The old adage that says “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb” is only partly true here. March certainly roared in like a lion on Monday with cold 30 MPH winds and snow flurries. I expected no less. But I do not expect any lamb-like behavior when it leaves. Here in Gold the adage runs more like “March comes in like a lion and May goes out like a lamb.” Or perhaps it should be “March comes in like a polar bear and goes out like a lamb that hopefully has a very thick and warm fleece.” Nevertheless, we’ve rounded one of those corners in the year where things seem to be pushing forward again even though it’s slow going. The days are growing noticeably longer. The sun, when we actually have a sunny day, feels stronger and warmer on any skin you’re brave enough to expose to it. I tell myself that I can feel winter losing its grip even though it’s still cold and there is still snow on the ground.
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| The first snowdrop to emerge. |
March is a tease. It gives us a day of warmer weather now and then. The snow and ice soften and melt a bit. A bit more ground appears. The edge of a flowerbed is exposed and the first tiny snowdrops try to push their way up. But the warmth is brief. Inevitably, the cold comes back with a vengeance, more snow falls, and I think I hear malicious March chuckle at my foolish hope that spring had taken hold.
March is a month for madness. I don’t pay any attention to basketball, but I know people who do and they get all caught up in March Madness and they have their schedules and charts and predictions. There is also the idiom to be “mad as a March hare.” It is an old saying going back to the 16th century. In Europe in March the breeding season for the European hare (Lepus europaeus) begins and the hares seem to go crazy as they box each other, leap into the air, and cavort. Lewis Carroll made the phrase even more popular when he created the character of the March Hare who appears at the Mad Hatter’s tea party in Alices’ Adventures in Wonderland. I can understand going crazy in March. I go a little mad as winter lingers on and on.
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| Mad March hares. |
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| The March Hare at the tea party. |
I did strike a blow against Old Man Winter last week. I started the first of my seeds yesterday. We are twelve weeks away from Planting Out Day and there are seeds that require that long of a head start to perform well – flowers like foxgloves, pansies, carnations, and sweet peas, and vegetables like celery and parsley. I filled four seed trays with soil, sowed the seeds, and set them on heating mats in the upstairs workroom bay window. Now I will watch and wait. It is thrilling to know that the garden of 2021 is underway.
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| Getting things ready to plant the first seeds of 2021. |
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| Planting. |
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| Four trays planted. |
We also placed an order for new chicks last week. We ordered three different breeds, Speckled Sussex, Brown Leghorn, and Amber Star. They won’t arrive until May 10th, but knowing that the order is in and the day of their arrival is fixed is thrilling. Miriam and Hannah have decided to hand raise these new chicks. Last year’s chicks went straight to the barn and had minimal interaction with us and because of that, they are very skittish around us. These hand raised chicks, the girls assure me, will be gentle and tame. Hand raising them is not easy. We’ve done it before. It means keeping them in a box or pen up here at the house for several weeks so they can be held and petted. That box gets smelly pretty quickly. But I’m more than happy to let them do it. I like being with chickens that are tame.
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| This year's chick order - Brown Leghorn, Amber Star, Speckled Sussex. |
Speaking of springtime and chickens, my hens are giving me at least two dozen eggs a day now. That’s great because I have twenty-seven hens and that means all of them are laying. Oddly, a laying hen produces one egg every twenty-six hours, not every twenty-four hours, which makes some people believe they come from a different planet where the days are two hours longer than earth’s. In all my long dealings with chickens, I could believe sometimes that they are an alien life form. They have their own society with its rules and social order. People say they are dumb, but I know better. They are as smart as chickens need to be.
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| One day's haul of eggs. |
Although we still have not seen any robins yet here in Gold (we’ve seen them in other places, but not here), the first red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) arrived at the feeders on Thursday. Just at dawn I saw one male, jet black with his bright red and yellow epaulets, and I was so happy. When I looked out an hour later, there was a flock of twenty or more males and females. I hope soon to go out in the morning and hear them singing their cheerful “o-kla-ree!”
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| Red-winged blackbirds at my feeders. |
I spent the morning on Saturday working on my houseplants. I repotted some plants that had outgrown their pots. I’ve had a problem with mealybugs. They started last year on my orchids and I got them under control. But last week I noticed that they had spread to other plants. So I declared war on them. One by one I took plants into the downstairs bathtub and washed them with a concoction of neem oil and tea tree soap. One of them, my coffee plant, was too infested to save. I’ve had that plant for seven years and I’ve been waiting for it to bloom. The flowers are said to be very fragrant. Well, I’ll never know because in disgust, I put it out in the snow. The mealybugs had even invaded my clivias, which are never bothered by pests. It’s time for the clivias to bloom and I’d been watching for the first buds to appear when I noticed the mealybugs. I washed each leaf and I think they are bug free now. I love it when the clivias bloom.
This coming week exciting things should happen at our house. Our friend Irvin Gingerich will begin the second phase of work on our front porch. He was supposed to start last week, but his family is in the maple syrup business and the sap was running, so he had to postpone. It will be so nice when the porch is done and we can use the front door again.
The weather forecasters are telling me that on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, the temperature will rise into the 50's. Four days of warm weather! I can hardly wait. But then as the weekend arrives, it will get cold again, of course. That’s March.
