All over our part of Michigan, there are intimations of spring. For starters, we’ve had a thaw. From temperatures in the single digits and teens, we’ve jumped into the thirties, forties, and even fifties. Winter is a long way from over in this Northern state, but this respite reminds us that winter does not, in fact, last forever.
The warmer temperatures have affected our behaviors. Two things happened right off. First, people scrambled to locate the storm drains and clear them of inches and feet of snow, so the meltwater, when it came, would have somewhere to go. And, simultaneously, people removed their hats and hoods and scarves and gloves and mittens, and unzipped their jackets. Some went so far as to remove their jackets altogether. I even saw a man wearing shorts, although he was also wearing a knit hat pulled low over his ears. Judging from his somewhat huddled, hands-in-pockets demeanor, a warm head doesn’t quite compensate for shorts in February.
The ice on the pond is no longer safe for skating. The hockey nets haven’t been hauled away, but they’ve been taken off on the ice. Some nice neighbor has gathered all the errant items of clothing cast off during play on the ice and arranged them on a pond-side bench for folks to retrieve. There are quite a few, including a sock. I’ve never really understood how people can lose a sock while outdoors and not know it, but then I do tend to run cold.
The rectangles of ice that used to be hockey rinks now act as reflecting pools, mirroring sky and trees. There’s no open water on Thurston Pond yet, but we passed a little no-name pothole of a pond yesterday that had open water, and over a hundred ducks and geese floating on it. I missed seeing that sight as I was focused so intently on the unpaved road, trying to tell the difference between mere shadows and potholes big enough to swallow a hundred ducks and geese.
The air has been filled with one of my favorite sounds, the last few days: the chirr of red-winged blackbirds. I haven’t seen any yet, but I know them when I hear them. My sisters and I grew up with that sound. Our family cottage had a lake out front and a canal and marsh out back. For us, the sound of red-winged blackbirds conjures up carefree days and a sense of all being right with the world.
Male cardinals have been singing for a while now, too. Have you noticed that, although they have similar voices, they have different accents? My favorites sound like the Swedish Chef from The Muppet Show. The cardinals express themselves differently, too. But everything they say at this time of year translates to, “Check me out!” Or, in the words of Beddini in Top Hat, “I am a very fine fellow!”
We saw a pair of enormous birds low in the sky at dusk, and puzzled over what they could be. Then we saw some in a farmer’s field, and the penny dropped: the sandhill cranes are back. Cranes were not a fixture of my childhood or my husband’s; we still get quite a kick out of seeing them.
The nuthatches using our bluebird house for a roosting box have been remodeling again. Their last project was to drag a long thin strip of batting inside. That seems to be working out well for them. Now they’ve stretched some of the batting sideways and pushed it over the opening to the house. In other words, they’ve installed a door.
We also got our first doses of CoVid vaccine this week. Hallelujah. The vaccine seems like the only way out of the pandemic, and we are delighted to be part of the solution. As an additional bonus, getting the vaccine entailed a road trip. Even trying multiple providers and locations, multiple times a day, I hadn’t been able to get vaccination appointments for us locally, so when word came that Toledo had lots of appointments, I pounced, successfully. Toledo is only an hour from here, and the trip does not teem with excitement. But after a year of pandemic shutdown, a one-hour ride in the car seemed like a Big Deal. It would involve not being home. Seeing different things. Talking to other people. We were positively giddy.
And the very-professional staff at the Mercy hospital in Toledo were upbeat, too. Nothing threw them off-stride. All of the people working in the highly organized, smooth-running vaccination program seemed happy to be part of it. If they minded answering the same questions and giving the same directions over and over, they showed no hint of it. We were well taken care of as patients, and treated as welcome guests. We even heard a staff member telling someone that the vaccination program at that hospital was administering forty shots an hour. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Finally, homebound from Toledo, we detoured to the A&W drive-in in Dexter, for strawberry shakes. What a great week this has been.
12 March 2021