HeronDragonWrites: Signs and Symptoms: Spring

Signs and Symptoms: Spring

Catmandoo herding the turkey herd out of our yard; Deb Marshall photo

Spring is ambling towards us, taking her own sweet time, clearly not in a rush. When I look out the window towards the back 40, all I see is white; when I look out the windows to the north, I see, for the first time in months, dry brown grass and bare dirt on the south-facing bank rising to the road. Not much of it – mostly there’s just white and high piles of white – but enough to know the snow’s in a downward slide, at least.

There are other signs and symptoms: mud season is upon us and The Husband nearly got stuck in it trying to get to the Tall Dude’s house the other day. Note to self: don’t venture down dirt roads unless you’re in a truck (high clearance and four-wheel-drive) and have a come-along stashed in the back.

On the north side of the house, next to the mid-window high snow banks, is a bare circle about 6 feet in diameter. This is how we re-establish where our septic tanks are located, out here in the sticks; they melt first. Mark it now if you haven’t already!

The Back 40, March 28, 2019; Deb Marshall photo

I can see a third of the compost bins that have been totally buried until a week ago. Some willows are starting to turn a spring pale yellow, sign that sap is rising. There are trucks parked alongside the back roads most everywhere, collecting tanks in the back, maple sap running. On weekends and evenings you can smell the sweet smoke when the collectors are back at the sugar shack, boiling.

I heard the woodcock two nights ago, doing his spring mating thing, buzzing, buzzing then swirling pipe as he flies. The parsnip bed – the small one the chipmunks didn’t devastate before first snow – in the raised bed nearest the house is snow-free, but still frozen tight. I tried to dig around in it this morning, but only the very edges are loose, and only down about an inch. However, now my hand trowel has reappeared for the season.

The frozen but uncovered parsnip bed; Deb Marshall photo

The right side of the Buddha on the front porch has emerged from snow, down to his waist; and his whole head is free, again. One morning, the maple tree across the driveway from the kitchen window was full of red-wing blackbirds, shouting at me to hurry up and bring out some birdseed.

Buddha two weeks ago; Deb Marshall photo

Buddha 30 March 2019; Deb Marshall photo

A bear trashed my mother’s feeder, making off with suet cage and feeder and bending in half the cast-iron shepherd’s hook they hung from. Now I bring in the one feeder I own at night, and sweep any seed the birds didn’t finish off the wart railings onto the ground, to keep the bear from coming up onto the wart, at least. I haven’t seen signs yet of our bear, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t out and about, at least part-time.

A friend of one of the chiros in the office next to mine in the Upper Valley was out hiking one day recently and heard a crying sound; hunting around, he discovered a baby bear alone in a cave. He left well enough alone but went back a day later to make sure momma bear had returned. Pawprints in the snow suggested she had, so he put his cell phone camera on a long, long selfie-stick and threaded it down into the rocky crevasse, and got a fantastic video of baby bear curled up next to momma’s back; in a few seconds, a sleepy momma turned her head back over her shoulder and looked directly into the camera for a few seconds: “What’s that strange thing hovering in the air in my den??” At that point, the human decided a swift retreat was probably the best way to proceed, but the resulting video is priceless.

One of the very fat squirrels; Deb Marshall photo

Catmandoo is spending more time outside, going so far as to sit in the rain on the wart for an hour the other day, and spending many minutes sitting atop the oldest compost pile, staring down between his feet, no doubt listening to mousies moving about below the frozen mass. The little Biscuit, who has grown pudgy this winter from too much lazing, is doing her race car imitation ‘round and ‘round the house more often the last few days, and ventures out to “hunt.” You can see how effective that has been. But I’m cleaning less out of the cat poop boxes every day, so they’re starting to find pawable dirt outdoors to use instead of the inside facilities. Probably on top of my parsnips!

There is one sweet little crocus in bloom against the south wall of the house, where I put bags and bags of pebbles last year. In fact, this one struggled out from under one bag of pebbles that I hadn’t spread before snow fell. I don’t remember planting crocus bulbs against the wall, or anywhere near-by, so it’s a bit of a mystery, but a very pleasant one!

Crocus struggling out from under bag of pebbles; Deb Marshall photo

The witch in the woods on the hill seems to have tired of her trick of turning mourning doves into wild turkeys and back again. The last couple of weeks both doves and turkeys have shown up on the same days, even at the same times, but never in the giant herds they traveled in this winter.

Part of the herd; Deb Marshall photo

All my seeds have arrived, and none of the trees and onion sets and so on, so I must have won that battle with the nursery people. Fingers crossed, Spring won’t have fully arrived for another many weeks at the rate she’s dawdling along. I do notice, half-way through the night now, no matter how cold I am when I go to bed, I wake up too warm, and have to strip off jammie bottoms and one blanket in order to be able to fall asleep again.

The last two days The Husband has started fires in the woodstove again, determined to burn up the small remainders of the winter’s cordwood. Even though the Old Farmer’s Almanac predicts a pretty big storm sometime in the first two weeks of April, I haven’t argued with him. I may be sorry, but, damn, it’s been raw and nasty at night.