Can we believe that the back of winter is broken? There is only a thin sheet of ice covering about half of my pond, visible from the window where I sit. On the 13th I was looking out over my snow covered lawn and lamenting that the pond was frozen solid, and was insisting that the ice was always broken up by Valentine’s Day. Then I looked back through My Pictures and saw sets of photos taken during previous February’s depicting knee high snow and, yes, frozen pond. No wonder we take pictures, it’s a check on our memories.
As it was, temperatures were rising on the weekend of the 13th, the snow was gone from the lawn by the end of the day on Valentine’s Day, and I was able to break up a little of the thinning ice at the edge of the pond so that the ducks and geese could thrill to the coming of Spring.
How much more Winter? Well, we watched for the groundhog on February 2, and depending on where our own groundhog lives, we knew that either we were in for six more weeks of Winter, or that Spring would be here in six more weeks. We are already more than half way there in either case. Ye-e-es!
In Old England February 2 was ‘Candlemas Day,’ and they rhymed thusly: “If Candlemas Day be clear and bright/Winter will have another bite.” Same thing, right? They also said that a good goose should start laying near Candlemas Day. Well, my old goose laid her first egg of the season on the 10th, and my younger geese were laying by Valentine’s Day, as were the ducks. The old English also believed that Valentine’s Day, being the day for love of course, was the day that birds start to mate and nest. Indeed, my ducks began to behave amorously on Valentine’s Day; perhaps it was the breaking of the ice that inspired them. Also, on that morning before I rose I heard that bird call that haunted me all last summer—the two note, high to low, almost as you might whistle to gain the attention of your dog. And as well, a three-note call from another, all notes on the same line of the staff. Thus inspired myself, I opened and cleaned out the bluebird nest boxes—I know, I know, I should have done that last fall, before the little deer mice made their nests therein.
A walk in my Arbor Garden shows that flower buds on my early blooming shrubs are already swelling and showing color—winter honeysuckle, winter spike hazel, and Daphne mezereum. Daffodils are thrusting their green shoots above ground, and I am keeping a close eye on my earliest bloomer, Rjinveld’s ‘Early Sensation,’ aptly named.
And every morning as day breaks, before I rise i can tilt my head to look out the window above my bed and watch the buds on the maple begin to swell.
So, just keep looking around that corner.
Gramma Windy
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