Regardless of what the calendar says, it sure doesn’t feel much like spring in the Twin Cities yet. If, like me, you’ve been poring over seed catalogs and dreaming of warmer days since February, the coming weekend’s “Spring Fling” at Como Zoo and Conservatory will be a welcome tonic for the mid-March blast of snows and sub-zero temps we’ve seen this week.

The conservatory’s annual Spring Flower Show is the centerpiece of this weekend’s festivities: beginning Saturday, the Sunken Garden will be ablaze with the colorful blooms and scents of springtime — crimson and orange, purple, cobalt, sunny yellows and every shade of green. The show promises thousands of flowers: tulips and hydrangea blossoms, hyacinth, calla lilies and bearded irises, allium and crocuses.

2012 Spring Flower Show in the Sunken Garden. Photo courtesy of Como Zoo and Conservatory

All weekend long, after ambling through the Spring Flower Show, visitors will find family-friendly things to do, throughout both the zoo and the conservatory’s gardens, on the theme “books, blooms and beasts: “make-and-take” craft activities; story times and talks by the conservatory’s gardeners; kids will even have opportunities to get up close and personal with some of the zoo’s resident critters at a number of staff-led presentations.

Late afternoon on Sunday, the event will close in style with the soulful blues of the Chastity Brown Trio, who will perform a free concert in the garden as part of the park’s “Music Under Glass” series.

Photo courtesy of Como Zoo and Conservatory

Como Zoo and Conservatory’s “Spring Fling” is Saturday and Sunday, March 23 and 24, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Chastity Brown will perform in the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory on Sunday, March 24 from 4:30 to 6:30 pm in the park’s “Music Under Glass” winter concert series. Admission is free and open to the public for all these events (beer and wine will be available for purchase during the concert), 1225 Estabrook Drive, St. Paul. For details, visit: www.comozooconservatory.org/events/special-events.