Spring is here. Many of the signs are familiar to us — daffodils and tulips are blooming in our yard, the kids are playing outside with the neighbors who we didn’t see often during the winter, and the stores are filled with bunnies, chicks, and colorful eggs. The clouds moved in on Tuesday and have stayed all week, bringing the infamous “April showers.” There are, however, a few things that are different about Spring here than back home.
For the Swiss, spring means gardening in a much more pervasive way that we are used to. I have spent hours in our yard, our raspberry patch, and our vegetable garden trying to get them ready. And they still don’t look as good as all the other gardens we see. Many people who live in apartments, which is very common, rent a garden plot in one of the many community gardens in the area. Gardening is like a religion here. Neighbors greet each other over the bushes and talk about the plants and the weather.
Many other flowers have come up in our yard that I don’t recognize. Little purple flowers that look like styrofoam balls stuck to a q-tip are growing under our elderberry tree. Clumps of 5-petaled flowers in white, yellow and violet are everywhere! And our peach tree, magnolia bush, and giant cherry tree are all flowering. It is really quite beautiful. And though there is a shortage of robins, the ducks have returned in large numbers. We have even seen them in the road and one took a bath in our backyard pond!
Today, we died Easter eggs the Swiss way. There are no egg dying kits in the stores, so I wasn’t sure what we were going to do. But I had recently seen bags of onion skins for sale, which I thought was a little strange. Then a friend explained that they use the onion skins to dye eggs. Huh? I looked it up online, and sure enough it is a common way to dye eggs in many countries. We gave it a try, peeling the 
few yellow and red onions we had in the refrigerator, and it worked beautifully, producing eggs marbled with yellows and browns. If you want to try it, there are instructions here.
And, finally, today is Good Friday, the start of Spring Break for the kids. Everything is closed today, as it is a holiday throughout the country. Tonight I have a choir concert for the Good Friday service at the main church in town. We will be performing Charles Gounod’s “Seven Last Words of Christ” among other things. I found some samples of the music here. The last movement is particularly beautiful, a perfect piece for a beautiful season.