Thursday, March 1, 2012

A Whole New Month

As much as I hate February, I love March more. It is the month of promise.  

March is a month of celebration, beginning with Bill Staines on Saturday.  We'll have an evening gathering with friends on Sunday.  Friends come from out of town for visits. We'll go out for Lenten fish fries. With the longer days and warmer weather, neighbors come out and reconnect after months of being shut in. Our eyes blinking  from the sun, we catch up on neighborhood gossip and talk about summer plans. 

We'll attend Canoecopia in a week and will focus on good places to wet the canoes. By e-mail, we consult with camping buddies to figure out the campgrounds where we'll meet over the summer. 

By the third week of March, snowdrops, crocuses and daffodils will start blooming in my gardens.  There should pasque flowers soon after.  By the last week of March, we start seeds in planters, both flowers and vegetables.  

We know we'll be taking hikes this month.  We'll put on our rubber boots and wade out to the swamps looking for early wildflowers.  In some years, March is warm enough to throw the canoe in the Wolf River and cruise through the Navarino Nature Center birding.  We can expect tundra swans, sandhill cranes, hooded and common mergansers, Canada geese, buffleheads, coots, and pie bill grebes.  

By the 31st, flannel sheets will be packed away.  We won't see them again until November.   

This morning, March started with a bang with an e-mail from an Ontario public library inviting me to perform there in mid-July.  So March will be the month I plan yet another storytelling trip, this time a Circle Tour around Lake Superior.

There will still be snow and gray skies in March, but with so much to look forward to, I am cutting back on St. John's wort as Seasonal Affective Disorder fades away.  




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