Vernal Equinox 2012

It's time again, the Vernal Equinox, my favorite equinox!  The time of year, when the sun crosses the celestial equator and officially starts spring!  This year, the Vernal Equinox occurs at 5:14am on March 20th Universal Time--which means here in Nevada, the Vernal Equinox will actually occur today, March 19 at 10:14 pm. It’ll only be at 10:14 pm on the U.S. west coast. It'll be at 7:14 pm on March 19 in Hawaii and at 1:14 am March 20 on the U.S. east coast. One event, across all the timezones, bringing the spring equinox to all of us around the world!

What's even better is that I already saw my first blooming violets of the season!  I saw them on Saturday the 16th of March.   I was keeping an eye out for them and I had been seeing the green plants, but no flowers.  Then on Saturday we took the kids out for a hike and when we were hiking out I kept seeing the green plants, but no flowers then on our way back we took a bit of a different route and there little Great Basin Violets all over the place.  Beautiful, little, purple jewels in the otherwise still brown landscape. 

I love watching the flowers slowly showing us their bright faces.  Soon we should be seeing buttercups and then, soon after, the flowers will start going crazy.  I should go up into the hills soon and see if any of the snow plants are starting to peak out, they usually take a bit longer since they tend to be higher up in elevation where there is a lot more snow.  

Happy Vernal Equinox!