Friday Ramble - Getting through March, sheepishly

March came in like a lioness, and then the lioness stepped away for a few days. Within her brief absence, plucky birds paired off amorously, and local starlings sang merrily, pretending they were robins. For a while it looked as if there would be a short maple syrup run.  For a handful of days, I dared to entertain thoughts of springtime - gardening magazines, agricultural annuals, nursery catalogs and seed packets bloomed on every surface in the little blue house in the village.

No halycon days for us this week. We are back to winter: frigid days and icy nights, the north wind blowing heaps of snow against the door of the garden shed, shiny new icicles dangling from rafters, clouds of blowing snow, earth and desiccated grasses vanishing after a fleeting emergence out of the white stuff. Snowdrifts are three or four feet deep in places, and local geese, loons and herons are going to be very late coming home this year.

What is one to do at such times?  I drink copious amounts of espresso and tea. In the middle of the night, I plot new beds of roses to be dug (hopefully) next month, research heirloom vegetables, lay out the design for another quilt on this computer. I cultivate forbearance and don't look out the window when snow falls again, hoping ardently that Lady March will get her act together and morph into a lamb, darn it.

At the end of winter, one becomes a tad maudlin.  When a friend in the Lanark Highlands told me this week that spring lambs are about to be born in her magnificent old log barn, I could have cried. Poor wee beasties, coming into the world in such circumstances.

Enough is enough already.  Rain would be fine, and it is easier stuff to shove than snow. One thing about the weather though - night skies have been fabulous: flaming sunsets and moons one can almost reach up and touch, planets dancing in the sky at dusk, dippers of starlight strewn by handfuls from vast, streaming cosmic cauldrons. What a show, what a trip!