Slowly Spring is Coming

I was out of the yard ahead of daylight this morning, ready to fish. The trout and salmon in the nearby lake prowl the ice edge near the inlet, a confluence of waters and topography, above and below, that I suspect makes them feel safe while they hunt. Unfortunately, there was ice clogging things up, so the canoe stayed on my roof.

Returning home, I fired up the burners for what is probably our last day of boiling maple sap for the year. It's been a good year with average production, with some delicious syrup made from lovely trees.

As I sat down with another cup of coffee, I heard the raspy call of a phoebe in our yard. My heart leapt a bit. A little searching and I found it out there, perched, waiting for the bugs to start flying as the frost recedes from the rising sun. Those little birds intrigue me. How they but up against the edges of our life, sometimes nesting under our eaves, flitting all around our yard, yet they retain their absolute wildness.

I appreciate the way we coexist in the shared space of our yard (I suspect the phoebe calls it his yard, the way I was inclined to call it mine when I started typing the line). The birds do their thing and I do mine, with very little perceived change in behavior in either party despite the overlap. The return of these birds lets me know spring is coming. The hummingbirds, who I feed so I can watch them, will be here shortly on their way north. Then the ramps and fiddleheads will pop out of the ground.

The ice that I can hear forming this morning is much more temporary than what I hear groaning in January. It will soon recede from the lake. On my phenological checklist, I'm waiting for a drumming local grouse to join the peents and twitters of the returning woodcock. The first loon call, which is another taste of the wild amongst a crush of humanity, will soon echo over the honks of the geese that have been back for a few weeks. It's time to transplant some trees and start thinking about the garden.