ALL FOR SPRING WITHOUT DST

I watched the sun rise this morning.  It was lovely, but I'd already been up for almost two hours.  I've no problem with going to bed in the dark, but I really hate getting up while it's still dark.  Getting up before daylight reminds me too much of long ago mornings when I stumbled in the dark to dress without waking the younger kids, making my shivering way to the barn, and too many early mornings picking fruit, berries, potatoes, etc. while the plants were cold and wet.  Early morning cold and dampness is different from winter cold, somehow it feels more miserable.  For those of us who dislike morning darkness, but enjoy the shadowed coolness of evening, Daylight Savings Time is a disaster.  I think some of us come into this life preprogrammed for dawn to dusk; we're not ready to start our day before the sun comes up and we're not ready to sleep until the night is dark and cool. 

Someone must profit from the time change or it wouldn't still be thrust on us twice each year. Every legislative session someone introduces a bill to end the practice, but it never makes it out of committee.  Not many people like it; golfers seem to be the exception.  It costs my state over a million dollars each year, and almost every year some school children are injured or killed walking to school in the dark or pre-dawn hazy light. Farmers hate it--cows can't tell time--it leaves students and employees dragging for a week or two of adjustment, and people like me who never quite adjust, grumble a lot and get cranky. 

Daylight Savings Time is my one complaint about spring.  I love almost everything else about spring.  I love seeing the early crocuses bloom, sometimes before the snow is quite gone.  I eagerly watch for tulips and daffodils to poke through the ground, the grass to turn green, and that faint aura of green that precedes leaves on the trees.  I celebrate being able to wear a sweatshirt instead of a coat. Spring even smells different and I'm so ready for it this year. The past couple of days have been wonderful after such a long, cold winter. I just don't want to force myself out of bed while it's still dark outside.