It's a Mad, Mad World

It's shaping up to be another absolutely gorgeous early spring day here on Maple Lake.  The birds are singing, the sun is burning off the mist over the lake, and the breezes are fresh and warm.

Let me put this in perspective for you.  Normal highs this time of year are 3C.  Today's high is forecasted to be 17C.  Madness!

The weather is doing wonderful things for the human spirit.  People are happy, laughing, thrilled with the warmth.  You can't help but want to get out and about and busy when the days are like this.  How great it is to throw off winter's oppression and fling open all the windows and doors.  To wear shorts.  In March.

That's all well and good for us humans, but what about the natural world?  What about those chipmunks that are drawn out of hibernation from the warmth of the sun?  The daffodils being coaxed from the cold earth?  The fat, red, almost bursting maple buds?  Unlike us, these natural phenomena don't rely on man-made calenders, they depend on the seasons behaving as they ought to!  I'm certainly not packing away my winter gear yet, but who is going to tell the chipmunks that?

My fear is that the next hard frost (and don't doubt that there won't be one!) will negatively impact the new, too early growth.  If the trees start to leaf out and we get a hard frost, we can expect that delicate new foliage to die off.  Likewise, if some early plants such as garlic get a head start, and then are killed off by the returning cold,  farmers can lose an entire crop.

Here's hoping the return to cold before true spring emerges is an easy one.

Going Around the Mountain

Spring has a way of showing us things that we hadn't noticed before.  After the snow melts, but before anything starts growing, we are presented with a landscape that is laid bare.  The fields and forest floors are flat and sodden with last fall's grasses and leaves.  The lay of the land is clear.  The canopies are open, illuminating previously dark corners of the woods.

Yesterday we went out for a walk in the field and forest edge across the road.  Part of our trek included a section that my husband's family called "going around the mountain".

I enjoy doing these hikes with Rick.  I like hearing tales from his childhood and feeling connected to a piece of land in a way that I never have before.  It's on these walks that my faith in our choice to move here is reaffirmed.  This connection to land, water, rock, and deep rooted family history is what I want.  

All Signs Point to Spring

I know that I have been spared this winter.  Wintry weather came on late, serious snow and cold snaps were few and far between.  There were strings of absolutely gorgeous days.  I fell in love with winter. 

And now, it seems, we are blessed with an early spring.  I know that there is a very real possibility of snow again, and everything will freeze up and grey days will drag.

But for now, early spring has arrived on Maple Lake.

As we waved goodbye to daddy this morning I noticed the chipmunks out from hibernation and scurrying around the front garden.  Several robins were up in the trees singing their "up, down, up down, up a little more, down again" song.  Last night I was out for a run and heard red-wing blackbirds.

I haven't managed to get out for a walk in the woods yet - I'm rather tethered to the ol' homestead having a one year old attached to me most of the time.  I have managed to poke around the house, though.  There isn't any new growth out there that I have observed, but mosses and other evergreen plants look particularly vibrant when finally free of their snowy cocoon.

My husband announced the other night that he "smelt it".  I said, "that disgusting rotten mud smell outside?" and he said, "no, spring.  It smells like eight years old".  How poetic.  And he's right.  What other season evokes childhood memories so sharply?  Spring is a season full of smells.  Some amazing, some...not so amazing.  Smell is the sense that can bring us back to times and places we thought we had forgotten.

I know we may not be entirely out of the woods yet, winter wise, and I'm bracing myself for winter's last hurrah.  I welcome it, though, and am loving the onset of early spring living in a place where I feel I can intimately observe the changing of the seasons.

She says, springtime's coming wait 'til you see it

While walking out to get the mail last evening, I felt it.

The air has changed, and the great wheels are turning.  Spring is creeping ever closer.

There was a freshness in the air that wasn't there the day before.  The smell of new.

It's in the wind, in the golden evening sun.  In the slush of my driveway, and the weird crunchy ice like dirty lace, that forms on the gravel shoulder of the road.  It's in the cockeyed grin of my slowly diminishing snow girl.

Title from Thompson Girl - Tragically Hip

Mid Winter Porch Decor

Unfortunatly I don't have any shots of my Christmas porch decorations, but I will share what I did today to freshen up the front.  I needed to get rid of the Christmas wreath - it was getting too dry and I was sick of it.  I made a new wreath - but then the planters looked off with their red berries, pine cones and variety of greens. 

I decided to pare it down and use strictly pine boughs.  Getting the birch to stand up in solid frozen soil was NOT FUN, but I accomplished my goal and I am pleased with the results.

A palate of green, white and yellow is modern and fresh.  Can't wait for spring!

My husband has told be recently that I am too negative.  So, I will say NOTHING of the fact that I CAN'T wait to get new siding, and a new screen door, and something to cover the hydro meter and, and...