February 19 - February 24 Eagles Lay Eggs

2010-I guess the egg laying is confirmed by now.  Saturday I walked out there past a knot of thrilled eagle watchers photographing one of the pair posing very photogenically on the first of the two dead trees.  I rounded the corner towards the fountain and one (the same?) came swooping right over me, landing in the dry grass and scooping up talons-ful with little hopping movements. Then it flew back to the nest.
The chickadees are singing their spring song and two vultures (the new sign of spring?) were spotted in the tree next to the creek.
I found a nice little south facing crook of the house to bask in yesterday--it got so warm I stripped down to a tank and stayed there about an hour, sniffing dirt, eating a pungent onion grass bulb, and dreaming of springs past.
Suddenly a flock of robins scavenging over the ground and I can’t help it-my heart leaps!  They are saying now that robins stay year round and that they are no longer a sign of spring, but it’s not that easy to overcome a lifetime of conditioning.  Anyway, even if they are around in the winter, apparently they stay in the trees.  Robins on the ground will always mean spring.  Unless like J said, they are really little turkey vultures in red vests.
Now snow is falling, thick and wet white sticking to everything.  More forecast for tomorrow and the next day and the next…I’ve cut a little branch of the forsythia to put up here in the loft-behind it a window full of snow.
2011- Is it possible to look forward to the spring without losing full presence here at mid February?  A new landscape of possibility seems to be opening up for me where I can let myself open more to this cold seemingly endless end-of-winter time. It has always been just something to get through, get over with, but this year I am enjoying it for itself.  I feel more able to let it happen as it will. Slowly, not wishing it away. Savoring more light, more warm sun, but appreciating the quiet time, the resting time, before the bustle of garden season begins.  I have also started feeling like I don’t want to be anywhere else, I don’t want to miss any part, any day of this unfolding process. I want to walk around this tiny piece of the world greeting each bush and plant and check on each one every day. It feels a little like being in love.
2012-Successful maple syrup making-I stopped at two quarts though C took the next day’s sap for almost another quart. The taps are still in though, and with the sudden turn back to cold and a good four inches of snow last night it’s hard to tell what will happen. Standing around the syrup fire the other day I remembered seeing the first red winged blackbirds in other years. None in sight that day but then yesterday a huge flock-several hundred I guess-though their epaulets were so thin a line I searched in vain for the binoculars to make a definite identification.
A beautiful bunch of forced forsythia in the living room-every bud opening spring yellow. And I saw some yellow snow anemones in Stone Ridge yesterday.
2013- More snow is predicted this weekend. The front yard is a sheet of ice. The temperatures are barely thirty during the day and the wind has been strong so it feels much colder. I have never taken a walk on the reservoir in the winter, even having to force myself to go, that I didn’t feel better afterwards and happy that I had got out of a closed state of mind into an open one. And I discover, time and again, that every kind of weather has something to offer. Yet, having learned that-knowing that- today I find I cannot force myself to go. Such a clear sense of being two distinct people with differing agendas, so, even though I have no idea if the reservoir is frozen this winter or not, if the eagles are on a nest or not, I stay in and cook and wait for the weather to ‘improve‘. And feel sorry about it.