Signs of Spring?

     Just as in the northern hemisphere, in San Marcos, the flowering of fruit trees, peach and plum mostly, signal the onset of Spring, while the Quebracho trees are turning red on the mountain resembling Appalachian  fall foliage.  It's true the vegetation doesn't know what's coming or going... seeming as confused as I am.  Cold, blustery wind at night with temperatures in the 30's and 40's are followed by hot afternoons spent hiding in the shade. I dip a toe out the door in the morning to see what the day's dress code should be, settling on three layers that will get me through the day. 
     The houses here are built to shield themselves from the intense sun that brutalizes them in the many months of summer, having no windows on the northern exposure and deep window wells with heavy shutters on the other sides.  So for those of us that show up in the fall and winter, inside is cold and dark with no penetrating sunlight until almost noon.  Every day I am surprised when I wake up at 7:30 or 8:00, 9:00 or even 10:00, when it's cloudy. The roosters crow and the dogs bark all night, so besides an alarm, there is nothing to rouse me except the need to pee or eat.
     I do realize for someone who is use to four distinct seasons, that I must learn to detect the smallest changes that quietly say "Yes, today is different from yesterday and it will keep changing until such time that it changes back again."  I visited Hawaii in early Spring one year and I remember seeing flowers everywhere and someone saying, "You should see it in the Summer!" and my mother-in-law, who lived on Oahu,  telling me that the temperature drops from a perfect 85 to a chilly 82 in the winter.  But I guess these nuances become greater when that's all you get.
     I'm told that it gets really hot here in summer and that makes me nervous, for a hibernating bear is released inside of me when my own temperature soars, ask anyone who's ever done a craft show with me.  What I'm hoping is that the difference between the heat now and the heat then is so subtle that only those who live without those four distinct seasons describe these small fluctuations using the same range of vocabulary we Northerners do. It's so cold! (Really 65 degrees)...It's so hot! (87 degrees).  Well...as I said, that's what I'm hoping.  Like the Inuit's word for snow or Seattle's words for rain, should there be 100 words for heat?  No, there's no time for all that heavy thinking. In heat, all heat, we just like to nap and that's what they do best here.  It is now 1:31pm...siesta time...thank god.