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.

Gold Fish

It’s not easy to kill a gold fish. At least not on purpose. I’ve done it. I’ve flushed a couple down the toilet. I’ve allowed a number to become entombed in the ice of our pond, their corpses floating to the surface in the early spring. In an indirect way, I’ve provided easy access to our fish to the cat and raccoon that patrol the edge of our pond, the gnawed skeletons scattered on the ground in the morning. But when I’ve brought some of the pond fish in for the winter and put them in an aquarium, as I did again this year, I’ve not been able to knock them off. I came close this week, though. We had to buy a new filter and pump this year, and after a couple of months it had become gunked up. So I decided to clean it. With vinegar. (That’s what we clean the coffee pot with, after all.) And it seemed to work fine – most all of the algae and gunk melted away, I rinsed everything out well, and put it all back together. But the next morning the aquarium was cloudy and the fish were gasping for air at the top of the tank. Things did not look good. My wife suggested a ph imbalance, which sounded as good a diagnosis as any, but what did that mean and what could I do about it? Moreover, what did I care? If the fish died, the fish died. They’re lucky they aren’t like their more unfortunate brethren this winter, encased in the ice of the pond out by the garage. They get two daily feedings and seem quite content, if completely unaware, in their aqua cage. If I were to flush them tomorrow, they’d be none the wiser. But they survive, if not thrive. The water began to clear up the next day, and after a few more days had cleared up altogether. They’re happy (I can only suppose) to suck in gold fish flakes twice a day and mindlessly cruise the tank in the beams of sun that slice the water. In a way, I envy them their obliviousness to the climate change threats to their confined environment. But they remind me in uncomfortable ways of those in our own confined environment who remain oblivious to the not-all-that-different threats to our own.

Surviving Winter

If it weren’t for the arctic temperatures, the driving snow, the treacherous ice, winter would be a fairly pleasant season. There was a time when I thought I actually liked winter. I lived for a year in Minnesota, owned a pair of cross-country skis, and actually used them two or three times a year. I have pictures of me bundled in a parka, ski gloves, and stocking cap, leaning on my ski poles, my exhaled breath frozen on my glasses and in icicles dangling from my beard, a smile on my face that looking back now I can only interpret as delusional. As I’ve grown older, about all I enjoy in winter is central heating, watching TV, and Johnny Walker Red, neat. In literature, winter has always symbolized death, and that seems just about right. I bring a couple of gold fish each year in from our pond to winter over in an indoor fish tank. As the two piscine lounge in their 10-gallon central-heated resort (no TV or Scotch, though), they have no awareness of their buddies who they swam with through the summer who are now entombed, frozen in a pond of ice. I watch them suspended in their tank and envy their watery ignorance of winter.