Signs of spring are everywhere, even though we’re officially a week away – from the time change to basketball talk to rising tensions in the Statehouse, a Boise spring tradition. Afternoons are suddenly surprisingly warm. There’s a sudden profusion of box-elder bugs, sunning themselves on warm walls and screens and annoying the heck out of their hosts.

Perhaps most dramatic to me was the transformation from deep winter powder playground last weekend to sun-warmed spring skiing cornfest at Bogus Basin this one. Both Saturday and Sunday, the slopes started off firm, some even icy, but warmed and softened as the morning progressed, until by afternoon skiers were sporting ear-to-ear grins as they gloried in the soft snow all over the mountain, with each face of the resort varying according to its sun exposure – smooth and fast here, slush-bumps there, something in between over there; and a big, deep snowpack still beckoning skiers to any part of the mountain they’d care to explore…

There still likely will be more snow before the season’s over, but all these signs of spring are making this year’s legislative session feel rather old. In recent years, when a legislative session approaches its end, I’ve taken to writing poor poetry, generally in the form of limericks, rather than tying on the traditional ugly tie that signals that it’s time to wrap it up. The tie tradition, launched by former longtime AP correspondent Bob Fick, presumed that if folks had to look at such an awful tie day in and day out, they’d be more likely to finish their work and skedaddle. Do limericks have the same effect? Perhaps, perhaps not. I’ll be posting this year’s first one shortly. We’re still two weeks from the target date for adjournment sine die.  But my, it’s starting to feel a bit stuffy in here…