March 27 - March 31 Starting Seeds

2011-The progress of spring seems largely stalled; barely 40 in the day and well below freezing every night. Everything seems to be waiting but with a kind of energy building up behind the blockage so that when the temperatures eases up it feels like things will fairly explode. There is now barely any ice in the reservoir.  I guess the huge amount of water mitigates daily temperature changes so there is always progress albeit slower in the  cold.
2012-Returning from a week in Florida. Everyday was clear, almost crisp, but with temps around eighty-so called perfect weather. And though it was great to lie out in the sun and swim in the pool, I find it strangely dead there. The air smells like nothing and even when breezes blow it strikes me like a fan, strangely mechanical. It is especially dramatic compared to here where, though its only in the high fifties and low forties at night, everything looks and smells so alive. The air is like an elixir I can’t get enough of and, though on the trip home from Kingston I passed one magnolia after another with its too soon opened buds blasted to brown mush, the apples are budding green, the nectarine is showing pink all over, and the wild roses are soft clouds of green mist everywhere.
2013-Early early in the morning, moonlight, not snow, paints the ground white. A truck passes, sounding like a snowplow and, only half awake, I imagine drifts of moonlight piled on the edges of the roads, massing along the branches of the apple trees and forming thick caps on the heads of sleeping birds.
Tiny ants everywhere, even occasional intrepid Marco Polos journeying across the billowy sheets.

March 22 - March 26 Robins Mate

2010-I have been noticing the birds in pairs, chasing each other in and out of the branches, but then I saw something I had never seen.  When I came out of the house, something orange dropped to the ground out of the maple tree. There was some shuffling about on the far side and then two robins hopped/stumbled out, in the act of separating from each other, then flew off. I don’t know if I disturbed them or if they were oblivious.

Wanting spring is the
First sign of spring. Water sounds,
One peeper, peeping.

2011- Following the warm up, two days of snow(though it melted in a day) followed by a cold snap-in the 20’s last night and probably not reaching forty today. The reservoir was almost free of ice though that will stall til it warms up. My own little crocuses have appeared here and there and one little anemone from a few years ago, buried under inches of snow and then quickly reappearing.
The other morning I woke up to see one of the wild cats-the big black longhair- sitting in the far apple tree impersonating an owl.
2013-As of last weekend, the reservoir was clear of ice. Somehow, even with night temperatures in the twenties and the days in the thirties, the garden thawed sufficiently for me to dig out the parsnips. Recipes anyone?
One bud on the star magnolia has loosened enough to send out one tentative petal to test the air. Still no robins.

March 16 - March 21 Ice Disappears

2010-The reservoir has grown patches of open water in the thin khaki-green ice of the western end.  With temperatures in the 60’s through the weekend I expect the ice will not last long. I am anxious to hear peepers and go through last year’s flower journal, regular journal, the views of High Point Mt. journal but find no mention of their first appearance. 
I have been having many bad dreams, one again last night that I can not even remember.
It is warm enough to put the seedling trays out in the sun and I am preparing the cold frame for when I go away at the end of next week. There was no maple sap for three days so I cleaned up and put the equipment away.
Yesterday (the 17th), the sun rose and set at 7:04, the perfect 12 hour day. Why was that not the equinox?
I wrote about ice music some pages ago-what a sound at the reservoir yesterday!  The edges of the ice were broken into tiny crystals that rubbed up against each other made a sound that was a combination of susurration (the only word for it and perfect though I have to look it up) and a million tiny tinklings. And the color green of the ice, almost olive in its rottenness and darkened even more by the brown of the muddy water underneath.
After a few days of unseasonable warm and sunny weather, the crocuses are up, the daffodils are ready to open, and the forsythia are showing yellow points.  The poplar across the meadow has burst out all in catkins that look from here like a froth of pale blossoms.  Definitely feels like spring now, but…
I have planted some of the seedlings out into the cold frame; mesclun, bok choy, chard and kale. This way I can get them acclimated before I go away on Friday.  I hope the weather, which has turned cool again, stays that way and I can keep them covered up until I get back.
The ice at the reservoir, except for loose bits at the very edges, is completely gone.  The eagles seem to still be sitting the eggs, so they could not have been laid as early as I’d thought.
2011- As of yesterday (17th), the reservoir is still largely frozen. There is one track of open water that continues around the shore and dike line but it looks like it was opened by some kind of ice breaker. No musical green ice this year but brown and grey floating chunks. Everything was stirring, the chipmunks, the robins, the seagulls, the wooly bears…The constant sound of geese this morning passing overhead. The daffodils on the south of the house look ready to open but the forsythias are still tightly closed. Snow drops and wood anemones spotted in the usual places and I cut pussy willows two days ago to put in the blue jug.  The snow has melted and the forecast is for well up in the sixties today.
A special full moon.   Just in between Friday and Saturday, a day before the vernal equinox (20th). It rose due east and appeared larger than usual because it was in fact closer than it will be for five plus more years. All this combined to make the highest possible tides though I was not in a position to see that.
Tsunami devastation in Japan:

This nuclear spring
It seems the cherry blossoms
Will pass unnoticed.

2012- Back from two days in NJ- heard the first peepers here last night. Record high temperatures (near eighty) expected to continue into this week.

Thin slugs wait for rain.
The daffodils' smiles seems forced
In this hot, dry spring.

2013-Eight inches of snow and no robins in sight, though the reservoir is clear of ice.
During yoga, falling over in the balance poses, I remember the idea, from the seventies, of biorhythms. Now considered pseudoscience, it still makes a lot of sense to me. The scientific study of these rhythms, chronobiology, does recognize all kinds of cycles and inner clocks and I feel myself part of outer cycles as well. Probably none is stronger than the pull of lengthening day where, just like the crocus buds underground I am pulled out of myself into the light.

March 11 - March 15 Red Winged Blackbirds Sing

2010-Out by the fire, a red-winged black bird perched there calling and one I couldn’t see called in reply. Their call reminds me of waterfalls- a kind of musical gargling.The finches are coloring up-perhaps the very same dull greenish yellow of the uguiso, or Japanese nightingale mentioned by Liza Dalby. Hard rain for three days on and off.

From here, March puddles
Reflecting the cold white sky
Might as well be ice.

I hear a crash near the bird feeder and then see something swoop away towards the maple in front of the house.  It’s a small hawk that apparently dived at a bird at the feeder-unsuccessfully. That never happened before.
2011-Wild Geese Fly North.  Raw cold and grey, day after day. A little spot of sun just enough to make you feel what you are missing. The reservoir was still frozen solid- ok, a few rotten green patches and some open water at the edge near the eagle nest.  That was a few days ago; I haven’t felt like walking in this cold and wind. After the feeling of a breakthrough in meditation, a kind of relapse; suffocation, twitching eyes, coma-like fogginess.  Nothing to do but accept it, and anxiety about contacting agents for the book--it makes me sick to my stomach.  My yearly tarot reading pointed to finding community and the monastery came to mind.  I feel almost ready to attend a Sunday meditation and dharma talk-but not yet.  My doing nothing joyfully has soured.
2012- The eagles are still rebuilding the nest. Poindexter, one of the eagle photographers haunting the reservoir daily, tells me that there were two eggs last year that never hatched. Also a new female this year. Days of hot dry weather that, however pleasant, seem just wrong at this stage of spring. I’m reminded again that there is no such thing as ‘spring’; its just a loose collection of generalities around an idea or concept. Hot, cold, dry, wet, windy, still; it’s all really spring-each one a unique collection of those attributes. I see how the ideal can keep one from seeing the real-if it doesn’t ‘fit’ one ignores or rejects it.
The crocuses are looking kind of beat by the warmth but the daffodils are blooming and the forsythia are just beginning to swell out.
2013-I need to see a robin. They're so late this year.

Yellow petals dropped;
Forced forsythia branches
Stand in sour water.

March 6 - March 10 Snowdrops appear

2010-Passing Perry Cobb’s on Milldam Road I saw the first bunch of snowdrops; pure swelling buds and waxy white flowers hanging above fresh green stems, surrounded by the filthiest, sooty black roadside snow.  I guess the last vestiges of sooty black snow are also a sign of spring.  And then there’s that brief period when the snow withdraws exposing bare ground and dusty dry brown grasses showing no sign of life.  It’s the very picture of despair but the heart knows better.
Willows are coloring up and the buds of the maples around the corner are swelling.  Across from Davenport’s those yellow snow anemones have appeared mixed with snowdrops.
The maples are producing copious sap, gallons a day. A report on the radio called it a banner year.  All told I end up with 1 ½ quarts of syrup from about 10 gallons of sap (which is only very slightly sweet to the taste and reminds me of, and smells like, coconut water.)
2011- Wanting spring is the first sign of spring… Three quarts of syrup this year and I learned something about wood from Laura-oak is not good for a hot fire, two whole days trying to boil the sap down. Next year I will prepare ahead. While I was back there the redwing blackbird showed up, same tree as last year, again singing to another I did not see (or maybe to me!) All it takes is the sight of one robin hopping about on a patch of bare grass and something shifts in me-not that it is spring but that I am spring. And still, with all this snow unmelted on the ground, not a flower yet.  Copious amounts of rain continuing and the expectation of local flooding.  So far this land is draining well and I haven’t needed to go out and clear paths for the water to flow off.

The first sign of spring
Is the longing for spring.
Redwing blackbird calls.

2012-Just at five-thirty, an hour before sunrise, a bird began to sing. It was soon joined by several others. Yesterday in Woodstock, I heard the first peepers-only one and two at a time but loud because very close by- in the boggy area near the gallery. Predicted temperatures today are up to sixty and warmer tomorrow-then back to thirties by the weekend. Saw the first robin, alone, in a budding pussy willow by the road.
      On Turning Sixty
   Waiting for a sign;
    Study or eat you?
    No longer sharp or hungry
    I see the unlooked for cloud,
    Misty and fecund, crossing the sky above my contented desert.
    Love? Now? Don’t make me laugh-
    Ah.
2013- New heights of production-5 quarts of syrup-two days standing over the fire-too busy to write.

March 1 - March 5 Maple Syrup Making

2010-Warmer days (up in the high 30’s, sometimes 40), cold nights, though last night was above freezing.  It’s snowing a sleety sort of rain right now.  The daffodils are up a good 3 or 4 inches (under the snow) on the south side of the house.  The seeds I started under lights are mostly all sprouted, except for the mache and celery which take longer. I have heard that the skunks are up and about though I haven’t seen any myself, which is fine because usually it’s dead ones. The squirrels have been highly excited; therefore many casualties for them.
I am trying to gather supplies for maple syrup making, nothing is coming together.  I can’t find dad’s drill, the forestry store doesn’t have spiles to put into the holes, and the weather is not cooperating.  I guess there’s still a couple of weeks at least.
Finally, I drilled holes in the maple- three on the sunny side and just ran plastic tubes directly out of the holes into my wine making bucket and two glass jugs.  One began running sap right away, one leaked sap down the tree, but when I filled the gap with clay, no more appeared.  The third, which was also like drilling iron, never ran.  It was getting colder and about 4 o’clock so maybe it will be stronger today.  The tree is complicated inside, like three or more stems that have fused together so it’s hard to tell where, inside the stem, you have reached.
2011-Funny, the squirrels aren’t noticeably active this year.  Probably too much snow cover still-a foot in many places and not much bare ground to be found. I’ve started syrup making-a simple little plastic fitting makes the tube attachment nice and snug. The sap is flowing well (my maple and two of V’s);probably 8 gallons in two days. It’s raining hard and there’ll be no chance to start boiling until tomorrow and then the wood is all wet.  Next year I will have to think a little more ahead and get the wood all collected and covered by the end of fall. The last day of March is 1 ½ hours longer than the first; a greater increase than in any other month.
 2012-Finished maple syrup making Friday-almost a gallon in three boilings, with C’s help. Weather is changeable to say the least- fifty a day ago, twenties last night, possible single digits tonight and then near sixty on Wednesday. Heavy snow fell Thursday, nearly eight inches but melting as it fell into slush and mud and still a coating remains. Yesterday summed it up; the sky was darkly grey and the air a much damper chill than the forty degrees the thermometer declared. It felt like snow and then snow it did, hard and squally, but then the clouds shifted and the sun shone through the falling snow which became gentler but steady and lasted that way for nearly fifteen minutes before it gradually stopped.
2013- I made spiles out of pithed-out sumac twigs and felt very proud of myself.  They worked well but have to be made bigger than it seems because they shrink when they dry.
Signs of spring: the trees are tapped and flowing sap, wood anemones are making bright yellow carpets up the road and the red winged blackbirds have shown up with their thuggish friends, the starlings.
In one glance I saw a yellow finch, a scarlet cardinal and a bright blue jay. If they were tropical rarities, such a sight would have people gathering to gawk, but they are, we say, just ordinary.