Brilliant color, amazing light and an overwhelming sense of renewal. Spring just grabs you and throws all this in your face. Spring's youthful exhuberance is just impossible to beat for the sheer well-being that being out on a spring day gives you.

It's no co-incidence that in Tennyson's poem 'Locksley Hall', it is spring that he's talking about when it's said that 'a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love'. Spring is when everything starts thinking about renewal, whether that's humans, animals or trees. The vast majority of the natural world experiences a rebirth of some description in spring.

Spring is the time when, depending on your point on the equator, the long winter nights start to draw out, and those of us who have been living a mole-like existence get to go and return from work in the light. There is a really good reason for our love of sunshine. It's the best natural provider of vitamin D, and I always feel better for having just been outside in the chilly spring sunlight.

Spring is an incredibly beautiful time of year, and although they all have their plus points, for me the combination of the low, but increasing light and the plants and trees bursting with sap is just unbeatable. Chlorophyll seems to ooze from even the tree trunks, making them seem green in the sunlight.

The pinks, whites and yellows of blossom and spring flowers are amongst my favorite. Delicate and not hysterical with color as are the late spring and summer flowers, the apple and cherry blossom have a hypnotic effect on people. Drawing visitors around the world to Tokyo, Brooklyn Botanical, Christchurch, NZ and Kew Gardens almost hypnotically to play homage to the host of cloudy pink and white blooms.

Whilst we humans have decided that we can breed at any time of the year, there is clearly something to the idea of spring as a time for partnering. Perhaps, as a lighter and warmer time people are just outside meeting new people more. However, for many animals, Spring is the season for starting a family. Even for the non-pastoral amongst us, the sight of new-born lambs or calves in the fields, wobbling unsteadily into the world is an incredibly moving sight.

Whilst its true, that the colors of fall are gorgeous and unforgettable, that blue skies on a wintry day are magical and that cornflowers in mid-summer are delicious, spring is just unique. It's the starting point for the year really, and something that I can't wait to get outside and see and photograph to remember it until next year.

Learn more about this author, Lesley Rigg.
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