{"id":35308,"date":"2026-03-31T11:26:29","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T16:26:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=35308"},"modified":"2026-03-31T11:26:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T16:26:29","slug":"signs-of-a-late-spring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=35308","title":{"rendered":"Signs of a Late Spring"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>When I was little, I remember the saying, &#8220;March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.&#8221;  The way I understood that was, March is stormy and awful at the beginning, and it&#8217;s spring&#8217;s early days at the end.  Life experience tells me that&#8217;s <i>sorta<\/i> true, and this year has probably been the most lion\/lamb March of the past decade, but really, this March has been bipolar &#8212; there have been 80 degree days (in Pennsyltucky!) and 20 degree days, and there was snow on the ground on St. Patrick&#8217;s Day.  The last few days have been warm, then cold, and then warm again.  As I write this now, it&#8217;s warm, and there&#8217;s a chance of thunderstorms this afternoon.  This March is displaying real wave\/particle duality &#8212; it is both lion <i>and<\/i> lamb, at the same time &#8212; and the final day of the month is no exception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was in Lynchburg for a week in the middle of the month.  I thought, maybe because it was further south, that spring would be further advanced there, but it wasn&#8217;t.  Even going through the mountains on my way home, things were still brown.  My mom&#8217;s daffodils had begun to bloom on their own; she&#8217;s not here, and there&#8217;s no one to tend to them.  (My dad isn&#8217;t physically capable of it right now.)  Seeing them made me feel both happy and sad.  Bipolar, not unlike March itself.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image is-style-scotch-tape-left\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"720\" src=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/20260322_190247-1200x720.jpg\" alt=\"A bank of daffodils on the side of the hill, backed by woods\" class=\"wp-image-35302\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>I had car trouble on the way home, a fuel pump leak. It did not leave me stranded, but I <em>also<\/em> came close to not making it to the mechanic after I got home. Joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Spring is running about two weeks late this year. The trees outside my apartment are finally showing green.  Most of the grass seed I laid in the dead places in front of my apartment did not take, but there is some growth.  Thanks for nothing, Pennington!  I don&#8217;t think any of your grass seed took.  Clearly, I should&#8217;ve stuck with the cheap stuff from Ollie&#8217;s.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image is-style-scotch-tape-right\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"900\" src=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/20260330_152022.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-35307\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>The tree at the end of the sidewalk, the one with the ginormous hornet&#8217;s nest, is not showing green yet.  The kids in that apartment are moving out this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I went to a baseball game downtown on Sunday.  Two, actually.  It was a doubleheader, Penn State York versus Penn State Schuylkill.  I can&#8217;t say the baseball was <i>good<\/i> &#8212; so many base running blunders! so many fielding errors and misplayed balls! so many passed balls! &#8212; but it was free, and it was a nice afternoon (as long as I sat in the sun), and there are worse ways to spend a late March Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image is-style-scotch-tape\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"400\" src=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/20260329_145628.jpg\" alt=\"Some action from the second game -- York has men on first and second\" class=\"wp-image-35304\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>The stadium was close to empty, even from a distance I could hear people on the field talking (with was a surprising number of f-bombs).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The second game, I honestly stopped paying attention and spent some time scouring Project Gutenberg for research materials for a potential short story.  I didn&#8217;t find exactly what I was hoping to, but I found things adjacent, and that actually may be better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Leaving WellSpan Park, I walked around the plaza and took some photos of the banners outside.  One such banner is for former Washington National, Ross Detwiler, whose game-used uniform <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=31971\">I bought several years ago<\/a>.  (Curiously, Detwiler is a name you&#8217;ll find in Mt. Rose Cemetery on the east side of York, which I discovered <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=33099\">five years ago<\/a>.  Seeing Detwiler graves made me wonder if Ross Detwiler, the pitcher, had cousins or family in the York area.)<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image is-style-scotch-tape-left\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"900\" height=\"900\" src=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/20260329_155524.jpg\" alt=\"The facade of WellSpan Park, as seen from the top of the parking garage, and beyond it a hillside of grave markers\" class=\"wp-image-35306\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>I parked in the Market Street garage &#8212; top deck, level 11, because I&#8217;m weird &#8212; and before I left I took one last picture of the ballpark and, beyond it, Prospect Hill Cemetery, which I visited <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=35289\">a week before St. Patrick&#8217;s Day<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That too was a nice day in this bipolar March, and I did not waste it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What will April bring?  Besides, hopefully, a new job&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I was little, I remember the saying, &#8220;March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.&#8221; The way I understood that was, March is stormy and awful at the beginning, and it&#8217;s spring&#8217;s early days at the end. Life experience tells me that&#8217;s sorta true, and this year has probably been<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=35308\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;Signs of a Late Spring&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[4081,4457,5023,5131,5088,543,4],"class_list":["post-35308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-baseball","tag-college-baseball","tag-mt-rose-cemetery","tag-penn-state-york","tag-prospect-hill-cemetery","tag-spring","tag-york","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}