I tell myself I don’t get spring fever in springtime. I get that surge of energy and optimism in the fall.
  Spring is a dull time. Winter is over, but summer hasn’t yet replaced it. If I were a bear, I’d hibernate in spring instead of fall.
  My spirit defines summer as that time between the opening of rivers and streams for trout fishing a few weeks from now and the opening of grouse season in early fall. Summer is long, warm days of hiking, canoeing, and getting in firewood. And fishing, of course.
  Fall is hunting and getting in the firewood I didn’t get in during summer because I was too busy fishing. Fall is a good time to hit the road and see some country, a less crowded time after those with children have returned home.
  Winter around here, near sea level and near salt water, is hardly more than an extension of fall. The days are shorter and colder, but not much colder. The only demarcations between fall and winter are the end of the trout season and the beginning of rain season. Winter snow is an aberration, not an expectation.
  Spring is often as wet as winter.
  This year, this week of Irrigation Festival in Sequim, nature mocks with daily rain this annual celebration of the importance of providing water for agriculture beyond what normally falls from the sky.
  The rain in spring is not so cold, and the days grow lighter and longer, but in a wet spring such as this one, spring is, for me, a mental dead zone.
  The garden has been tilled three times, but the ground has been too wet on the days I’ve been home to get me excited about planting seeds. Volunteer vegetables and flowers from last year, along with grass and thistles, have taken it upon themselves to start the garden without me.
  Without the invigoration of outdoor activity, muscles stiffen from lack of strenuous use. With to little physical exercise, mental activity declines. Instead of enjoying each day for itself, I find myself marking time, waiting for something. Waiting for spring to be over.
  I tell myself spring dulls me, but I get things done without realizing it. This spring, instead of being stiff from inactivity, my muscles are sore from working several hours a day digging out turf and moving dirt, converting front lawn to labyrinthine garden. My mind is dulled, not from lack of physical activity, but from exhaustion.
  To take a break from heavy work, I putter. Minor household projects that have been dogging my mind for months and years take advantage of this lull in life and demand to be done. 
  While I think I’m doing nothing, I find myself busy with what might be called spring cleaning, even though, in my case, that means re-arranging disorder rather than getting rid of unnecessary stuff.
  A vague shadow of order does come out of the chaos, though. Having run out of room for books long ago, I find it not difficult to give some away or donate them to library sales.
  Shoeboxes full of photographs dating back 40 years are my next rainy day project. If I don’t know who people in pictures are, I don’t need to keep half a dozen snapshots of them. I don’t need that many even when I do know who they are.
  Staying inside too long makes me restless. Puttering peters out. I pull on boots, grab a hat, and go outside.
  Dozens of newly planted shrubs stretch above wet field grass and open tender leaves in hope of sun.
  Redwings chatter when I walk too close to the pond. A pair of mallards is back again this year, nesting amid the redwings in the cattails. Deer tracks in the wet ground are sharp and new.
  A burst of sunshine splashes brilliant colors across our blooming flower garden as I trudge up the hill with the mail. I take a deep breath of clean, wet air and look around.
  Maybe spring isn’t such a bad deal after all.