Countdown to Spring

Lots of exciting happenings (remember Happenings?) over the next month to six weeks or so. From furthest away to closest in time, here they are:

• The SE stream trout in streams regular season starts April 12. The Winter catch and release stream trout season is underway now.
• Spring Equinox is March 20 this year.
• By mid-March, the geese and the Red-winged Blackbirds should be back.
• By midnight, March 3, permanent ice houses have to be removed in southern Minnesota.
• March 1 is the start of meteorological Spring.
• In less than 2 weeks (February 23), the average daytime high in Minneapolis is 32.
  (It takes until April 3 before the average low is 32.)
• From early to mid-April we can expect to hear the first frog choruses.

Now, wasn't that better than yet another complaint about this Winter? Here's a picture of some Spring greenup from March 2012 to help lift your spirits (unless you enjoy staring through a hole in the ice). Amy Gerstler makes me wonder what it might be like to live where Spring is perpetual.

 Spring 2012                   © harrington

In Perpetual Spring

By Amy Gerstler 

Gardens are also good places

to sulk. You pass beds of

spiky voodoo lilies   

and trip over the roots   

of a sweet gum tree,   

in search of medieval   

plants whose leaves,   

when they drop off   

turn into birds

if they fall on land,

and colored carp if they   

plop into water.

Suddenly the archetypal   

human desire for peace   

with every other species   

wells up in you. The lion   

and the lamb cuddling up.

The snake and the snail, kissing.

Even the prick of the thistle,   

queen of the weeds, revives   

your secret belief

in perpetual spring,

your faith that for every hurt   

there is a leaf to cure it.

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