My mother was from Boston, and like most of Beantown’s good citizens, she had a flat Boston accent. She tickled me every spring when she tried her best imitation of a New York City accent. I don’t know if it was supposed to be Brooklyn or the Bronx, but it was funny. On the first really perfect day in May she’d say:

“Spring has sprung,

“Da Grass iz riz,

“I wonder where da boidies iz.”

Every year the same. And we’d both laugh.

And “da boidies” were where they always are in May – on their nests or in the trees, singing spring’s welcoming songs, or grubbing for worms.

This year’s resident boids have moved out. By last Friday, our scrawny-necked trio of robin hatchlings had grown into actual baby birds, complete with freckles and mini stripes. They were there Friday morning, beaks up … and gone that afternoon.

The five weeks I watched their mom, whom I named Xena, was the fun part of this emerging spring, although I worryied about her eggs in below freezing weather. When I began organizing spring cleanup on the porch, I past her nest many days.

I can’t say every day, simply because it was too cold too often to be weeding, cleaning out flower pots, or emptying the shed of its winter storage items. One day I carried an angel, a frog and a birdbath in three separate trips between the shed and the back garden, and I was done. My paws were too cold, even with work gloves, to continue traipsing that distance. Spring hadn’t sprung, despite what the calendar said.

Those cold days also limited the extensive scrubbing that spring requires. Arthritic hands don’t wash railings for very long on 35-degree days. But I think many of the spring clean-up chores I have now are a case of “Be careful what you wish for.” I did this to myself.

I wanted our porch sitting area to be like an outdoor living room. What was I thinking? Truth be told, maybe I wasn’t thinking clearly.

Porch time is almost half the year, from the good days in May through the last gasp of warm autumn in October. Why shouldn’t it just be as comfy and appealing as our den or living room? Some of my grander ideas, from way back during my designing years, still dwell in the deep recesses of my head. Every once in while, one of them escapes and invades the small sane area that’s left. And I get carried away.

We spend a lot of happy, leisure hours out there in the warm months. Mornings on the porch often start with coffee and the morning paper. We eat lunch there as often as possible, occasionally with friends, and it’s my afternoon go-to when I’m slogging away in the garden. Weed ten minutes. Sit on the porch for twenty. Repeat. It gets a lot of use.

We also eat supper outside most nights, and every night when the family is here for the summer celebrations. I love having everyone gathered together, eating and drinking, laughing and chatting, and remembering the family stories. And the remembering brings more laughter. So yes, I simply wanted the place where we spend so many happy hours to be nice.

There were the early years of buying the basics – comfy summer swivel rockers, side tables and canvas draperies. When we found the right rug, I was committed. “Yup, now it’s going to be the summer room!” That was the moment the insanity hit.

Then, slowly, there was the ceiling fan, the just-right dinner table and chairs, the special window box, and the cantilever umbrella. But these things take time. There were no stimulus checks when we were ready for our umbrella. Finally, last year, fifteen years after I hooked up the first hanging baskets of flowers, we hung the artwork. We finished converting the space into our summer digs.

And of course, now it all needs to be washed and restored to its previous memory-making setting. You see, the only place we have to store it all is outdoors on the porch – stacked high, covered as much as possible, and hopefully away from as much snow as possible. But, the wind that blows from December to early April deposits dirt, dirt, dirt. My May job is to scrub, scrub, scrub.

The Memorial Day deadline looms. If the egg-bearing Xena shows up June 1st, she won’t recognize the place. I doubt if she’d build a nest on our baker’s rack between the glasses and the napkin holders.

So g’bye little boid. Spring has sprung, da grass iz riz. And we’re almost ready.

Marcy O’Brien lives in Warren with her husband, Richard, and Finian, their silky Maine Coon cat. Marcy can be reached at Moby.32@hotmail.com