Spring Swing

It’s that time of year when I turn the defroster on in the car in the morning and shift to the AC in the afternoon. The snowpack is receding to reveal green shoots of crocuses and daffodils pushing through half-frozen dirt. And the chickadees are singing longer and louder, with other birds adding their voices to the soundscape outside.

Ah, springtime. Just a friendly reminder, though, that we’re likely in for more winter before spring really sets in.

It’s a rare – maybe nonexistent – occurrence that one New England season simple ends and the next slides smoothly into place. I’m guessing there will be some more give and take between winter and spring – more cold wind, more blowing snow, more bundling up into layers – before the warmer, greener season really takes hold. But the transformation has begun.

Last week, the Connecticut River, where I cross over it from Thetford into Lyme on my way to the office, was a wide, smooth swath of silver-white. This week it’s melted out to a sleek ribbon of cold slate. Where snow covered the perennial bed just a few days ago, now the newly-exposed leaves are greening in the March sunshine, a first step toward summer blooms. Sap buckets hang from sugar maples, and the dog has taken her first dip of the year in an ice-free Bowen Brook.

The kids and I spent all of last weekend at ski races, where the spectators basked in the warm temperatures, and freckles sprouted on noses and cheeks. After school early this week, the kids changed into shorts and headed into the yard with a soccer ball. And so we find ourselves, again, in an in-between place, where mud and snow mingle in the yard, and ski boots and snow pants share space with flipflops and cleats near the front door.

This transitionary time is not always pretty. Tired snowbanks are melting away to reveal a winter’s worth of detritus. (And each year, I wonder who on earth drinks so many cans of bad beer before tossing the empties out the window.) Frost heaves mar the backroads I travel. People and pup track mud everywhere. Without a blanket of white, and before the pastel hues of spring paint the landscape, the most common color there could be considered “blah brown.”

But there is a hopeful sweetness to this shifting of seasons, too. I’m anticipating more days of sweet spring skiing peppering the earliest weeks of soccer practice. I’m starting to think about the garden and which vegetables to grow (or try to, at least) this year. And I wholeheartedly welcome the light of lengthening days.

There is still some snow to come, I’m sure, and cold. At some point, probably soon, I’ll have to don the extra layers again, at least for a while. But these sunny March days are a reminder that spring is on its way, meandering though it may be.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay was published in the Littleton Record as Meghan's Close to Home column on March 13, 2020.

Indecisive March

March is such an indecisive month. I think whoever coined the phrase, “If you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait a minute,” must have done so in March. What other month can bring near-summer temperatures, mid-winter snow squalls, rain storms, thunder claps, and sunny blue skies all in one week?

Snow crocus

Even after such a weird-weather winter, this month has been intensely unpredictable.

The crocuses bloomed last week, the earliest I can remember them opening to the warming sun. And our first robins of the year flew into the yard weeks before their normal arrival date. We’ve had more birds at the feeder than ever before: chickadees and blue jays, nuthatches and woodpeckers, goldfinches and purple finches.

I’m loath to bring the feeder in with so much color and activity there, but I’m sure by now the bears are about, and I’d rather keep them out of the sandbox, which is next to the bird feeder. My kids rediscovered that sandbox last week. It’s been there all winter with hardly a skim of ice, but suddenly, with warmer weather, it was the new hot spot.

Maybe the sandbox is just better in shorts and t-shirts. And that’s what the kids were wearing, casting off their more practical mid-March outfits and digging into the summer clothes as soon as they’d walked in the door from school and dropped their backpacks.

My littlest one even asked for bug spray. I’m not sure if the bugs were actually in the sandbox with her or the request was just an innate response to wearing shorts. Regardless, the kids spent hours in the sand, making some combination of mud-sand whoopee pies and cookies and cakes, digging tunnels, getting thoroughly, happily dirty. It’s the most peacefully the three of them have played – I don’t know, maybe ever. As soon as dinner was in their bellies, back out they went until the dark crept in, later now that we’ve changed the clocks.

The next day dawned sunny and warmish, moved to a sky clustered with thunderheads, and ended with cold and wet. And then it snowed. Back out came the extra layers for skiing over the weekend, the neck warmers and thick fleece shirts. Flip-flops, still covered in sand, were chucked once more into the depths of the closet and replaced again by snow boots.

Yes, we are in that familiar March place, where we might ski or bike or walk along the beach at Echo Lake. Maybe all three in one day. The extended forecast calls for a continued mixed bag of sunshine, rain, snow, warmth and chilliness, sometimes all in the same day.

So, I’ll hold off washing up and packing away the winter gear for a while longer, at least until mid-April. March is such an indecisive month. You never know what’s coming next, and it’s best to be prepared – for a little bit of everything.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the March 25, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.

Signs of Spring

I ordered my first batch of seeds for the vegetable garden this week, reminding myself that even as March snowfall blankets the ground in a clean layer of white, spring is – eventually – coming. March is notoriously fickle around here, changing from cold and snowy to warm and sunshiny, then back again. All of spring, really, is like that; last year a Memorial Day snowstorm had my flip-flop-wearing kids scrambling to find warm coats and mittens as they ran outside to build a snowman.

This year's buds, last year's leaves, and new snow.

Last week, as the season’s persistent subzero temperatures met us each morning, even my winter-loving children had had enough. “I just want it to be spring,” moaned my daughter, as her siblings agreed. When I reminded my skiing-sledding-shoveling-snow-angel-making kids that they loved winter, my son replied, “But, Mama, I like winter better when it snows.”

Lucky kid got his wish, waking up to a thin layer of snow Tuesday morning, followed by a major storm midweek. He rushed through breakfast and headed outside to shovel before going to school. As I approach the deadline for submitting this column, it’s snowing hard, with a foot or more predicted. That translates to three happy little skiers and a happy ski mom.

Of course, by mid-March, many folks are winter weary and ready for spring. Often, these are the same folks who don’t like winter in any month, and I find their choice of living in New England odd. But I admit there are days, as March stretches toward April, when I, too, long for warmer days and fewer layers of clothing.

This yearning happens to me at the waning of each season. Near the end of summer, I crave the crisp coolness and color of fall. As that color fades to stark brown and grey, I wish for the sparkle of winter’s snow and ice to brighten the landscape – and my psyche. After months of cold and winter white, I happily anticipate the return of color to the landscape.

The animals are ready for spring after a long winter of cold, too. In our field, the deer have returned lately to the old apple orchard, traversing our ski- and snowshoe-packed tracks and scratching through the crust to reach the cold, hard apples that fell last fall. More birds are arriving at the feeder, which during the coldest months is frequented mainly by chickadees and a pair of blue jays. I’m hesitant to refill the feeder now, as I’m sure the bears, too, will emerge from their winter hideouts soon.

Spring here can be a season of strange juxtaposition. Snowbanks piled high from a March storm stand adjacent to mushy mud puddles in the driveway. Leaf buds swell on the tips of tree branches even as icicles drip from the eaves of the house. Snow boots and winter hats mingle with mud boots and ball caps in the front hall. My children these days are likely to ski in the morning, then come home and haul their bicycles out of the garage in the afternoon.

I like to think of these seasonal contrasts as holding the potential for the best of both worlds. Ski in the morning, bike in the afternoon. Roll up sleeves and uncover faces to soak in the first warm sunlight of the year, then tuck into a favorite chair by the fire as the warmth of afternoon fades to the chill of evening. Watch the snow fall, then melt, then fall some more, as we plant the first seeds of spring into pots by the window.

No matter what the weather is outside, these little seeds will sprout and grow, reminding us that spring is – eventually – coming. In the meantime, we’re heading out to play in the snow.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul,posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the March 14, 2014 edition of the Littleton Record.

March Madness

In the American sports world these days there’s lots of talk about brackets and Cinderella teams and number 2 seeds getting taken out by number 16 seeds. But the only seeds I’m thinking of during March Madness this year are the ones that will grow into vegetables.

March crocuses

It’s been 70 degrees or warmer the better part of the last week. In mid-March. In northern New England. Where last year at this time the snow banks along the driveway were still dwarfing the lilac bushes, this week the lilacs are budding. There is no snow on the ground anywhere in sight, except for a wee bit in the deepest rocky crevices of Mount Lafayette and on the high slopes of Cannon Mountain, where a couple months ago they stockpiled manmade snow to last the season.

Well, a week of summer weather means ski season ends this weekend. And I feel as if I should be planting the garden rather than making the final turns of the winter.

March Madness? I’m surrounded by it. In a matter, literally, of minutes we went from ski boots to flip flops, turtlenecks to tank tops, chilly air to freakin’ mosquitoes! There are dandelion greens peeking at us from the yard. The tulips are up six inches and look to be blooming in another week. Continuous warm temperatures mean maple sugaring season was abruptly abbreviated this year, so get ready for the price of maple syrup to skyrocket.

The birds are chirping incessantly. The peepers are singing already. The bears are up. While we haven’t actually seen any bruins, yet, the paths through our yard and fields are littered with their scat. It’s a good reminder to keep the muck boots on when we wander around outside, even though our winter weary toes long for flip flops.

Our mudroom, whose scattered piles are normally indicative of the season, is now a schizophrenic hodgepodge of chaos. (OK, with three small kids, two adults, a long-haired dog who likes to roll around in the mucky field, and two cats thrown in for good measure, our mudroom is normally chaos, just not quite to this extent.) There are snow boots and mud boots, ski pants and sandals, neck gaiters and sunglasses all mixed together in a confusing jumble.

“Mom, do we need mittens?” my kids shout as we head out the door. “Should I wear my snow boots or my rain boots? Or my flip flops?” My smallest one, age 3, went out the other morning in shorts, rain boots, a spring weight fleece jacket, winter hat, mittens, and sunglasses. March Madness, indeed.

The last two afternoons the kids have stripped down to play in a makeshift kiddie pool. Last night they revived one of their favorite pre-bedtime summer rituals: running around the front yard in circles as fast as they can, giggling in a slap-happily the whole time. They came in covered in mud and dirt, got cleaned off, and fell into bed exhausted.

Next week we return to cooler temperatures. Normal March weather, requiring long sleeves and socks. It might even snow a little bit. It won’t surprise me one bit if it snows – a lot – before summer really sets in. Really, we had a taste of winter in October, lots of fall-ish mud season-esque weather through much of the winter, and now summer in March. Why not winter in April? Or May? It’s a good reminder to all those North Country folks who lament snow in winter (hello, it’s WINTER in NEW ENGLAND!) that we don’t get to choose when it happens, but snow is a fact of life here. It’s easy to embrace snow in winter. Snow in late spring, after a taste of summer, not so much.

So, for a while, our mudroom will remain confused, as will the tulips. We’ll leave the bikes on the porch, but the snowshoes are still there, too. And while I’m tempted to sow seeds in my veggie garden, which is completely melted out and warmed by the sun, I think for now I’ll stick to planting seedlings inside, leaving them in the warm, south-facing window of the living room.

It’s a good place for looking out at the March Madness around us.