The tulips are popping up in front of Cindy Kaufman's store in Lawrenceville, the gelato machine has been turned on at Mon Aimee Chocolat in the Strip District, and Bruce Kraus is being reminded once again how Pittsburgh's streets have become one big ashtray.

Today is the official opening day of that mud-luscious season, spring -- a time when lovers lounge in the pale sun on Flagstaff Hill, the white-throated sparrow sings his fleeting song before heading to Canada, and the street cleaning machines spray dust and debris off the streets and up onto Penn Avenue's sidewalks.

And drive the merchants crazy.

"We sweep in front of our store at least once, sometimes twice a day. We actually have to use a shovel sometimes," said Ms. Kaufman, owner of T's Upholstery Studio on Butler Street. Nonetheless she forged ahead and put pansies in her planters yesterday morning.

There are plenty of upsides to spring -- warm weather, longer days, baseball, peonies -- but in its early stages, a lot of people are finding plenty to complain about.

Some even complain that winter -- and the total 76.9 inches of snow that fell over the season -- is over.

"I actually loved every minute of this winter," said Joani Ondra, who was buying sprays of fragrant eucalyptus at Roxanne's Flowers in the Strip Thursday. "I like that it forced you indoors, where you had to relax and connect with family."

Jan Grice thinks spring is an abomination.

"Everything is hideous until things start growing. The landscape is filthy, there are piles of road salt everywhere, the naked city is exposed."

Daylight savings?

"Awful," said Ms. Grice, 53, of Shadyside. "It used to be a late April thing, but now we seem to really be pushing the envelope."

"I really like winter," added Ms. Grice, who grew up amid huge amounts of snow in the Laurel Highlands. "I like holing up in my house, closing up the windows and making soup. It seems that when spring comes, it's always sort of sudden and there's this sense of the world moving in on you."

The change in light -- indeed, the greater exposure to the world at large -- has mixed benefits, adds Wendy Levin-Shaw, a social worker with Squirrel Hill Psychological Services.

"I think change brings out crankiness in some people," she said. "Spring is exhilarating and exciting, but it also exposes you to the world more when you go outside, and for some people who aren't in a relationship, it can be hard to walk the streets and see couples holding hands or pregnant women or just people being happy, especially if you have struggles of your own."

Rainy weather will be moving in tomorrow, but compared to 2005's frigid March -- when the temperature averaged more than four degrees below normal -- temperatures so far this month have been running above the normal of 39.8 degrees, noted Brad Rehak, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. There are no indications that we'll be having a colder, hotter, wetter or drier-than-normal spring, he added.

We can take comfort in one constant: our spring will come sooner than Philadelphia's. Lilacs bloom here in late April, but often don't flower until mid-May in the eastern part of the state or New Jersey, because of the thermal effect of the Atlantic Ocean, which takes longer to warm up in the spring and cool down in the fall, Mr. Rehak said.

High pressure systems that sit over New England at this time of year pull in cool air off the ocean which dams up against the eastern slopes of the Appalachians, he said.

"That means it can sometimes be 20 degrees cooler in State College than Pittsburgh," he said.

When the sun emerged earlier this month, finally melting the last dingy hulks of this winter's snow, the crocuses, the hellebores and snowdrops revealed themselves -- along with abandoned car mufflers, plastic water bottles, chewing gum wrappers and cigarette butts.

Mr. Kraus, a city council member who represents the South Side, remembers stepping out of his house two weeks ago and seeing cigarette butts everywhere -- bobbing in the brackish brown water against the curb, in puddles, on lawns.

"It's a sea of garbage," he lamented, noting that since smokers were kicked outside to indulge their habit, the streets "have become ashtrays."

That said, "spring still is my favorite time of the year," he added, noting that he saw his first blooming crocus five days ago. "It's the promise of renewed life."

In usually snow-pummeled areas like New York's Saratoga Springs and Buffalo, gardeners are taking respite from a relatively mild winter.

"Winter doesn't bother me all that much, and I, along with many of my fellow Buffalonians, have been kind of sniggering at all these freak-outs about snow," said Elizabeth Licata of Buffalo, who blogs on Garden Rant (www.gardenrant. com).

"We only got 74 inches this year, and I'd say the snow season is pretty much over."

Those anxious to get outside need to be careful, though. Those spring pools in your back yard or nearby woods that "chill and shiver will like the flowers beside them ... soon be gone," as the poet Robert Frost predicted, but in these early days of spring they may be "vernal pools" teeming with life, breeding wood frogs, salamanders and other critters, said Tracy Coleman, of The Nature Conservancy in Harrisburg.

Ms. Coleman is a biologist, not a poet, but her point is this: that puddle your kids want to jump in may be a vernal pool. Be patient and leave these seasonal wetlands alone.

Vernal pools matter, "because they support a distinct biological community that is adapted to a dry phase," she said, a seasonal drying out "that allows for a fishless environment necessary for successful reproduction by several amphibians" -- that would be spring peepers, to you -- "that would otherwise succumb to competition or predation."

Then, wait a little longer. Spring won't come into its fullness until the wood thrush sings in the woods around Pittsburgh in late April, says Scott Shalaway, a West Virginia-based writer. "It's the most beautiful song in the eastern woods," he said, "and when I hear it, I know then that there's no chance of a late snow.

"The wood thrush also sings a low, haunting "evening vespers song, just at sunset. When I hear this very beautiful flute like 'e-o lay,' on a warm evening with the smell of fresh grass everywhere, then I know, really, that spring is here."

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