Friday Ramble - Getting Through March, Sheepishly

March came in like a lioness, and then the lioness stepped away for a few days. Within her brief absence, plucky birds paired off amorously, and local starlings sang merrily, pretending they were robins. For a while it looked as if there would be an early maple syrup run. For a handful of days, I dared to entertain thoughts of springtime - gardening magazines, nursery catalogs and seed packets bloomed on every surface in the little blue house in the village.

Silly me, I should know better than to succumb to such fancies. There are halcyon days now and then in March, but they are scant, and they are difficult to predict. Storms, frigid days and icy nights persist, the north wind flinging heaps of snow against the door of the garden shed, tumps of earth and faded grasses vanishing after emerging briefly out of the white stuff. There is still a lot of snow about, and our geese, loons and herons are going to be late coming home this year. It will be weeks until they can find food in frozen farm fields.

What is one to do at such times? I drink Logdriver espresso and Yorkshire tea, make soup and cookies, pummel bread dough. In the wee hours of the night, I plot new beds of heirloom veggies and herbs to be dug (hopefully) next month, research heirloom roses, ponder starting another quilt. I cultivate forbearance and try to be cheerful when temperatures drop and ice turns the threshold back into a skating rink. I hope ardently that March will get her act together and morph into a lamb, darn it.

At the end of winter, one becomes a tad maudlin. A friend in the Lanark Highlands told me this week that spring lambs are about to be born in her magnificent old log barn, and I could have cried. Poor wee curly beasties, coming into the world in such bleak and harrowing circumstances.

Enough is enough already. Rain is just fine, and it is easier to shove than snow. One thing about the weather though. When night skies are clear, they are fabulous: flaming sunsets and moons one can almost reach up and touch, planets dancing in the sky at dusk, dippers of starlight strewn by handfuls from vast, streaming cosmic cauldrons up there somewhere in the darkness. What a show, what a trip!