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| Today's Photos Courtesy of Jan |
I'm compelled to interrupt the flow of the blog to say something about what many of us are experiencing, the seeming arrival of spring. Most likely anyone living north of the Mason Dixon line is thinking: Oh, don't be so sure, and people in Maine are going to send me emails about the April Fools snowstorm. I remember it well.
Nevertheless, yesterday some organic switch was thrown. Part of it may be a change in my focus - driving around, I saw the gleam of buckets hanging on sugar maples where I don't think they were the day before. In the morning I was outside attaching an antenna to the tall bird feeder, and I heard a lusty chorus of songbirds. I
know they weren't there a day earlier. All winter the marsh's soundtrack is a shruti-box of crows, gulls and geese. In one day, non-internet tweets have arrived, I hope to stay for the next six months.
Inside, the cats returned on Monday to the window seat over the dining room table, which they've been boycotting since the beginning of November, presumably because the glass was cold.
This transition is not just a function of temperature - it was warmer here last week, and there were no songbirds or window cats then. This week, nature seems to have committed to a spring path. I've made a pledge to encounter the early part of spring with something more than greedy yearning for more. Spring is 25% of the seasons, and I want to savor all of it, relish the strange winds sailing down the Dyer River that seem to be chilly and warm at the same time, the sluggish bugs in the mud, even the first poor stupid wasp to invade the living room and meet its maker courtesy of Norby.
