mud season

 Mud season has started. If you don't live in a place like Vermont, you may not know about mud season.

This is mud season. One year the mud on the Crossroads literally pulled the tire on my car off of the rim. Wikipedia says that it is caused when the frost on the top of the road has thawed, but the frost underneath is still frozen so that the water can't percolate down, hence the mud. It also said that in Russia, mud season is called rasputitsa.

This blog actually started this time of the year many years ago because of mud season. I was thinking about the seasons of the year, and the conventional wisdom that there are four seasons. I knew there were more than that around here; mud season, foliage season, stick season. I decided to try and count them...still counting.

the weekend

 Walking over the weekend, bluets emerging at the parsonage down the road. I didn't realize they were the first ones out. I thought it was the coltsfoot.

So are the pussy willows a little farther down.

One day we had thunderstorms for the first time in a long time. The next day the sound of peepers and tree frogs croaking from a pond along the way. Today was very windy, flapping of a flag in the breeze, sound of a metallic clasp against the flagpole; ding, ding, ding.

emerging

 High of 65 yesterday. Took a drive into town with the windows open. Saw runners on the roads along with a couple of women pushing baby strollers. Tinges of green on the willows and reds on the maples as buds begin to emerge. Horses and the sound of motorcycles on country roads.

We do a lot of looking: we look through lenses, telescopes, television tubes...Our looking is perfected every day, but we see less and less. While drawing grasses I learn nothing "about" grass, but wake up to the wonder that there is grass at all.

Frederick Franck

Zen page-a-day calendar

relative

 The water in the Ira Creek is very clear this time of year.

Allyn has mentioned several times the relative "feel" of temperatures in the spring and fall. In the spring a temperature, say 50, can feel warm and the same temperature in the fall can feel cool. It's not hard to figure out why. Two days ago we went out to walk and the temperature was 50 degrees. At one point during the walk, it felt so warm I took off my wind breaker and rolled up my sleeves. Yesterday when we went out the temperature was around 30 and again I took off my coat and rolled up my sleeves.

The most extreme example of this phenomenon I ever heard was from a reader of this blog. She and her husband were camping somewhere in the far north. A severe storm came through and they were stuck for days in their tent with temperatures well below zero. After the storm had passed, the temperature rose to zero. It felt so warm they went about their business for a time in tee shirts.

Spring

 The first sparrow of spring! The year beginning with younger hope than ever! The faint silvery warbling heard over the partially bare and moist fields from the bluebird, the song sparrow, and the red-wing, as if the last flakes of winter tinkled as they fell! What at such a time are histories, chronologies, traditions, and all written revelations? The brooks sing carols and glees to the spring. The marsh hawk sailing low over the meadow is already seeking the first slimy life that awakes. The sinking sound of melting snow is heard in all the dells, and the ice dissolves apace in the ponds. The grass flames up on the hillsides like spring fire as if the earth went forth an inward heat to greet the returning sun; not yellow but green is the color of its flame-- the symbol of perpetual youth, the summer checked indeed by the frost, but anon pushing on again, lifting its spear of last year's hay with the fresh life below. It grows as steadily as the rill oozes out of the ground. It is almost identical with that, for in the growing days of June, when the rills dry, the grass blades are their channels, and from year to year the herds drink at this perennial green stream, and the mower draws from it betimes their winter supply. So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity. 

Spring

Walden

Henry David Thoreau

scolding

 With the departure of ice and snow from our walking route, we have gone back to walking the full route of 41/4 miles, boots being replaced by sneakers. Red squirrel and pileated woodpecker scolding us yesterday as we made our way around. In the spring and the fall, with snow and temperatures around freezing, there are some interesting (for me, Shawn) manifestations of thermodynamics. Some of these are the angle and direction of terrain, shade, and the ability of dark colored objects to absorb light, and emit heat.

The most interesting phenomena to me has to do with a section of our walk. It's through a narrow valley running north and south. Every year at this time the snow on the east-facing slopes disappears before the snow on the other side of the road, the west-facing slope. I googled it, and was surprised I couldn't find anything. The only thing that comes to mind is that the daily temperatures are warmer when the sun is shining directly on the east-facing slopes in the afternoon, and that it's some kind of interaction between the temperature and the direct sunlight.

birds

 I didn't see them but I heard them, red winged blackbirds screeching from a soggy area on the walk yesterday morning. A sure sign of spring.

old photo

I saw them, but I didn't hear them. Mourning Doves spied while out walking. Mourning Doves for some reason have never been a species that has sparked my imagination. I think it goes back to that presumption that anything common can't be too interesting. Again I was wrong. I wondered whether Mourning Doves migrate and found this site with a lot of interesting information about them.

https://northernwoodlands.org/outside_story/article/the-secret-life-of-the-mourning-dove

Saw a pair of birds with reddish upper bodies hanging out in the forsythia bush in the back. I dug out my field guide for birds and it looks like they could have been purple finches or red polls. I have moved the field guide from the book shelf to the table in the kitchen where I eat my breakfast.