Time to wish Winter "Au Revoir"

This morning the Better Half [BH] and I combined efforts to put the driveway to rights. I drove the tractor and used the backblade to scrape several inches of slush from the top of the remaining, underlying ice. BH spread a limited amount of salt on the slipperiest spots and laid a sand path from the house to the township road. There's a chance, with a little luck, we'll make it to full melt with no serious falls or tumbles. Grabbing the tractor during dismount saved me at one point this morning. Several sets of Yak-Trax are going onto the "to be replaced" list for next Winter. Our body is neither as agile nor resilient as it once was.

In honor of Winter's imminent departure, we finished the last few essays in the Winter section of natural connections. We're planning a visit to the Cable Museum sometime this Summer. That's probably when we'll take the opportunity to pick up Emily Stone's second volume of "natural connections", to be published later this month. If you enjoy our North Country's natural happenings reported by season, we highly recommend books as an inspiration for weekly phenological considerations and observations. Also, in recognition of the fact that it is now less than a week until the Vernal Equinox, today we read ahead a little and finished rereading Ted Kooser's Winter Morning Walks: one hundred postcards to Jim Harrison. That means we'll return to reading his Kindest Regards volume until we've finished working our way through that collection of new and selected poems.

red maple, mid-March

Photo by J. Harrington

Too late for this past Winter, but in an effort to get local deer to stop emptying the sunflower seed feeder we keep in front of the house, we're going to put the thistle seed feeder out front. We've also filled the suet feeders for the last time this Winter. We want all traces of them gone by the time our local black bears awaken feeling hungry and with cubs to feed. Plus, we've had a few problems with bears helping themselves to the seed feeders and the hummingbird nectar feeders. Trying to feed "birds" has become a never-ending challenge. We used to think squirrels were the major culprits!

red squirrel at "bird" feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

Although it's a couple of days out of sequence, here's another example of why we've been reading Winter Morning Walks. The theme matches perfectly this week's occurrences, except for the geese, and they'll soon be back.

march 16

Snow melting from the roof.


Spring, the sky rippled with geese,
but the green comes on slowly
timed to the ticking of downspouts.
The pond, still numb from months
of ice, reflects just one enthusiast
this morning, a budding maple
whose every twig is strung with beads
of carved cinnabar, bittersweet red.

~Ted Kooser

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