First Day of Spring

On the first official day of Spring, as I worked this afternoon in the back yard (78°), indications that this past winter was one of the mildest of all time:

1. Sage is probably the heartiest of our perennial herbs. I’m able to use it regularly, fresh, in the Thanksgiving cornbread-sausage stuffing. But it’s usually died off by mid-December under the snow and freezes. This year it survived the whole winter and the shrub is still surviving, if not full, vibrant. I might have to make a Saltimbocca for dinner this week.

2. At the beginning of December we got our first snow, about one inch. It didn’t require the use of our snow blower but I thought it best to get some gas and try to start it in preparation for the snow I thought must be to come. But it wouldn’t start and so I took it in for a tune-up which turned into a two-month hassle of resolving a recall of the injection system. Fortunately, I didn’t need the blower for those two months, or the month since. This afternoon I started it (successfully) for the first time in order to run out the gas tank. It took two hours for the still-full tank to run dry.

3. We had four gold fish in our above-ground pond last year. In November I tried to get them into an indoor tank to winter-over but was only able to net two. I assumed the other two had either been dinner for a raccoon or cat (as has happened in the past) or I would find their floating carcasses when the ice went out this spring (as has happened in the past). The small pond typically freezes through over winter. But as I was emptying and cleaning out the pond this afternoon I saw both of them desperately swimming in the slowly diminishing water. I netted and reunited them with their buddies from last year in the indoor tank. How they survived under the ice without oxygen or food I don’t know. A few weeks from now they’ll all four go back into the pond. Late next fall, when I try again to bring them indoors, they’ll have forgotten altogether their being brought in or not brought in this winter. But they’re gold fish, so they’ve probably already forgotten.