Spring Slated for Mid-March Arrival

A forecaster from National Weather Service has come out with word that by mid-March, the northeast will see a warming trend. The last few years have seen late-arriving springs, partly due to lingering arctic air. But this year, there will be no arctic air and a strengthening March sun will work wonders toward warming us up.

For me, this comes as the best possible news. Wild edible plants will become available earlier and trout fishing in streams and rivers will crank up into high gear by early April.

Today is February 8 and until just a few days ago, I was able to go out back on the hillside by my house and pick fresh wintergreen leaves to chew on. That’s because what little snow we had melted, leaving wide swaths of bare ground on south-facing hillsides.

Before that, though, three resident deer had pawed through the snow to get at the wintergreen. This surprised me. I didn’t know that deer liked wintergreen. I knew that partridge liked it, because many lf the birds that fell to my shotgun in fall had crops filled with wintergreen leaves.

Today, though, temperatures are in the low teens and a major snowstorm is on the way. But it’s only early February and we must expect such things. So let it freeze, let it snow and do whatever it wants. With news of a big warmup in March, we can handle about anything that nature gives us.