Hellooooooooooo? Spring where are you?

You may think that asking for spring weather on March 3rd is a little presumptuous.  After all, the spring equinox does not occur until March 20th.  The solstices and equinoxes define astrological seasons.  If you want to map out climatologic changes, you need to follow meteorlogical seasons.  Meteorlogical winter is the time of the coldest temperatures of the year.  Generally around these parts, meteorlogical winter runs from November 1st to February 28th.   March 1st is first day of meteorlogical spring.  And since the average daily temperatures are getting warmer (up to around 40 degrees now for the average high temperature and around 25 for average low temperature), well then, I would like to actually have warmer temperatures.  Oh we've had a day here and there above average, but overall the cold has been hanging on.

This morning when I left the warmth of the house to shuffle to the barn to feed the cats and chickens, it was 12 degrees outside.  As I made my way back to the house, the sun was just starting to rise.  For the first time this year, I heard gobbling from the toms that live in the resident flock of wild turkeys that live across the road.  The male redwing blackbirds were singing loudly.  The cardnals joined in with their "birdy birdy birdy" song.  There was no doubt to any wild bird that the days are getting longer and breeding season is not far away.  The only thing missing this morning was the tiniest hint of warmth in the air.

After work I took the dogs for a walk through the garden area.  I needed to get them some exercise and Mike asked me to take a measuring tape and measure the spacing between last year's plants that had been planted in double rows on plastic.  So to kill two birds with one stone so to speak, the garden became the dog walking destination.  Obviously Mike is plotting out something for this year's garden.  I didn't ask him what.  I certainly didn't want to get involved in a math problem.  After about 3 attempts and nearly falling and breaking a hip on the ice that had formed in between the crop rows, I settled for "about 16 inches" as my answer to Mike's question.  Close enough.

As I turned to cross the middle of the field and start working back to the house, I noticed some deer in the very back of the field.  Then they noticed me.  Then I noticed it was not "some" deer, but "MANY" deer.  This time of year, the whitetail deer is known for a behavior known as "yarding up".  Most of the bucks have lost their antlers.  The bucks are neither concerned with fighting with other bucks or chasing does.  So does and bucks harmoniously gather together around food sources.  As the deer bounded across the field away from me, I did pretty good counting to 29 and then I lost count.  I figure there were somewhere between 35 and 40 deer out in our field tonight.  A beautiful sight for sure.

Mike loaded up some cell packs to take over to the neighbor lady's greenhouse tonight.  The cell packs are where vegetables such as tomatoes and broccoli and cabbage will grow until they are ready to be transplanted into the ground.  The plants won't be started for another month, but Betty, who owns the greenhouses, will be able to fill the cell packs with dirt and store them until they are needed.  It is always good to be able to get whatever work can be done now before the growing season gets busy.

Spring is now the time to keep the blog in line.  Lots has been happening around here.  I missed the opportunity to blog about the great deer, dog, cross country ski adventure.  The flood through the back yard was somewhat notible too.  The new baby layer chicks arrived over a week ago and they are all settled in and growing.  This evening when I went to collect eggs from the 4 mature laying hens, I collect 3 eggs for the first time since the hens started molting last fall.  You see, even they know it is spring.  Someone just needs to come and fix the outdoor thermostat.  I am ready for 40 degree days.