A sign of hope! Think Spring!

The chart below was in Paul Douglas' weather blog this morning. It offers hope for us Winter-weary folks if we can just hang on for another couple of weeks. See March 10? See 34℉? The temperature is forecast to get above freezing! Perhaps we'll return to some semblance of what passes for normalcy in Minnesota's weather. Warm days and cold nights make for a successful maple sap run. Plus, bragging rights for surviving this February and the Winter of 2018-2019 won't even get us a free cup of coffee around here, since everyone else also had to cope with record-setting snowfalls preceded by a Polar Vortex.

Temperature Outlook

As of now, the birds are grateful the feeders are kept full. The dogs are grateful for a break from sub-zero temperatures. The dog walker is grateful the sun is shining. We all hope, as much as dogs and birds hope, that Friday's forecast of more snow brings but a dusting. Through today, the Winter Severity Index is only in the Moderate Range. That certainly seems to put a damper on the bragging rights, but we were living here during the Winter of 1983-1984, so our bragging rights are forever established. We lived through the Winter of Hoth on Earth!

tapping the sugar bush in a couple of weeks?

Photo by J. Harrington

As of this weekend, two kinds of Spring activities start, one of them regardless of the weather. We start focusing on organizing our fishing gear and planning some trips. We also will begin working on organizing our information for filing tax returns. Although, if we get enough more snow that more snow blowing is required, tax preparation efforts will get deferred. We've learned to limit, as much as we can, the major sources of pain we have to cope with at any one time.

Goddess of Maple at Evening

Chard deNiord, 1952

She breathed a chill that slowed the sap 
inside the phloem, stood perfectly still
inside the dark, then walked to a field 
where the distance crooned in a small 
blue voice how close it is, how the gravity 
of sky pulls you up like steam from the arch.
She sang along until the silence soloed 
in a northern wind, then headed back 
to the sugar stand and drank from a maple 
to thin her blood with the spirit of sap. 
To quicken its pace to the speed of sound 
then hear it boom inside her heart. 
To quicken her mind to the speed of light 
with another suck from the flooded tap.

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