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The chokecherry trees in our yard bloomed a couple of weeks ago, leaving the boughs dripping with fragrant bouquets. That got me excited about summer.

“It’s almost here,” I sang, while the flowers took their place as the official greeter of the season, offering spritzes more precious than anything you could buy at the department store perfume counter.

A friend asked, “What’s almost here, winter?”

Isn’t that typical? Even though it’s not even summer yet, we’re already worried that it’s over. Start counting down the days, folks. We might as well call the season a bust, now that we’re getting our first week of rainy weather.

In Alaska, the calendar doesn’t quite define the season. Spring begins as a gleam in March’s eye, then takes a sharp turn down a path that leads to breakup, a dismal mess to navigate while we wait for the main attraction to arrive. No wonder we’re ready to claim summer when the first green buds pop out like jack-in-the-boxes.

For some it begins with a kayak or canoe slipping into ice-free water, the first river trip of the year. Or with bare skin, when the sun’s rays are finally warm enough to sit around outside. Others point to their gardens. For them summer starts with the planting of seeds, or when they can turn the watering hoses on the kids. Maybe it happens when we take a ride on the Crooked Creek & Whiskey Island railroad at Pioneer Park, or as I like to call it, the Park Formerly Known as Alaskaland.

Another sign comes in a familiar orange hue, sprouting out in varieties that spell Yield and Detour along roads and highways. The start of another construction season means ripped up roads and alternate routes. We may appear at the apex of the animal kingdom, the epitome of both creation and evolution, but we’re no better than the ants when our paths are blocked. We cluster around access points, looking for new places to park, a recognizable landscape in a changing routine.

Humans once counted on the powers of observation for survival, until we didn’t have time to notice. Now we’re lucky if we get to spend our leisurely moments listening for the first notes of those returning birds, their songs committed to memory during the quiet winter months when only a raven’s call accompanies the icy silence.

Walking through the woods at Creamer’s Field recently, a swarm of mosquitoes in my eyes and nose, the birds tell me it’s summer with every swooping swallow and hoot of air rushing through the snipe’s tail feathers.

Even my young son has his own way of knowing when the season’s here. He sees it in the clusters of eggs that appear on our ladybug tree, a big birch perched right in front of our house. He knows how to watch closely while the life cycle unfolds. He’ll mourn untimely ends brought on by misplaced thumbs squashing egg sacks before ladybugs even get a chance to become peppery larvae, spreading out in an aphid patrol.

Later they’ll return to that same tree, looking for a spot to curl up into a pupa spiral, a safe place to transform. Then just as the seasons do without our help, a new ladybug will emerge, a beetle for my son to pick up and protect.

Yet his desire is as dangerous as the passing fancy of a neighborhood woodpecker. A welcome visitor, accepting party favors we never offered, then entertaining us with an exotic tree-spiraling dance accompanied by a drum beat of a greeting. Rat-a-tat-tat.

Maybe there’s no one way to define the start of summer. We all have a different reason to claim the season. Just as some of the last birds to appear, the arctic terns, must think it begins with them. They get busy, along with the gardeners and the kayakers, the field scientists and the construction workers, taking advantage of their time in the sun.

Then they are just as eager to call it over when they leave first to beat the traffic on their long journey south. Home to another summer, a hemisphere away.

Maybe it doesn’t really matter when summer starts, no three-month category with its neat edges tucked up into equal portions can contain what it means to live here. Each month, each phase of the year, comes with its own sights and sounds. And someday the edges might blur even further, the clues arriving in less clearly-defined clusters, because after all, the only constant is change.