

I saw this fat robin in our yard yesterday

There are tons of flowers blooming around our neighborhood with a variety of colors and sizes.

I don’t know what these flowers are, but I sure like them – this neighbor’s yard also has a variety of this flower in yellow and pink

Here are some flowers along a neighbor’s retaining wall

More flowers on another neighbor’s retaining wall

Flowering vines a couple of doors down from our house

More flowering vines at the end of the block

There are also lots of flowering trees right now. Common trees are dogwoods, redbuds, and cherry trees.

Dogwood trees look so light and lacy when they are blooming

Dogwood flowers are so interesting and unique

Our neighbor across the street has a huge redbud tree – this photo is me standing on the sidewalk and looking up into the branches

Redbuds fascinate me – the flowers will bloom along the length of the branches and not just at the ends

We have a weeping redbud tree in our front yard

In a week or two, the cherry trees will drop all of their petals as you can see in this photo from a couple of years ago, and our yard will look like someone just had a wedding

And let’s not forget trees that don’t flower but have new leaves, like these colorful new leaves along our sidewalk

We also have a weeping Japanese maple tree on the front sidewalk

Spring marks the beginning of festival season in Atlanta. Beginning in spring and running through the fall, there are a variety of festivals in neighborhoods and parks all over the city. One of my plans this year is to go to all of the major festivals. Some of them will be old favorites like the Inman Park Festival in our own neighborhood, and some of them will be new experiences.

Artist booths during Inman Park Festival last year

The annual Inman Park Festival parade starts in front of our house

Every year, a group of gnomes marches in the parade during Inman Park Festival

Spring also signals the end of the school year, and even though we don’t have kids, I still feel the change in the rhythm of the calendar. At the end of May, we’ll stop hearing the school bus picking up kids in front of our house at 6:57 am and dropping them off at 2:35 pm during the week. My church handbell choir will pause rehearsals for three months which will free up my Wednesday evenings. The neighborhood pool behind our house will open up for the summer, giving Chad and me a place to cool off and relax together after a long day of work. And just in general, there’s a mental shift as we look forward to a change of pace – that sense of free time and long days of summer.