April 6 - April 10 Frustrated Squirrels

2011-Infinite shades of green. Today (the 7th) the day has grown to an even thirteen hours.  I’ve been waiting for the peepers to start but the evenings have been so cold, I haven’t been out.  Then Friday evening(8th) there was a full chorus- had they been gradually building up?  Val said she had not heard them before either-they’d come all at once.
This morning I watched  solitary turkey cock walk and skitter across the field.  Periodically gobbling and shaking out his tail feathers, but never fully extending them, he seemed very taken with himself but fearful at the same time.
2012-The weather is cool but stabilized-very windy.  We are all waiting for rain, which forecast only in the 10 to 20 percent chance range, is not very likely. Yesterday I saw a farmer plowing up great clouds of pale dust preparing for corn. I need to water my early seeds today. The daffodils are kind of skimpy this year, but because of the cool weather, the opulent forsythia are lasting and lasting. The house glows golden from their blooms.

Forsythia’s glow
As warming as real sunshine
This cold grey morning.

2013-And then this year the forsythia are still closed up tight, only showing the tiniest crescent of green between the bus scales. The grass is just beginning to color up and out at the reservoir I wasn’t sure the palest mist of color around the trees wasn’t my imagination. The eagle people were anxiously awaiting the first hatch.
 Yesterday, in support of keeping feeders full, I heard a bird person say that this is a critical time for them, nest building, and before insects and other food sources are widely available.  The squirrel I thought was dead (I know it's him) is back, frustrated by the empty feeders.Yet I’ve been warned by bear people that hibernation is well over. What to do?

April 1 - April 5 Daffodils Bloom

2011-The 12 inch snow  storm predicted for last night has failed to materialize.  The light covering I woke to is already melted away. It emphasizes the feeling I have that the season has turned a corner; no matter what the retreating winter can hatch, spring will be stronger.  The ice on the reservoir is completely melted.  The water is turgid and chocolate colored. (How can eagles see to catch fish?)
Strangely, perhaps because I have been kept inside so much by the weather when I want to be out, or maybe because they are the principal thing filling my eyes while I do yoga, but I have fallen in love with the slate floor tiles. Each one contains the beauty and complexity of a fabulous painting, in fact I fantasize making these paintings though I don’t know where to start.
2012-A two inch snowfall crushes the heavily blooming forsythia and then melts away; the usual dance of extremes. Now the weather has settled into a pattern of sorts-blustery mid fifties days and low to mid thirties nights.  This years’ extremes are perhaps the reason behind the unusual bird migration. Other years the robins have been settled in mating and nest building now, but this year they have been chased off by the flocks of red winged blackbirds and common grackles that swept in and, finding the feeders full, decided to stay. I am not refilling them in hopes these obnoxious (the grackles anyway) visitors will move along. Or perhaps it is my time to learn to love and appreciate them as I do dandelions. (Plateful of greens every night this week.)

Blooming so early,
Fiery forsythia steams;
Quenched by heavy snow.

2013-ROBINS! Suddenly there they were, about a dozen, hopping around on the grass. Though that was several days ago and once again they seem to have been chased off by the more aggressive birds. I’m done with filling the feeder now as bears are probably waking up.
There are no platesful of greens yet this year but I did put together the first salad-a mix of garlic mustard, dandelion; leaves, buds, and crowns, ramps, and a bit of scallion and sorrel from the garden.

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.